From Utter Despair To Ultimate Victory

Psalm 13: Lament, Prayer, and Praise

And please turn your Bibles to Psalm 13, reading in Psalm 13, starting at verse one. 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 when 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. Please pray with me. Father, we thank you for the honesty of the psalmist and how he felt far from you and far from your help.

As we often feel, Father, we're surrounded by a sinful world. We have a prowling devil and we have a traitor in our own hearts. But Father, lift our eyes that we might see as our pastor encouraged us this morning, the greater picture of your grace being triumphant in us, in our weakness, your strength being shown.

We pray, Father, that as we study your word again, that you'd lift our eyes to our savior and that we'd see in him all we need, Father, for everything in this world, even when times are very difficult, that we can trust in your grace and that it will prevail over our sins and over this world.

We pray that you'd be with us, Father, by the presence of your spirit, that you'd give us ears to hear and hearts to obey. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen, amen. Please be seated.

The Feeling of God’s Distance and the Reality of Spiritual Cooling

Have you ever felt this angst that David speaks of here, especially in the first couple of verses of this psalm, this distance from God, this cooling of relationship with him, this feeling that God has somehow taken you out of mind, that his memory has failed or that you have somehow taken yourself away from him, that you have failed and you failed God in such a way that he's finally turned away from you and said, no more of this one.

I've had enough of their inconsistencies. I've had enough of your sin. I've had enough of your iniquities. And you are no longer in my mind. Do you ever feel like that? We know from the scripture and from so many parts of scripture that tell us that God would never do such a thing, that God would never actually forget us.

So I'm asking you, have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt the embers of your love for God cooling and your distance from him increasing so that it is as if, important two words, as if he's lost all memory of you and has no cause or no reason or no motivation to regain it?

This Psalm speaks of that situation. And I would venture to guess that all of us at some level have been there. If we compare ourselves to when we first came to know Jesus Christ and with rejoicing, like the Ethiopian who went away rejoicing when he knew his sins had been washed away, not by the baptismal waters, but by the blood of Jesus Christ and faith in him.

And he rejoiced. We have this high moment. And then as life intrudes, as the weeds grow up, as we can't see the image of the cross quite as well as when we first did it, and we have so many things impinging upon our time and our consciousness, and things cool.

Things cool off. And eventually we start going wrong directions, read our Bibles less, pray less often. And the next thing we know, we have this memory back in the back of our minds in the far recesses of something we're missing.

It comes to us, it's God. It is that warm, close, intimate, vibrant relationship that is cooled off. And we can say with the Psalmist, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? If you've ever felt like that, this Psalm, as was prayed just a moment ago, and I love the way that was presented to you, how real the Psalms are, how gritty they can be, how true they are to the actual lives that we actual people live.

The Psalm has David under some unnamed aggression from some unnamed enemies, these ones who are going to exalt over him. We have no idea who they were. He had hard times and enemies in abundance, bushels full of them, we might say.

The situation is not revealed to us, but even so, we do well to understand its reality. It's reality, sort of like we've preached this morning. What's real? David, whatever they were conspiring against him, David in his prayer warns God that in his death, or should there be failure on his part, should God not rescue him, he tells him in the middle of the Psalm what the consequences are going to be.

They will exalt over him. In verse four, I have prevailed over him. My foes will rejoice because I am shaken. So he calls out these four times. And I think he calls out for many of us, how long, how long, how long, how long will this go on?

He asks how long will you forget the third, fourth of them, taking counsel in his own soul because he hasn't God to inquire of. The enemy is going to be exalted over him. If we've ever been in this situation, if you've ever felt this cooling of the fire of love that we have for God, this perception, again, I choose my word carefully, this perception that God has moved from you, this Psalm is for you.

I would have you to see how we go from utter despair to ultimate victory, the despair of how long, oh Lord, will you forget me? I call that desolate probation, the seeming absence of God. That's the first two verses.

And then in verses three and four, in the middle of the Psalm, desperate prayer, from desolate probation to desperate prayer regarding the probable outcome, should this state of affairs continue. And finally, at the end, in the last two verses, determined praise as he remembers the goodness of God and returns to him in prayer and trust and hope and faith.

We are sort of back to where we were this morning, where we can't let circumstances cloud our view of God. When things are good, we forget to give him the praise, implying that easy times were accomplished by my own hand.

And more to the Psalm, when things are more difficult, our memories tend to be no better. But this is when we are tempted to move forward on our own and to find our own solutions. And to say, well, this thing is bad.

This is a hard circumstance. Oh Lord, help me. And then as soon as we stand up, we get to work helping ourselves, do we not? In either case, if we can just keep in mind that it is, I, it is not God, it is me whose mood has changed.

We being mercurial, we being changeable, totally unlike God in that way. It is God who stayed fixed to his nature. And it is we who have moved. We're unstable as water, as Jacob prayed about his son, Reuben.

We begin with this desolate privation, desolate privation. And by privation, I mean having something taken away, which was important, something which was good, something which we wanted and sought after.

How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? And one of the worst agonies of people whose loved ones are stricken with dementia or even worse with Alzheimer's is seeing their love grow distant as it fades from memory.

And we could even ask, and I don't really have an answer, certainly not a technical or a medical answer to it, did that person stop loving their spouse of many decades? Well, in one sense, no, not at all.

But they have, in another sense, moved away as they lose their facility, as they lose their memory, as they're unable to rejoice at times past and the things that they went through together as a husband and wife.

And it's just crushing to the one who has to watch this. And even knowing that it's not, in that sense, their fault, at least not culpably their fault, that they've forgotten this. They do sense this cooling of the love between them.

Can this person who's lost all memory truly love them as they once did? It's very hard when we see this memory fade. It even hurts our feelings when people who are close to us even here and now forget things or forget important events or forget good times that we had together.

It's especially true between a husband and a wife, but even amongst friends and siblings and such like that. Memory is so important, and to see it fade, to see things forgotten is in many ways very hurtful to us.

I think it does us good to admit the reality of that. And how much more then to see God seeming to forget, seeming to no longer want his countenance, which means his presence, to be toward this person.

That feeling of desolation could be crushing, and it would be crushing to one who knows what that was like, to the one who never knew God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, this distance from God, which they have in abundance, is no problem because they've never had the closeness.

They've never had the intimacy. They've never been one with God because they're one with Christ. And so they have nothing to sense in terms of losing that relationship with God or being close to him. But for us, for you as a Christian, who have known those times, have you not known them?

When you're in your prayer closet, as we call it, on your knees, having read a psalm or any passage from the scripture that particularly has spoken to your soul at that moment, the situation that you're in at that time, and you feel the literal presence of God, the reality of his person, believing in that God you cannot see, and the warmth that just sort of fills you, and you know God is with you, and you know that God cares for you and loves you.

Have you known those sort of times? Have you prayed in that way when you stand up and you know that you truly have communed with God Almighty by the power of the Holy Spirit and through faith in his son?

That triune blessing that so warms your inner person. Well, you have to have known that in order to cry out four times with David, how long, how long, how long, how long? I can't take another minute, yet that relationship be restored.

Lord, come back to me. Lord, be with me once again. How long is your face to be hidden from me? It's a feeling of desolation, and as I look out, I can attest that every one of us would know in our mind, intellectually, we know that God didn't forget.

Speaking of God having memory or God forgetting or remembering anything is really too small. It's a way of accommodating himself to us. God doesn't have memory. God ordained all things whatsoever shall come to pass in eternity past.

It's not that he remembers anything. He ordained all things. It's not that he remembers or forgets. His will is like his person. It's eternal. He doesn't have to think, okay, what was the plan for today?

Oh, I'm going to go meet with Mary today and listen to her prayer this time. That's not God. He doesn't remember or forget like that. Speaking of memory and lack of memory is an accommodation to us. In Isaiah 49, 15, chapter 49, verse 15, God says through the prophet, 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. Can a nursing mother forget her child? Well, it is possible. We would think it's horrific, but we do hear of these things and it would be horrific. And God's making a point.

He's not saying that because they sometimes do or that's a rare happening and it's a terrible thing when it does happen, I will only do it every few thousand centuries or something like that. And he's making a point here.

As it's commonly known that a nursing woman, a nursing mother cannot forget her child, so God will never forget you. We know that intellectually, do we not? Does your mind not center on this truth? And yet sometimes our spirit on the how long, how long, how long, how long, this is forever.

And the warmer and more intense and more intimate those times were when we knew God's presence in an immediate way, in that special way, the longer a second is or a minute or a day or a week, just seems like forever.

Will you forget me forever? Can God do that? We should be saying, no, of course he cannot. My mind knows that and my spirit must apprehend this truth. In Hebrews chapter 13, verse five, he says, and this is clear and this is in context, and this is easy to remember, I will never leave you or forsake you.

By faith in Jesus Christ, you have the indwelling spirit. Jesus says we will make our camp with him. And when things get cold, we'll go indoors. That's not at all what he said. He says, I and the Father will make our home in him, the one who has faith.

And when she stumbles and sins, we will find a better abode, a more holy abode. No, he doesn't say that either. He says, we'll make our home with him. We will dwell with him. We will be in him. We will be in her and with her.

I will never leave you or forsake you. Christian, this is to you. And it's for these times to get us back from this desolation of how long, how long, how long, how long, this is forever. No, it's only been a day.

This is forever. It's too good when God was so close to me or I felt that closeness. It's only been a week. It's forever because what I knew before was so beautiful and so sanctified and so enriching to my soul, I can't do without it another moment.

Have you ever cried out like that? How long these four times? I can't go another second, but that God should return to me. And David knows as well as you do. He knew then that God hadn't forgotten him.

God hadn't forgotten anyone. God hadn't forgotten anything. It just seems that way. And this is the truth. This is the reality. This is the everyday life grittiness of the Psalms. You know, we have many instances in the historical record of David hearing directly from the Lord.

You know, we have when he would be in 2 Samuel, or excuse me, in 2 Samuel and in Kings, when he called for the ephod, that priestly piece of the garment, and inquired of the Lord. I don't know exactly what that looked like, but it was symbolic of going in prayer and petition to the Lord and of the Lord's presence with his people, this piece of garment from the tabernacle.

And he would inquire of the Lord and then he would hear from the Lord. The Lord would answer him. And in many other instances, David would hear directly from the Lord in a way that we don't today. We have the whole scripture.

We have Jesus Christ and faith in him. But so fervent was David for the Lord that David was named by God a man after my heart. Yet here he is pining away for God to cease, to cease forgetting and to again take him into his presence.

What was this like? Have you ever been camping when it's really cold? I mentioned camping a moment ago. I mean, the kind of camping when the scout master or your parents or whoever it is, and if you've never done this, well, I'll just describe it to you very quickly.

It's freezing outside. I mean, it's cold, but there's this bonfire going, a nice roaring fire. And if you stand close to it, you're warming. You get so warm that you have to turn around and get the other side warmed up because this side's getting too hot.

You have to move away from it a little bit. It's that intense. But just take that step away. And do you know how fast you turn cold? You go running back for that fire. You wanna get there as quickly as you can.

This is what it's like if you've known that fervency with God, and yet for whatever reason, it's cooled off in your perception. Just that step away from the campfire. David begins to search out the cause as we ought in the second verse.

Desperate Prayer in the Face of Unanswered Need

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? I won't speak much about the enemy because we don't have any idea which enemy it was.

Peter Craigie, one of the commentators, and a few others think that the enemy might even have been death itself. I think that imports a bit of New Testament theology into the psalmist. I don't quite agree with that, but we don't know who or what this enemy actually was.

Perhaps, just speaking of enemies in general, the temptations to sin that we face in this life, maybe David as a prophet writing for all of us from his day. But the first part of the verse, I think, is very applicable.

How long must I take counsel in my soul? How long must I, how long is it required of me to get counsel from myself rather than from God? I think is what is being said here. I haven't heard from God. God has cooled, he's forgotten me, he's turned his face away.

Where do I have to go? Myself. You can see by the way I've said that just how wrong-headed it is. But when we're in that situation, when we're desolate for God's presence and sad because of the beauty of what we had before and how much we miss it, how quickly do we go back to our own resource, our own wisdom, our own knowledge, keep our knees straight and our Bibles closed?

Is this not the refuge to which we flee too quickly, all too frequently? There is for David an enemy of some sort, and I won't speculate who or what that was, for you and me, there might be a crisis, maybe an actual enemy, but we're not kings like David was.

Most of us don't have actual enemies on this earth who are seeking actively to do us harm. I hope you don't. For you and me, it's the circumstances, the sort of thing that we've talked about this morning.

It's relationships, it's jobs, it's economy. And we take counsel in ourselves so quickly, and our prayers become more hurried as the need for an answer, we think, is all the more intensely needed now.

We find a proverb that relates, we open our Bible, we read it, maybe we can memorize it for a moment, we pray about it, close it, say, Lord, give me the answer. We don't get an answer right away. We stand up and we go about our own business, doing it our own way.

That's what it is to take counsel in my soul, have sorrow in my heart all the day. It's to actually turn away from the fix, to turn the opposite direction of the cure. So what do we do? You know, the emergency gathers wings, it's coming faster, it's ready to land like some primordial beast and make its home in the nest of my life.

It will have its way with me the way David fears his enemies will with him. And so we, as it were, demand this answer. Lord, you're going to get 46 .23 seconds more prayer and I better have an answer because when I step up, leave this home, I've got to fix this.

Now, do you hear yourself in the Psalm? How long must I take counsel in my own soul? I wanna look into this a bit by maybe changing how long to why. Let's change the how long to why for just a moment.

So it would be, why must I take counsel in my own soul? Why must I have sorrow in my heart because of your silence? Why must my crisis have such success? Why does this go on like this? If we all have these moments where we were caught to God, how long?

Because we miss his presence and it's not there and we can tell it's not there. Why? Why? Well, Charles Spurgeon in his Treasury of David offers this advice and I think this is very good. Inquire into the causes of God's anger.

He is never angry, but when there is very great reason, when we force him to be so. What is that accursed thing in our hearts or in our lives for which God hides his face and frowns upon us? What particular disobedience to his commands is for which he has taken up the rod?

You can see where he's going in this. In word, what sin has created this gulf? God didn't suddenly grow tired of you. He didn't forget that he chose you to be in his Son before the world was founded. Jesus' promise that the Father's love for him is the same that he has for you who are in him didn't just vanish.

How would Isaiah explain this? He would say, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. The answer to how long might just be to find the why.

And when why is answered, then how long to be answered? How long? Until you repent, until you acknowledge your iniquities before the Lord and repent. Isaiah goes on to say, for a brief moment, I deserted you, but with great compassion, I will gather you in overflowing anger for a moment.

I hid my face from you. You hear the echo of the first two verses of the Psalm, but with everlasting love, I will have compassion on you. Now you hear, I will never leave you or forsake you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.

The same David in Psalm 66 verse 18 says, if I cherish iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened, but truly God has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer. God's presence is restored when sin is recognized, when it is confessed and repented of.

Throughout this long process, drawn into following years for some, shorter times for others, God remains true to his people. He remains true to you, to all who have faith in Christ. He's bringing a hard providence in your life.

He has turned away in that sense from you in order to bring you back to your senses, to bring you back to sanity, to bring you to repentance. You need to look back on those times when you felt like the psalmist, if you've ever felt that way, and then remember the forgiving love and the restoration of intimacy and warmth when God forgave and restored that vitality of a relationship within you.

And you can look back and say that God was with me the whole time. He was preserving me while the Holy Spirit in you was feeling the grief of the dullness of your heart and your refusal to repent. And then with repentance on your lips and forgiveness in hand, were not your prayers once more heightened to new levels as your faith was confirmed?

There's no mention of sin in the psalm, but the verse from Isaiah and others don't allow us to speculate what was exactly going on with David, but it does give us grounds to conclude that this sense of cooling of the relationship with the Lord has got to be related to this.

For you and me, we don't even have to speculate. Paul, in Ephesians chapter four, verse 30, he warns us, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit within can be grieved. I will never leave you or forsake you, says the Lord.

So he's not selling it apart and come back when you've done better. That would be a whole works-based life that we don't hold to because the Bible doesn't teach it. A sin is like ice that forms on the sweet waters of our union with Christ.

It is sin that drives you to take counsel in your own soul. It is sin that widens your distance from God. It is sin that has separated you from your God, and it is sin that grieves the Holy Spirit within.

So it is sin that causes you to cry out and say, how long? I believe the scripture would say the answer is until you confess your sin and repent, and then know God's forgiveness, 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

In a word, brethren, to restore us to that full and vibrant relationship with him. So that's your desolate privation. Desperate prayer comes next. In desperation, he reminds God of the consequences should this state of affairs go on.

He implies his ever-watching enemies are going to rejoice when they see his God unable to deliver him. Consider and answer me, verse three. 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.

Persistent Prayer and the Widow Before the Unjust Judge

As we said earlier, most of us don't have the sort of numerous and determined enemies that King David had. We can't agree with the old comic where Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is, who? He is us.

I met the enemy and he is me. The sin's mine, the disobedience is willing. So what do we do? What's this desperate prayer that he brings forth? Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God. Light up my eyes.

Return my vitality. Take away that pall of death as my eyes dull before you. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz, he wrote of how after some time in the concentration camp, when lights were out, before the lights went out and they were able to look at each other, they could tell just by looking at someone's eyes if he wouldn't survive the night.

And he records that they were able to do this with unerring accuracy. There's a dullness that comes. There's a lack of light behind the eyes that just shows this person has completely given up. And here, David says, help me to stop giving up.

Light up my eyes, bring me back to life. I don't wanna sleep the sleep of death. I don't want my enemy or this situation, be it an actual person who's coming after me or the circumstances I'm in, to have the last say, to have the rejoicing, to see me shaken off the foundation I have in Christ Jesus and his word.

In the face of unanswered prayer, what are you to do? In the face of this time, if you're praying to God, even as you're saying how long, how long, how long, how long, pray. Pray as David does in the middle here in verses four and five, excuse me, verses three and four.

Pray as the importunate widow did in Luke chapter 18, where Jesus commends her because she's going to an unjust judge and she's demanding justice. He doesn't wanna give her justice. He just wants her to go away.

God is completely the opposite of that judge. God will hear his people when they cry out. God will answer his people when they cry out. Does he promise that you can cry out once and he's going to answer?

No, he says cry out. And Jesus says, but when the son of man returns to earth, will he really find faith? Will he really find his people praying? Will he find you desperate to return to that warm glow of being so close and intimate to God because you miss it so much?

How much more ought you to pray to God than the widow did to the unjust judge? To God who is inclined to answer than any person who is not so inclined at all. Remember, if you feel, and I say feel in quotes and with all the emphasis I can, if you feel this distance from God, don't stop praying.

Pray until you found the cause. I am the Lord, I do not change. It is you who changed. It is you who went askance. It is you who must continue to pray, trusting in God who will never leave you or forsake you to answer, to show you your fault, to forgive you once again when you confess and repent, and to restore your relationship with him.

He hasn't gone anywhere. It's you, it's me, it's we who've gone astray. Even during this time, the last two verses, verses five and six, there's this determined praise, determined praise even before he has the answer, even while he's calling out how long and he's praying.

Determined Praise in God’s Steadfast Love

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. If there was an enemy, if there's a circumstance that is eating away at you and causing your prayers to be too quick and causing you to take counsel in your own soul, I would suggest to you that going into this determined praise mode, praying to God constantly and then praising him is much what John would speak of in 1 John chapter four and verse, excuse me, chapter five and verse four.

And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. If there was an actual enemy, this is David's victory. I have trusted in your steadfast love. Hear that, oh my enemy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

Hear that, oh circumstance that had me taking counsel in myself. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. The victory is found not in God answering you when and how you would have him to do, the victory is found in your faith.

The victory is found even when you feel that coolness, even when you're calling out to God how long, remaining in prayer and remaining true to praise him. That's the victory. The victory is when God's answer, no matter when it comes or what more sacrifices demanded of you is preferred to what flows from your own thoughts and your own counsel.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love. I have repudiated my own counsel. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. And my enemy, even if he thinks he's exalting now, doesn't have the last say, God does.

I wanna just take a moment on the form of the verbs in what I read, 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.

I have trusted is what we call a perfect. A perfect means that the action is complete and has continuing effect, an action complete. And then I shall rejoice and I will sing are what we call imperfects.

And that doesn't mean that they're bad verbs. It means that the action is not complete. The action is ongoing. I think an imperfect in the Hebrew could also be a future, an incomplete action because it hasn't started yet.

So a perfect, a done deal, I have trusted. This is decided. I shall rejoice. I will sing. I take those as continual. I take those as present and continual. I am rejoicing. I am singing. It's going to go on and on.

And finally, the Lord has dealt bountifully with me. We go back to a perfect. What a beautiful memory this is for us that the Lord has dealt bountifully with me. When we're calling out to God, how long?

And calling God to account as it were. Saying, God, you can't keep doing this. The circumstance, the enemy, the thing, it's going to pull me off track. You need to come. Then just let your mind slow down a moment and remember that he has dealt bountifully with me.

He has withheld no good thing from you. He has given you Jesus Christ. He has poured out his spirit into your hearts. The love of God has been poured into our hearts. We could put it all together like this, but rather than give in to the discouraging hopes of my enemies or the discouraging thoughts I have about my circumstance, I will remember that I've trusted in the Lord's faithfulness and that trust is with me now.

Because of that trust, I will be found in ongoing praise and prayer and in song as I keep my mind, as I keep in my mind that he has been good to me. He has dealt bountifully with me. And from on high has showered gifts upon me.

I will remember Ephesians chapter one, verse three, that in Christ he has blessed me with every spiritual blessing. He has dealt bountifully with me. I will remember 2 Peter chapter one, verse three, that his divine power has granted to me all things that pertain to life and godliness.

There's no good gift that your father's withheld from you. When you find yourself in these times, remain in prayer. Call out to God how long, but also call out to God why. And in all this, remain in prayer and remain calling out his praises as in the last two verses.

Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote in his exposition on spirits of depression, how the devil bedevils us into thinking that God has forsaken us, which is a good strategy for the devil, who you can't see, to make you question the faithfulness of the God who you also can't see.

It's the devil who'd be devils. He's the roaring lion looking for someone he can devour. So David places that plainly before us, but then he also gives us the way out. It's prayer and praise. These two go together, prayer and praise.

And I just wanna close with a quote from Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer. We're looking on this psalm, he said, our hope despairs, but our despair hopes. Our hope despairs. We're frail, we're human, we do despair.

We do call out how long. We forget to say why is this happening, but we call out how long and we become despairing and start to enter into our own counsel. But then despair hopes. The indwelling Holy Spirit reminds, it says, no, draw away from yourself.

Put your mind, put your eyes, put your spirit on my word. And in prayer, know the restoration of God, amen.