Psalm 13

How Long Will You Forget Me?

Big Idea: To overcome despair you must have tenuous trust and exuberant joy in the LORD and His Salvation.

Intro

Around 20% of Americans suffer from depression, and that rate is much higher amongst younger generations. These rates have increased rapidly over the past ten years. Depression is defined as a “severe despondency and dejection, especially when long lasting” (OED). In other words depression comes when you have a prolonged loss of hope, and you despair things will ever change. Some are biologically more prone to despondency and despair. Their outlook on life is darkly colored and often tends towards pessimism. These folks have to fight harder to find hope and hold on to it. I have wrestled this demon my whole life, so have many godly people down through the ages. We see this despondency often in the Psalms, but we also see how the Psalmist overcomes it.

The key to overcoming despair is tenacious trust and exuberant joy in the Lord’s steadfast love and salvation. Both of which the psalmist lays hold of in prayer to defeat the scourge of despondency. By doing so, he sets a pattern for us to follow as we learn to sing this song when in despair. The answers we find in Psalm 13 to overcome despair are simple, but they’re not easy. Anyone who has been under the iron-grip of depression can testify to that. Which is why singing is so important. For singing helps settle truth deep in your bones. So let’s turn together to Psalm 13 and discover how to overcome despair.

Psalm 13

The Cry of despair

You can hear the loneliness and isolation. The sense of abandonment which has carried on long past the Psalmist’s ability to hold on in the four how longs. This is not something that has come up overnight, but psalmist has dealt with over a protracted amount of time. Thus, despondency gives way to despair, a state of hopelessness that things will never change.

The Despair

It’s impossible to recreate the situation David had in mind when he composed this hymn with plenty of occasions possible. But its ambivalence is important since it provides an opportunity for us to insert our own source of despair as we sing. In hopes that we too may climb up the ladder of prayer and lay hold of trust and joy in the Lord and His salvation.

What we do see is the feeling of abandonment. The psalmist feels alone. He feels God has left and forgotten him. He feels this way because he does not see God’s active involvement in His life. For if God remembered him and caused his face to shine on him, the result would be felt, and his situation would be changed. But as it is, he prays and his condition does not change, his enemies still seem to get the upper hand.

But even the enemy is intentional vague so that we, the singer, can insert our own in as we sing. Whatever brings you despondency and leaves you there for a long time can lead to despair. That could be anything from the world, the flesh, or the devil, that unholy trinity of enemies we Christians are always subject too. I know personally that much of my own despair has come over my fiercest enemy—my own flesh. That enemy stalks me viciously and seems to never let up. But my flesh seems to gain much of its strength from the world and the devil. Anyone who has tried to defeat sin in their own strength knows the feeling of abandonment when sin seems to gain ground. As much as you have cried to the Lord for deliverance, sin seems that much more determined to wreck you. The more it does, the more you feel you will never overcome it; the more you feel God has forgotten you and is hiding His face from you.

Or maybe you despair over your situation. You’ve got some years down the road of your life and things have not gone the way that you had hoped, maybe you’re not in the job you had hoped, or haven’t reached the point of financial freedom at the same time your parents did. Or, maybe you had hoped to be pregnant, and have asked the Lord continually and it feels like he has forgotten you, like He has hidden His face from you.

This sense of abandonment produces in us anxiety and sorrow. You could translate v. 2 “How long must I worry and feel sad in my heart all day?” Anxiety is an “Uneasy feeling of uncertainty, agitation, dread, or fear.”1 It can be a normal response to a perceived threat, but it gets high-jacked and can become acute when it persists after the threat is gone, or when there is no threat at all. But it often comes when you worry incessantly, like when you take counsel in your soul or sorrow in your heart all day long. The worse thing for an anxious person to do is hear their own self talk to them. That’s how the worry begins, and once you start, it’s often a difficult spiral to get out of.

The Plea

The turning point of this psalm comes in v. 3, when David takes his despair to the Lord in prayer. Consider and answer me, O LORD my God. He has laid out his complaint, lamenting God’s absence and the depths of his despair, knowing there is only one way out of his situation–the Lord. So he pleads with the Lord to enlighten his eyes lest he die, lest his enemies get the last word by rejoicing in his death.

What the psalmist asks for is a clear vision of God through the eyes of faith. Jesus Said,

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Mt 6:22–23).

So also the Apostle Paul prays,

“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Eph 1:16–19).

Paul pray’s that the eyes of their hearts would be open so that by faith they may grasp the good news of the gospel and lay hold of all the promises of God. Which is exactly what the psalmist prays for when he pleads with the Lord to “light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”

Reading this some think David felt close to death, maybe from sickness, and feared death and the result it would bring to the kingdom. Again, it’s impossible to recreate the scene and is intentional vague, so that there is room for the worshipper singing this psalm to identify more fully with the feeling of being close to death, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually.

So much of this is reminiscent of our Lord, who tasted despondency and the anxiety facing down the dreadful death on the cross that awaited Him. From Matthew 26 we read:

“Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.” (Mt 26:36–44).

Three times Jesus, who was “very sorrowful, even to death,” pleaded with the LORD to “let this cup pass from” Him. Jesus was deeply troubled at the prospect of the cross where he must endure an unimaginable hell while he receives the due penalty for all our sins in the wrath of God. It’s not sinful to feel despondent, its only sinful to remain there long-term. Jesus prays His way out of despair to fresh resolve. Which did not include a removal of the painful thing that brought on the despair, but a willingness to face it because it was the will of God.

Such is the condition of us all. For nothing that befalls you, that threatens your joy and robs you of the experience of God and His presence can fall outside his will. As the confession teaches:

The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave, for a season, His own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled; and, to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon Himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends. (WCF 5.5).

I’m not diminishing that our experience may be expressed as the Psalmist does: How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? But as we will see, the way out of the pit of despair is by defeating unbelief, and finding trust and joy in the Lord.

Finding trust and joy in the Lord

The Psalmist rises from prayer deeply encouraged and finding that his faith is strengthened. For what he has not allowed to happen was the death-grip of despondency to overwhelm him. He overcame this by preaching to himself. The good Doctor Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his book Spiritual Depression said it this way:

“I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow ourselves to talk to us instead of talking to ourselves. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why aren’t thou cast down, oh my soul? “ He asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: “self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you“. Do you know what I mean? (20-21)”2

There is great danger in listening to your “self” and not talking to yourself. That branch of therapy called Cognitive-behavioral Therapy has largely to do with this. With getting you to reframe your thinking to counter your self-talk, which is damaging you. Here, the psalmist’s self-talk is keeping him in despair. Scripture just calls this renewing your mind. There are two necessary conditions for overcoming despair: tenacious trust and exuberant joy in the Lord and His Salvation. It is preaching to yourself which produces these and the result of both is singing.

Trust

When you preach to your “self,” you are reminding yourself of the character of God and His very great and precious promises. The Psalmist says, “I have trusted in your steadfast love.” But what is trust and why place it in the LORD’s steadfast love?

Jonathan Edwards describes trust in God this way:

He that looks for happiness in the creature, trusteth in it; he that has respect to riches as that portion in which he seeks happiness, he in a Scripture sense trusts in riches. So he that sets his heart upon pleasures, looking for happiness in them, trusts in pleasure; so he that looks to God as the fountain of satisfaction, and chooses him as that portion that he expects happiness in, is said to trust in God. They that trust in God are sensible that he is the fountain of happiness, that he is the best portion, and the only portion, that can make a soul happy. A sight of the excellency and glory of God convinces them of it: they see that excellency in God that makes the soul sensible that other things are vanity, and that the happiness of the soul consists in knowing of God and in a conformity to him, in having his image and a serving and glorifying of him by a holy life, and in the enjoyment of his love and the light of his countenance. And therefore, neglecting other ways, he seeks happiness here. He turns his eye this way, and he is come to that conclusion that if ever his soul be happy, it must be in God; he don’t expect that the cravings of his soul will be satisfied in anything else.3

Where do you go for happiness and satisfaction, is it in your fellow man, in relationships, in money or status or power, in pleasure, whatever you seek as your highest good is what you trust in. But David says I trust in the Lord. Trust then is a confident resting and reliance upon God alone for all that is needed. Trust is a species of faith, which believes that God exists and is a rewarder of them that seek Him (Heb. 11:6).

The natural enemy of trust is unbelief. Which is the root cause of despondency and despair. Unbelief doubts God is there and the promises he has made to save those who draw near to Him by faith. These doubts keep you locked in the death spiral of morbid introspection, darkening your eyes by their habitual dwelling upon your present situation. Faith looks up, it looks out, and sees God and remembers His promises, drawing confidence from experience of His goodness and the trustworthiness of His word.

Here, David grounds this in the LORD’s covenant-keeping love. I still love the children’s storybook bible’s definition of the Steadfast love of the Lord by Sally Lloyd-Jones. This love is “never ending, never giving up, never failing, always and forever, love.” This is not like the fickle love we show to one another, which is often mercenary, given only so that we can receive something in return. God loves out of the abundance of who he is. Not because we are lovely, but because, as Luther so ably put it, he is making us lovely.

For David, God gave him shadowy pictures of this love in the sacrificial system. He saw in the offering up of a lamb a stunning picture of the LORD’s steadfast love. But we, in all its fullness, see the substance and it is even more stunning. For God’s loves is on full display when he sent His Son to suffer and die in the place of ruined sinners like you and me. There is no greater love than to lay down your life for someone, but Jesus lays down His life for sinners. There on the cross we see all the promises of God become yes, and amen in Jesus Christ. For there our greatest enemy was defeated, namely death. So the death of Christ frees us from the despair of death, the despondency of being alienated from God, not for a moment, but for all eternity. It is this salvation that we rejoice in.

Rejoice

Since our joy is in the LORD and His salvation, it need not be buffeted or diminished by the circumstances of life. No doubt David still has enemies who, at that moment, would love to prevail over him. He may still have the faint existential dread of despair in the background somewhere. But he overcomes it with joy grounded in the Lord. Joy is the result of believing. Paul teaches this clearly in our theme verse from Romans 15:13

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Ro 15:13).

Paul prays the Lord would fill you with joy by believing in Him. As your faith grows, so does your joy. One way God causes your faith to grow might seem paradoxical, but he hides himself from you, so that you have to seek and ask in earnest. Then, when you do, God opens your eyes to see, and you are filled with joy. Like a baby who grows anxious when he loses sight of his mother, but when he finds her, he is filled with joy and begins cooing and laughing. So also do you, when you lose sight of God in the darkness of your sin, or of your situation. But when he opens your eyes to see Him, you are filled with joy.

Sing

The Natural response of joy is to sing. So the psalmist says, “I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” John Piper puts it this way:

Once you see…that the work of the heart (the emotions) is as important for reflecting the glory of God as the work of the head (understanding) is, then you will begin to see why music and singing is so important for Christian worship. The reason we sing is because there are depths and heights and intensities and kinds of emotion that will not be satisfactorily expressed by mere prosaic forms, or even poetic readings. There are realities that demand to break out of prose into poetry and some demand that poetry be stretched into song. So music and singing are necessary to Christian faith and worship for the simple reason that the realities of God and Christ, creation and salvation, heaven and hell are so great that when they are known truly and felt duly, they demand more than discussion and analysis and description; they demand poetry and song and music. Singing is the Christian’s way of saying: God is so great that thinking will not suffice, there must be deep feeling; and talking will not suffice, there must be singing.4

Joys got to go somewhere and there is no more fitting place than giving voice to it in song. We see this response over and over throughout the scriptures. Adam sees His wife for the first time and composes a song, God delivers Israel from Egypt and Moses composes a song, David sings to quiet Saul’s evil spirit, and becomes the sweet singer in Israel giving us most of the 150 hymns that make up the churches song book. But our song doesn’t end with Israel, for we continue to sing new songs celebrating the salvation accomplished and applied by David’s greater Son. And on into eternity we will sing songs of praise and honor to the LORD our God, the almighty who has saved us from sin, and judged our enemies. So we will sing, “hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God” (Rev. 19:1).

I said to begin that the prescription the Psalms gives to overcome despair is actually simple, but it’s not easy. If you’ve wrestled the dark-demon of despair, you know fighting for trust and struggling to lay hold of joy is not easy. As the Apostle John teaches, “this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 Jn 5:4–5). so take up the shield of faith and plead with the Lord to shine His face on you and dispel the darkness, so that you can see the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ. Fight for tenacious trust and exuberant joy in the LORD and His salvation. Amen.

Lord’s Supper Meditation

If you are here this morning and you have felt what the psalmist expressed when he cried out, “how long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” Then I hope as I have preached the darkness began to lift, and you have glimpsed the steadfast love of the Lord and glory of His salvation. Sometimes we are not in a place to be able to preach the gospel to ourselves. We need that word to come from outside us and assure us again that God is merciful, and that despite our circumstance he will never leave us or forsake us. So Jesus offers you this meal as a better word, one that will fortify your faith and breathe fresh life into your joy. For Jesus offers you himself in this meal as a reminder of the steadfast love of the Lord, for the promise he made to our fathers he has fulfilled by sending His Son to come to save the world from sin and death. He who has begun His work in you, will bring it to completion. When on that day all darkness will be dispelled. And the light of God’s glorious presence will shine on us and we will behold Him not with the eyes of faith, but we will see Him as He is, because we will be like him. So will all those who trust in Him and with joy, rejoice in His salvation singing the song of the redeemed with all the saints in that place were there is no sorrow, no pain, no despair or despondency, but joy everlasting. And this meal is foretaste of that to satisfy your desire to see the LORD. May the Lord shine His face on you today and may you hear him say, “I have not forgotten you, take my body and my your faith grow, take my blood, and drink to your salvation.” So may you see in these visible words, the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ. Come and welcome to Him.

Charge

To overcome despair, you must have tenacious trust and exuberant joy in the LORD and His Salvation. Don’t listen to your self, talk to your self. Preach the gospel to your self daily, and pray the Lord give you faith and joy to defeat the darkness, and come out into the light of God’s presence. Amen.

1 Ralph E. Enlow Jr., “Anxiety,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed., Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 28. ↩

2 Lloyd-Jones, Martyn. Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 20-21. ↩

3 Jonathan Edwards, “Trusting in God,” in Jonathan Edwards Sermons, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach (New Haven, CT: The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, 1729), Je 17:7–8. ↩

4 John Piper, Sermons from John Piper (1990–1999) (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2007). ↩