Psalm 6
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PRAY LIKE DAVID 2
PRAY LIKE DAVID 2
True repentance is a continued spring, where the waters of godly sorrow are always flowing. 'My sin is ever before me'. - Thomas Brooks
Psalm 6 is the first of the Penitential Psalms, it’s a Psalm of repentance written by David.
We don’t know at what point in life David wrote this song, but what we do know is that he wasn’t in a good place! It’s raw. Put it this way, it’s not a Psalm you’re likely to hear being worked into the next Elevation worship album!
There are four things that are troubling David:
He feels surrounded by enemies Psalm 6:7
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.
2. He is experiencing something like a dark night of the soul
6 I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
3. He is suffering physically and worries that he might be about to die
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
David was clearly frightened - he thought he might be about to die.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
Some try to use this verse to suggest that the Bible doesn’t teach that there is an afterlife; no resurrection. But this isn’t at all what David is trying to teach here. It is true that the doctrines of heaven and hell are much clearer in the new testament than in the old, there are verses in the old testament even that speak of a resurrection after death - Job 19:25-26
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
What David was trying to say here is something like this - ‘how will the world hear my praises to you if I’m dead?’
4. He is troubled by his sin
1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
And out of this place of deep anguish David prays. And that’s a theme that you’ll find all through scripture - when life gets rough, God’s people turn to prayer. Moses on the battlefield, Jonah in the Whale and Jesus in the garden of gethsemane. Don’t let pain, grief or guilt keep you from prayer.
David prays in the following three ways:
He prays for sovereign mercy (v 1)
He prays for God’s presence (v 4)
He prays for healing (v 2)
And he ends with this confident declaration that the LORD will answer his prayers
I want to argue that each of these three prayers of David should be a normal part of every Christian’s prayer life. That God would cover us with his mercy, saturate us with His presence and heal us both inwardly and outwardly.
A PRAYER FOR SOVEREIGN MERCY
1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
Notice - David didn’t pray that God wouldn’t rebuke him, or that he wouldn’t discipline him, but that God would not rebuke him in anger, or discipline him in wrath.
For God disciplines those he loves - Hebrews 12:7
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?
“There are two rods of God, one of mercy and goodness, the other of anger and fury.” Martin Luther
Discipline is a good thing when it comes from the hand of a Father who loves you. Parents who don’t discipline their children are not loving them as fully as they could.
David prayed for God’s rod of mercy and goodness.
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
Mercy is what happens when we don’t get treated as our sins deserve. David knew he hadn’t lived in such a way as to deserve God’s kindness - he pleaded with God not to treat him as his sins deserve.
This is a fitting prayer for each of us first thing in the morning and last thing at night - Lord do not treat me as my sins deserve, have mercy upon me. Pass over my sins today - please don’t treat me as my sins deserve.
A PRAYER FOR GOD’S PRESENCE
4 Return, O Lord, deliver my soul:
Oh save me for thy mercies’ sake.
There’s a promise that appears both in the old testament and in the new testament - God makes the promise “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
In the Old testament God’s presence went before his people by day as a pillar of cloud and by night as a pillar of fire. In the new testament we read of the incredible outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when God’s Spirit filled all those who believed in Jesus. There were what looked like tongues of fire on each of their heads - showing that God’s presence was no longer something outside of them - but rather now inside of them by the infilling of God’s Spirit.
And God’s promise remains the same - he promises to all of his people that His presence will never leave nor forsake them.
That being said, there are times when we sense God’s presence more and there are times when we sense it less. He’s always with us, but sometimes it appears moreso, and at other times less so. And it does seem to be both in scripture and in the history of the church that in certain seasons God pours out a greater measure of his presence onto His Church. And at other times it seems that His presence is less noticeable.
David’s cry is - Return O Lord! Let your presence come upon me as it did before, when i defeated goliath, when I was routing all my enemies, when I brought your ark back into Jerusalem. David longed for the weighty presence of God to rest upon him as it had in times gone by.
Do you hunger for God’s presence like David? Do you pray that you might know what it is to experience a greater weight of God’s presence?
14 The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
15 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.
The nearness of God’s presence brings us peace, power and joy. Pray each day for a greater awareness of God’s presence in your life.
Nothing in or of this world measures up to the simple pleasure of experiencing the presence of God. Aiden Wilson Tozer
A PRAYER FOR GOD’S HEALING
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
David’s sickness or malady, whatever it was affected both his physical and his mental health. We are complex creatures - our physical body and our soul are interconnected and what happens in one affects the other.
Story of the guy who’s car kept cutting out on the motorway - he’d get out fiddle around under the bonnet and it would start again and away they’d go until a few miles later - same problem. That man had normalised the dysfunction of his car - and often that’s kind of how we act particularly around issues of soul healing. God can heal our souls as well as our bodies - many of us are walking around with soul wounds that are causing all sorts of dysfunction in our lives but instead of going to God for healing we’re doing just enough to keep the car on the road.
We first need to acknowledge our need for God’s healing touch - whether in our physical or our mental health. Then we can begin to call on him to heal us - even as passionately as David did. How long?