Or, Tuning a Heart That Feels Forgotten and Forsaken by God
Scripture: Psalm 13:1-6
Date: November 23, 2014
Speaker: Sean Higgins
On a dark and stormy night it is one thing to look out the window and notice that the lights are out in all the neighbors’ houses. It is another thing when the lights go out inside your home. Knowing that things are wrong all around you doesn’t shake faith like when things are dark within your heart. Circumstances certainly will test your trust in God. And sometimes the wind blows a tree onto your backup trust generator. Or to put it another way, while it’s hard to stand against gusts, it’s impossible to stand without gravity.
Psalm 13 may be both the most despairing and most personal song we’ve studied yet in the Psalter. From the fourfold canon fire questions in the opening verses, to the repeated use of first person singular pronouns in all six verses (“me, I, my”), this psalm relates to individuals who feel like God has forgotten about them or even forsaken them. It shows how to appeal for the Lord’s help and how to argue your case. It shows how a heart can be tuned to sing of His grace.
We do not know what caused David to write this piece. We do know that David wrote it to the Lord since he addresses the Lord directly in all three stanzas. We know that in another sense it was written by the Lord; His Spirit moved each lyric into place. And therefore we shouldn’t be surprised that David’s personal process had a place in Israel’s public praise, entrusted To the Choirmaster for use in corporate worship.
In most English translations (such as the ESV, NASB, NKJV, NIV) the song has three stanzas divided with two verses apiece. Verses 1-2 contain four questions about the Lord’s nearness, which are really just one expression of need. Verses 3-4 contain three appeals for the Lord’s help along with three arguments for why the Lord should help. And verses 5-6 contain three commitments to rejoice in the Lord in light of His grace.
David feels alienated from the Lord and he wonders repeatedly how long will it last.
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?
(Psalm 13:1–2)
The question How long? punctuates his vehemence four times; “This will go on until when?” He addresses Yahweh directly, O LORD , and asks a quartet of concerns. First, How long…will you forget me forever? Forgetting questions God’s interest. “Why aren’t You doing something so that I can at least know that You’re paying attention?” Second, How long will you hide your face from me? A hidden face questions God’s presence and approval. “I cannot sense Your favor or feel that I have fellowship with You.” It’s similar to but more acute than the questions that begin Psalm 10.
Third, How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? Left to himself, David didn’t have any good ideas that could resolve his trouble. Everything he told himself just made it worse. This questions God’s guidance. “Why aren’t You supplying truth to direct my way?”
David, therefore, complains, that while thinking of different methods of obtaining relief, and deliberating with himself now in one way, and now in another, he is exhausted to no purpose with the multitude of suggestions which pass through his mind. (John Calvin)
And fourth, How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? There is more about enemies in the next stanza, but here perhaps it questions God’s promise or even His power. “Haven’t You declared that You will help? Can’t You do something? Why aren’t You? Where are You?”
If David deserved this distancing of God as discipline he doesn’t acknowledge it. If he had sinned and believed his condition to be a result, he does not mention any repentance or need for repentance (as he does in other songs). So his torment is not from a guilty conscience.
In each part David cannot see the end. He has no idea about the duration of his difficulties. Even knowing that your pain will last a long time is easier than dealing with indefinite pain. How long? How long? How long? How long will this last?
David does not feel that the Lord is near, or that the Lord cares, or that His help is obvious. But he still believes that the Lord is the right one to ask. What will tune his heart is not someone else’s attention or advocacy. It is the Lord he needs, the Lord he seeks, the Lord who is capable and can fix it all. David doesn’t pursue distractions; he moves from isolated questions to appeals with arguments.
David felt alone, alienated from God’s fellowship. He described it in the first stanza. Now he desires for the Lord to respond, and fast.
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
(Psalm 13:3–4)
David chases the four questions with three imperatives. David isn’t bossing God. Even the nature of the verbs themselves are dependent, not dictatorial. The imperatives are rooted in his despair and urgent in light of the possible consequences.
The three appeals are consider , answer , and light up . Consider could be translated, “Look!” If God’s face was turned away from David (verse 1), David asks God to turn His face toward him. Answer goes with verse two. He had been self-counseling, now David desires for the Lord to respond in truth. He is humbly crying out to the one who ultimately mattered, O LORD my God .
The third appeal is not not one that we use very often: light up my eyes . It’s a reference to dimming energy all the way until death. Someone with bright eyes is ready to go, eager for life. Remember the men in Saul’s army who hadn’t eaten due to the king’s ordinance? When his son Jonathan ate from the honeycomb, “his eyes became bright” (1 Samuel 14:27). He was revitalized. David asks for that.
And he provides three connected reasons. These are arguments for why the LORD needed to answer him. If the LORD doesn’t, the first thing to happen is that he will sleep the sleep of death . He might actually die. Death is bad, but not even the end. If that happens, his enemy [will] say, “I have prevailed over him” . Similarly, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken . If he was dead, then David’s enemies would rejoice. Even if he didn’t die, but he was paralyzed by despair, shaken from doing anything, these would give his enemies the wrong idea.
None of these arguments are about the glory of God, not explicitly. “If You don’t act, Your name will be ridiculed.” David’s arguments are based on his own well-being and the vindication of his name over his enemies. But before we tell David that his poem is selfish, aren’t these actually desires that come from faith? The enemies of David were the enemies of the LORD. To reenergize David would make a statement for the LORD’s name. This is a personal appeal, but a good one. We do not need to out-spiritualize the Spirit-inspired example of argumentation. “Lord, act so that those who desire our downfall would not enjoy such gladness. Work in such a way as to establish our work for Your sake.” If the cause is good, then it makes a good case.
The key changes dramatically in this final stanza.
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.
(Psalm 13:5–6)
But I . This is an important move. There are no questions or appeals but three commitments: I have trusted , my heart shall rejoice , I will sing .
He remembers and relies on the steadfast love of the LORD. The LORD is faithful to His covenant; He cannot deny Himself. Undoubtedly David could recall times when the LORD had answered his need, when he felt God’s commitment to him.
So my heart shall rejoice in your salvation . He anticipated the end of his trouble and resolved to rejoice. And I will sing to the LORD because he has dealt bountifully with me . Give thanks because He has given bountifully , abundantly, “generously” (HCSB). “He has been good to me” (NIV). This is grace.
This is the quickest swing and the most extreme swing in the Psalms so far. In verse 2 the heart is in sorrow and by verse 6 it is rejoicing. The switch happens so fast it calls into question the honesty of the expressions. If you have ever felt abandoned by God, how long did it last? Did you read a couple verses and then everything was better? Probably not. It took chapters to change for Job. And when you’re eager and full of joy, is it easy to remember the intensity of alienation?
Which part of the song is most honest? Did David dramatize his despair or was he forcing upbeat words out of his mouth? Or was he most honest when he wanted to get better so that his enemies couldn’t hold it over him?
It’s likely that the events in this song did not take place in real time. We might say that the sequences have been shortened. All of the song, from the initial questions to the final commitments are honest, but they didn’t necessarily about-face in 51 seconds (the time it takes to read Psalm 13 aloud). We don’t know how long it took. We do know that the Lord helped.
How is this arrangement beneficial? If you came into worship in a faith crisis, or even if you just came in grumpy, could we start singing Psalm 13 and expect that every soul would be ready to rejoice by the final measure? What if we sang it twice? It can take a while to get the inside lights turned on again. But even though it may take more time than it takes to sing these lyrics, it won’t happen some other way than this. We won’t find resolution to feeling that the LORD has forgotten us without taking our concern to the Lord and asking Him to help, remembering who He is. We won’t move from a minor chord to a major chord without this sort of progression.
The author of Psalm 119 wrote:
It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statutes.
(Psalm 119:71)
If you have not been afflicted with feelings of God forgetting or forsaking you, you are blessed with strong faith. If you have been afflicted like this, then you have been blessed with despair as an exegetical aid. You are not just imagining what Psalm 13 looked like for David, you are imagining yourself looking like David. This insight will make your exegesis better, and better exegesis will aid you in despair.
It will also increase your desire for God’s succor (pronounced ‘suckor’). Succor means “assistance and support in times of hardship and distress.” It comes from the Latin succurrere meaning “run to the help of.” Do we not desire that the Lord run to help?
This is the type of song that teaches us that “How long?” questions can come from believers. Feeling that God is not intervening is a feeling that the faithful have. This song is for them for then. This is the type of song that teaches us to seek resolution to our questions from God Himself. Make your complaint to Him, and that has the added benefit of getting your thoughts off of you. And this is a song that teaches us to anticipate rejoicing again, at some point. It also reminds us that if we’ve been delivered, we ought to be singing.
I have always enjoyed my reading of C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters. I shared the following quote in the message on Psalm 3. But it has reminded me that our trust in God when God seems to us forgetful is a poke in our enemy’s eye. The elder demon, Uncle Screwtape, writes to his nephew and apprentice, Wormwood:
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
Obedience, even obedience in singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God, is spiritual warfare. Go. Fight. Sing.
We will begin a five part series through 1 Thessalonians next Lord’s day morning, Lord willing. We’ll come back to the Psalms for more study someday, Lord willing. But we don’t need to close the Psalter altogether. We’ll still find most of our calls to worship from Psalms. We’ll still sing the Psalms we’ve already learned on some Sundays and learn some more at future all-church choir practices. It doesn’t need to stop there. What about if this Thursday you tried singing one of our newly-learned Psalms around the feasting table? Maybe choose a simpler one such as “Blessed the Man that Fears Jehovah” (Psalm 128, Cantus #166, only two singing verses long). May the Lord bless you, to eat of your hands’ labor and be prospered all your days.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.
Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!
(Psalm 90:13–17, ESV)