Alright, again a very good morning. We are back under the MCO and I thought as I reflect on this period of time, I think we should be thankful to God. We should be thankful to God for a number of things. We should be thankful to God I think first of all for preserving us during this time of the pandemic. We also want to thank God for the opportunities and the resources He has given us as a church to continue with some ministries during this period of time and even this morning’s live streaming. We do not want to take this for granted. 

But I do want to encourage you that during this time of the MCO as we continue with our live streaming, you are not here in person; you are all back home in your houses and perhaps wherever you might be, I do encourage you to take some time to pray for this ministry. Perhaps in your own homes, the head of the household can gather your family before the service begins to pray for the Lord’s blessing.

As you have noticed this morning there were some glitches, and a reminder again that we do not want to take this for granted. And so this morning, I’d like to turn your attention to Psalm 13. Psalm 13, and I’d like to turn your attention to this particular psalm and meditate on it. I think it has something to encourage us especially this time of the pandemic. Alright Psalm chapter 13, let me first read this psalm.

Now Psalm 13: “To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, and having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him”; Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved. But I have trusted in Your mercy; My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because He has dealt bountifully with me.”. Now let us again turn to God in prayer for help.

“Our Father in heaven, we again pray that You will bless our time together. As we open up Your Word, we turn to You and ask for understanding. And Lord, we pray Lord that You might speak to us, and we pray Lord that Your Word may bring encouragement this morning to us and to remind us that in terms of difficulties, in times of trials, that we can turn to You. And so we pray that You’ll speak to us this morning, for we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Alright, we are looking at Psalm 13, and Psalm 13 is a psalm of a lament. A lament simply means it’s a psalm of mourning. Lament means to cry. It’s an expression of grief. And so I’d like to begin this morning by asking: Are you lamenting? Are you perhaps in grief? Are you hurting? Now I’ll like to encourage you first of all by saying that you are actually not alone. Perhaps some of you are really grieving over something or going through a rough patch in your life. I say we find in the scripture expressions of grief.

In fact, this is not the only psalm of lament. There are many other psalms of lament. The psalmist here cry out, we see in chapter 17 and verse 1 a similar cry: “Hear a just cause, O LORD, attend to my cry; Give ear to my prayer which is not from deceitful lips.”. And so we see there a cry. If you look at chapter 18, we see again the lament in verse 6: “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, and my cry came before Him, even to His ears.”.

So lament or mourning is a common experience of believers. And not just of believers, but even of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself because if you would flip over to Psalm 22 and we hear this cry: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent.”. So even our Lord Jesus Christ experienced grief in His life. And so this is what this psalm is about. It’s about people in grief, going through a painful time in their lives. It’s for people lamenting and crying out to God.

And more particularly I say, this psalm is not just the psalm of lament but it is about the lament or the cries of believers. It is particularly about the cries of Christians, about your cry and mine. As we look at this psalm, we can see that it is divided into three sections, and we would like to follow through under these three sections. We see in verses 1 and 2, we have the believer’s anguish. And then in verses 3 and 4, we have the believer’s action. And then in verses 5 and 6, we have the believer’s anchor. So let us consider this in turns. First, the believers anguish in verses 1 and 2. 

Now the believer’s anguish is captured very well in the first two verses. We read: “How long, O LORD?”. Here is a cry to the Lord. How long? “Will You forget me forever?” And you see that “how long” is mentioned four times here in these two verses. How long? It’s like the psalmist is asking how long? How much longer? How long is this going to last? And perhaps as you read these two verses, you can think of your own personal experiences. Perhaps there were times in your lives that you cry out in similar fashion. You’re like the psalmist. You were perhaps wondering whether God is listening to you, whether anyone is there, conscious or aware of your pain.

And here we see the psalmist which is David himself, now he described three aspects of his anguish, three aspects of his grief. And the first is this: That God seems distant. That God seems distant in verse 1. It is almost like him asking: God, where are you? Where are you when I’m going through this experience? And we often hear people ask questions like this when they go through a particular trial in their life. And so where is God when this happened?

Remember when 9 11 happened, people asked a similar question: Where is God on 9 11? Or where is God when this person is taken away from me? Why does He seem so far away? It seems that God has forgotten him. And so the psalmist cries out. And it seems also that this is going to last forever, this crisis or this trials in his life. He prayed and he cried many times, but nothing happened. Nothing’s happened. And you can think of many people struggling. Struggling because of perhaps a prolonged illness and they cry out to God and pleaded with God and asked God perhaps to give him or her health again.

But nothing seems to be happening. Or maybe people struggling with a family problem or relationship problem, and this crisis seems to go on and on and on. And despite the fact that you pray and you cry out, but God doesn’t seem to be listening. Now that is what the psalmist is saying here, and that is a first aspect of his experience as it were of anguish. I’m in pain, but where is God? Where is God at a time like this? God seems distant. Now that is the first aspect of his anguish. 

Now the second aspect of his anguish is this, that David is in turmoil. He is in turmoil. You read in verse 2 he cried out: “How long shall I take counsel in my soul”. The word ‘counsel’ could be translated as struggle. How long shall I struggle within me in my soul (means within him or wrestle)? He’s wrestling with him to find answer. He’s asking himself questions, and there seems to be no solution. Nothing seems to work or it doesn’t seem to make sense.

Now you can think of a person like this in the Bible, the man called Job. Now he is no stranger to the experience that we are reading here in this psalm. He went through great trials in his life, and he couldn’t make sense of the trials in his life. He asked questions, he struggled within him, and he could not find an answer. And then the psalmist says in verse 2: “Having sorrow in my heart daily (or all day long)?”. Now here the psalmist is saying that I’m going through this and I try to make sense of it. I cannot understand. It is not taken away from me. It has been a long time. God doesn’t seem to care. And he says that.

And the great difficulty in this is that as it goes on day after day after day, he is stuck in that tunnel and he can’t seem to see light in the end of that tunnel. It’s like a rat in the maze with no exit. He’s running around, he’s trying to find the door out, but there is no door out. He runs in circles. And very often that is the experience of a person in grief, a person in trouble. And this is what the psalmist is trying to help us understand his case. He said that is where I’m in. That is the experience that I’m going through. It is difficult. God doesn’t seem to be around, and it has been going on for a long time. And so he is in turmoil.

And then there is a third aspect to his anguish. The third aspect of his anguish is that the enemy- the enemy seems to have the upper hand. He says in the last part of verse 2: “How long will my enemy be exalted over me?”. And be exalted means how long will my enemy triumph over me or have victory over me. Now that is the third aspect of his anguish here. He says my problem now seems to be having the upper hand, seems to be controlling me, seems to be winning as it were in this fight.

Now we know that David went through many severe trials in his life. Now we are not sure what particular trials that he was thinking about in this psalm, but if that enemy could be his son Absalom. And his son was a pain in his life, giving him much sorrow and grief. His son was his very own enemy. And perhaps he was thinking of Absalom, and Absalom seems to have the upper hand as it were in this case over him.

Or his enemy here could be a reference to Saul. We know that Saul at one point was after him and trying to take his life. And Saul seems also to have the upper hand. He was chasing him with an army, and David was running away hiding in the caves. And he seems to be losing the battle because so many times Saul seems to be so close to capturing him and killing him. Now that is the experience of David. That is what he’s saying here. I’m crying out, I’m in trouble, and my trouble or my problem seems so big and seems to triumph over me. 

Is that perhaps your experience? Does this psalm perhaps this morning describe your case, your experience, your grief? Perhaps like the psalmist, you have been crying out to God and God doesn’t seem to be paying attention to you. Perhaps you have the same feeling like the psalmist perhaps God has forgotten you. You have the experience or the feeling like the psalmist here that you are struggling within and you cannot make sense of your trouble. And perhaps like the psalmist you have the feeling that your problem is bigger than you, it’s triumphing over you, and you seem to be losing the battle. 

I don’t know what that problem perhaps you might be experiencing. It could be an illness in your life, and you’re getting worse perhaps and it is triumphing over you. You simply be losing the battle to this illness or losing the battle to this particular problem in your family. There are many kinds of family problems that we can have, we can experience. Perhaps a relationship between the husband and the wife or the parents and the children or some other crisis in the family, and it’s not going away. And this is what the psalmist is talking about. He’s talking about his anguish. This is the believer’s anguish, and this is the psalmist’s anguish. His trials and this problem.

Now the second part of this psalm describes the psalmist’s action. Are you in grief? Are you in anguish? But what do you do about it? What do you do about it? Now let’s consider the next two verses here (verses 3 and 4). He says: “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him”; Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.”. The question is: What did David do when overwhelmed by trials? When he was in anguish, what did he do? 

Now, these two verses tell us this. He tells us that he prays. He prays. Now let me point out three things here about his action (the believer’s action). First, the believer prays. Now I want you to notice first of all a seeming disconnect between verse 2 and verse 3. You see at the end of verse 2 you get a sense that this psalmist here, that David here now he says that he’s in trouble, God doesn’t care, and he cannot understand what is going. It doesn’t make sense to him. And that yet at the very next verse (verse 3), he cried to God. He said God, you are far away. He says God, you don’t seem to care. He said God, where are you when are you in trouble? 

And yet the very next verse he says, God. He says hear me or answer me. Now you see this is a true believer’s instinct. A true believer’s instinct. And his instinct is to cry out to God. Every child of God because he is a child of God, he knows that there is no other place to turn to. Now someone wrote this, and he says: “When all things seem against us to drive us to despair, we know one gate is open; one ear will hear our prayer”. Now, this describes the believer. I want to ask: Do you know that? Do you know your God? Do you know that in time of trials, in times of pain, there is one ear that will hear? 

You see that is what the psalmist is saying here. There’s no way and there’s no way I can turn to and except back to God. Yes, He may seem far away. Yes, He may seem that He doesn’t care, but He is my God. He is my heavenly Father. And so the psalmist prays. Now the next question is: What does he pray for? What does he pray for? When you turn to God in a time like this, what do you pray for? What do you say to God? Now, look at the psalmist here in verse 3. He says: “Consider and hear me (or in some translation, it says: “look at me and answer me”)”. Now that is what these two words mean. To consider is to ask God to look.

It is as it were you begin to feel that God is perhaps not paying attention to you and you cry to God and say to Him say, God, pay attention to me. Listen to me. Look at me. And that is what the psalmist is crying, is saying here. He’s saying to God: God, don’t you care? Now, this is what he says here. Look on me and answer me means to listen, to hear, to listen to my problems, to listen to my complaints. Now how often do you share or do you pour out your complaints to God? You turn to God in prayer and you honestly open up your heart and you tell God exactly how you feel. You talk about exactly the problem that you are facing, the anguish that you are in, the trials.

And then next, you see the psalmist says here in verse 3, say: “Enlighten my eyes”. Look at me, he says. Listen to me. And then he says: “enlightened my eyes”. You see David here is struggling to understand. And that is very often one of the main problems when you are in trials. When you are in trouble, one of the greatest difficulties is when you don’t understand. You can’t make sense of that problem in your life. 

And so David is struggling, and that’s why he prays. He says help me understand. Enlighten me, give me understanding. Help me to make sense of what I’m going through. Help me to know perhaps the purpose of it. Help me understand why this suffering never ends, why the pandemic goes on and on and on. Why one trouble after another? You see that is what David is crying out here. He went through one problem, and then another one comes. And so he cries out to God. He said listen to me, hear me, look at me, and help me understand. That is what he’s praying for here. 

Now I want you to notice thirdly about his prayer. First, he prays. Second, we see what he prays for. And then thirdly, we see how he prays. How does David pray here? How do you pray at a time like this? Now note a word that is repeated here from the end of verse 3 through verse 4. Verse 3 the end, he said: “Lest I sleep the sleep of death”. Verse 4 says: “Lest my enemy say”. And then he continues: “Lest those who trouble me rejoice”. The word ‘lest’, used repeatedly or mentioned repeatedly in these verses, tells us something about the way he prays to God.

When he says lest I sleep, lest my enemy, or lest those who trouble me, you see what he is doing here is that he is giving reasons to God. He is pressing an argument. He is telling God why God should deliver him out of his trouble. He said: “God, help me. You have to listen to me. My enemy is triumphing over me. And God, you have to listen to me. You have to deliver me out of this trouble. And here are the reasons why.”. He’s giving God one reason after another. 

Now I want to emphasise here or point out here concerning true prayer. See, prayer is not vain repetition. Now so much of prayer is what some people call you just say your prayer in a rather mechanical manner. But biblical prayer is not vain repetition. Biblical prayer is about making your case before God. It’s about coming to God and you lay out your case. You tell God your feelings, you tell Him your concern, and you plead with Him. You plead with Him and you tell Him that He should listen to you. And here are the reason why. 

We see example of this in First Samuel chapter 1- in First Samuel chapter 1. Here we see the prayer of Hannah. And again we see what a believer’s prayer is in 1 Samuel 1:10-11. And here we read concerning Hannah: “And she was in bitterness of soul (in other words she was in anguish), and she prayed to the Lord and she wept in anguish. Then she made a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and forget not Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head.””. 

Now, this is exactly the same thing as we see in Psalm 13. Here is a believer in anguish. Here is a believer in action as she comes to God and cry out to God and pleading with God that God does not forget her, that God listens to her. And then she pleaded and she makes her case before her God and says that if You will give me a son, I will give him back to You. Now remember Hannah lived in the days of the judges, a time of darkness, and it was a time where there was a need for the man of God. There was a need for a preacher. And Hannah’s argument in the prayer is this: She said give me a son; I will make him a preacher, a man of God for the kingdom’s sake. 

Now you see, prayer is first of all making your case or laying your case before God. The question is: What is your plea? What argument are you making as you come to God in prayer? Why do you want God to remove your suffering? Why do you want God to take this problem away from you? What’s the reason? You see in the case of the psalmist here in Psalm 13, he says it’s so that- it’s so that your honour may be maintained. What will people say if I’m being crushed (remember he was anointed of God)?

And the same thing with Hannah here, say my concern is for You O God, Your glory and Your honour. It’s a similar prayer that Moses prayed in Exodus 30 when God wanted to crush and wipe up the Israelites. And Moses came to God and he pleaded with God in the same way. He told God: What would the Egyptians say if you crush Your people; if you allow Your people to be wiped out? You see, Your honour and Your glory is at stake. Prayer is a plea, and this is our plea before God. And so we see here the believer’s anguish and the believer’s action in times of trial.

And then thirdly in the next two verses, we have the believer’s anchor. How does this psalm end? It’s amazing that the psalm begins with a cry of desperation: “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?”. Will I go on like this day after day without end inside? And yet the psalmist ends this way in verse 6: “I will sing to the LORD, because He has dealt bountifully with me.”. I will sing to the Lord. 

Now the third part of this psalm is the believer’s anchor. By anchor, I mean the believer’s hope, the believer’s assurance. Something that the believers hold onto in times of trials, in times of pain. So I want to ask you: If you are going through a rough patch in your life; if you are experiencing something similar to the psalmist here where you are in pain, where you’re in anguish, and your problem seems to last forever, what is your hope? Where do you find your assurance? Where do you find your comfort, your consolation? What do you rest on? What is that anchor? Now, this is how the psalmist ends here in this psalm in verses 5 and 6. 

Look at verse 5. He says ‘but’. Amazing after verse 4, after all the cry, after telling God that God has forgotten him, after saying to God that he is going through this pain without end, then he says but I have trusted in what? He says: “But I have trusted in Your mercy”. David, in times of grief, and he said there is something I cling on to. There is something that I base my hope on, my comfort on. My assurance is this: It’s in the mercy of the Lord. It’s in the mercy of the Lord.

I know that this word is translated variously in the different English Bibles, and the reason is because this is a very difficult word to translate. It is sometimes translated as ‘mercy’ as in the New King James Version. It is translated I believe as ‘steadfast love’ in perhaps the ESV translation, translated as ‘faithfulness’ in the NASB, and translated sometimes as ‘unfailing love’ or ‘unceasing love’ or ‘the lovingkindness of God’. 

Now, these are the various English words used to translate this word in Hebrew, which is ‘hesed’. Hesed. Now that is what the psalmist is thinking of. That is my confidence- the hesed of God. The faithfulness or the lovingkindness of God or the steadfast love of God or the mercy of God. That is what I hold on to in time of trials. In other words, we need to know God, and David knows his God. He knows this particular truth about God. I want to ask you: Do you know this particular truth about your God? What is that truth? 

Well, it’s a truth that is described to us or mentioned here in Exodus chapter 34. Exodus chapter 34. I want to show you here in verses 6 and 7 something marvellous, something amazing about God. Look at verses 6 and 7, Exodus 34. Verse 6: “And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”.

Well, what is God saying here in these two verses? What is God trying to show to us about Himself? What He is here showing to Moses? He passed before Moses and He says look, this is the great truth about Me. The great truth about God is this: That He is rich in hesed. In verse 4 it says: “abounding in goodness” (Mistakenly mentioned “verse 4”, supposedly “verse 6”). The word ‘goodness’ is the Hebrew word ‘hesed’. It’s now translated as the “goodness of God”. God is good (that is God is rich in His goodness or rich in hesed). And then in verse 7, he says keeping hesed, translated here as “mercy”. Keeping hesed for thousands. 

Now, this is the great truth that we need to know about God, and this is the great truth that David knows about God (about His God) that God is rich in hesed and He is keeping hesed. Now, remember the context of Exodus 34 that the Israelites have just broken the covenant with God and made for themselves the golden calf in Exodus 32. And then in Exodus 33 and God wanted to wipe them out from the surface of the earth because they have been rebellious against God. They have turned their back on God. They are now worshipping idols. And yet the next chapter 34, and God revealed His mercy towards them, His goodness, His kindness towards them. 

Now that is Yahweh. That is the God whom we have come to trust and believed in, and that is David’s God. That is David’s God. And so David’s anchor or the believer’s anchor is Yahweh’s hesed. It’s Yahweh’s lovingkindness, unfailing love. You see, Yahweh’s kindness or mercy or unfailing love or hesed is the believer’s anchor because God’s lovingkindness is to the undeserving. It’s to those who are in rebellions against Him. Israel has rebelled against God, and yet God continued to show His lovingkindness to them, His mercy towards us.

The believer’s anchor is in Yahweh’s kindness or lovingkindness. It’s because Yahweh’s loving kindness or unfailing love is unwavering. Not only it is for the undeserving but His kindness is unwavering, for His love is a loyal love. God’s love is a tenacious love. God’s love is a love that has committed Himself to us. God’s love is a love that will not let us go. Now that is something about the love and the mercy and the kindness and the faithfulness of our God.

Later in Psalms- Psalm 23. Psalm 23, and David wrote this famous psalm. At the end of Psalm 23, he wrote this: “Surely goodness and ‘hesed’ shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever”. You see, this is David’s experience in his Christian life. He says surely goodness and hesed shall follow. The word ‘follow’ actually means shall pursue me. God’s faithfulness, God’s unfailing love pursue us all the days of our lives. Will God ever forsake you? Will He desert you? Will He not hear you? Never! 

Now that is what the psalmist knows. That is what the psalmist understands here. And that’s the reason why when he writes a psalm of lament here, when he writes a psalm about his anguish, about his trials, about his trouble, about the fact that so very often in his trials, in his trouble he is in a situation whereby he could not understand what he was going through, in a situation where that pain and that grief seems to continue forever. And yet in moments like this, he has an anchor to hold on to and that is the mercy of Yahweh, the mercy of the LORD. 

And that’s the reason why he could end this psalm like this: “Therefore I will sing to the LORD”. In his anguish, he can sing. In his trials, he can sing. Why? “Because He has dealt bountifully with me.” Because in other words of God’s hesed. What is the proof, you might ask? What is the proof of God’s lovingkindness, of His unfailing love for us? For David, he says the proof is that he has dealt bountifully with me. 

I want to ask: Have you experienced the bountiful dealings of God in your life? Can you think of an instance where you can say I can trust Him, I can hold on to Him in times like this because He has been good to me, He has dealt bountifully with me? Now turn with me to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. What can you say? Has God ever dealt bountifully with you? Now listen to what Paul said as he wrote to the Romans in Romans 8:32. He wrote: “Now He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”.

Now, this is Paul’s argument. You say God doesn’t care. You say that God has forsaken you. You see, you think that God has deserted you. How could it be? How is it possible when God, he says here that “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all”? How shall He not care for you? How shall He not freely give us all things? For nothing can separate us from His unceasing and unfailing love. That’s what the psalmist thinks. Do you know your God? Do you realise that your God has given you His very best and there is none other than His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He has done that? How shall He not care for you and give you freely all things? Let us pray.

“Our dear Father in heaven, again we want to thank You for Your Word to remind us that though often times we may go through rough patches in our life, that we may face a similar trial as David where our problems never seem to go away, that we often cannot make sense of the experience that we are in. And yet we have this assurance- the assurance of Your lovingkindness, assuring of Your love for us which is unfailing, of Your faithfulness which is new every day.

And You have proven that to us by the giving of Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come to this world and to die on the cross for our sake. Indeed He who did not spare His Son, how shall He not freely give us all things? Grant to us O Lord the same assurance that we find in this psalm, for we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.