Psalm chapter 13, a very short
psalm, only six verses. Let's read this together. First
one starts out this way, and you can see that this psalm,
it opens up with a complaint. David is lamenting, and he says,
How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long wilt
thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel
in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall
my enemy be exalted over me? So notice he said how long, I
think four times there, the very first two words of verse one,
near the middle of verse one, the first part of verse two,
and then the last part of verse two. So four times so far, he
said how long, which teaches us that he has been under this
affliction for a long time, this sorrow. He says in verse 3, Consider
and hear me, O Lord my God. Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep
the sleep of death. Lest mine enemies say I have
prevailed against him, and those that trouble me rejoice when
I am moved. But I have trusted in thy mercy. My heart shall rejoice in thy
salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because
he has dealt bountifully with me. Notice the huge change between
the beginning of the psalm and the end of the psalm. In the
first part, it's about how God has forsaken him. But at the
end, he's singing to the Lord because of his grace, his bounty
towards him. And so we see here in this text
of scripture, just these six verses, the transition that God
granted him in the prayer between how low he he was in the beginning
and how good he felt at the end because of the consideration
of all that he said here in this psalm. And so I want to look
at this with you and consider this, especially I want to spend
a little time on this matter that David said, how long wilt
thou forget me, O Lord? Will thou forget me, O Lord?
But the first thing I want to say here is that when David is
praying here, Think of him as a preacher. As a preacher, he
is expressing very honestly what's going on inside of him. God has
created this, the sense that he has here of the loss of God's
communication. So he says in verse one, how
long will thou hide thy face from me? It's as if he has been
cut off from all communication from the Lord. and this feeling
of being forgotten by God. So those two things show a very
low condition that David was feeling here at the beginning.
And one thing you notice when David talks like this is there's
never a time when David speaks of feeling low when he does,
when we can actually get that low. David's expression of sorrow
and sense of despair and loss here in this psalm is very open,
very transparent, very honest, and yet it goes beyond what we
have experienced in our sense of being low. And at the same
time, his sense of exaltation at the end goes far beyond what
we actually can experience. And that's what a true A man
who has truly been given the Spirit of God to speak from God
will say. He will express the truth of
how he is in his sense of the loss of God's communication,
and also when he sees the Lord's truth of his salvation, he will
have the greatest joy and be able to express it. And so that's
what David is doing here. So let's consider now here, David
is complaining that God has forgotten him. But God cannot forget, can
he? But he's speaking of him. remembering
or forgetting in this way, using the word forget, as he does here,
will you forget me forever? God speaks to us in this way
because it helps us to express our feeling that God has, in
the sense of things at least, in our sense of things, he has
neglected us, just as when we know that we I should say it this way, just
as when we feel that those that we know have forgotten us when
we don't hear from them. So if someone doesn't talk to
us, if they don't call us or write to us, we feel like they've
neglected us. We might draw the conclusion
with people that they've been very busy. Or we might feel a
little sorry for ourselves and wonder if they really have forgotten
us, or at least they have cut off communication from us because
maybe we've offended them. or we haven't been the friend
that we ought to be. So we have a sense of what David
is saying here when he says, Lord, you've forgotten me. How
long will you forget me? He feels neglected. He feels
God has not spoken to him. It wasn't that David no longer
believed in God's promises. We know that's not true because
he did here express this in prayer. And it wasn't that he didn't
trust himself into God's almighty and faithful hand. of grace and
care to deliver him, both out of his despair and out of the
hand of his enemy, whether in life or in death. But just as
when we ourselves are weighed down by distressing and perplexing
trouble for long periods of time, and we don't perceive in ourselves
any sign of God's help or concern, we may wonder then if God has
forgotten us as a man forgets. But here's the question, can
God forget? Does he forget the smallest matter?
If not the smallest matter, shall he forget his eternal purpose
of grace to glorify himself and his son in the salvation of his
people and his purpose to bring them to himself in love? Can
he forget that? Can he forget to make his love
known to them as being his very sons by the precious blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ? Or does he forget them under
chastisement? We might forget. When we're chastised,
just like when we were children and our parents would chastise
us, we would forget the comfort of our mother and father when
they were chastising us. And so when the Lord chastens
us this way, because this is the way the Lord does chasten
us, that chasing hand of God makes us feel distant. It makes
us feel as if God is not hearing us and we can't pray. and there's
a break in the communication. That sense is a distress to the
Lord's people and so it's a chastening. So under chastisement we forget
the Lord's comforts and under chastisement our patience wears
very thin and our hope grows very dim. But it is under these
troubles of mind that our prayers get very real, don't they? And
our words get right to the point and we say, Lord, where are you?
Your grace in Christ has overcome my sin, and my sin is not stronger
than you, so Lord, help, save. I perish, and Lord, hear me when
I call." That's the way we pray when we're in distress. And so
we have the opening words of this Psalm in verse one. How
long wilt thou forget me, O Lord, forever? How long wilt thou hide
thy face from me? So no matter how low we feel,
David here is feeling very low, lower than we feel, isn't he?
And no matter how great we feel because of God's salvation, David's
joys and praise far exceeds our own." So, our experience here
of God saving us, in his word here, notice he says, How long
will thou hide thy face from me? When scripture speaks about
God hiding his face from us, it's hiding his favor. It's hiding
the look of God up towards us in favor and in saving grace
and mercy. And so our experience is that
when he hides his face, we are distressed. But when he shows
his face, then we see the beauty of his salvation. We find that
in seeing his face, we see our salvation and we see his face
in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the way we see him. And
so we're always asking the Lord to shine upon us in this way.
So David expresses this loss of the sense of God's presence
and the loss of comfort and truth that God gives to him. And when
we lose the nearness and delight of a person we love, we also,
we know that sense just like he did. So, let me see, getting
to the next part here. One thing we ought to notice
here is that even though David expresses this concern about
his sense of the loss of God's presence, his confusion, his
perplexity and despair under that affliction, and everything
that the enemy might bring upon him, the false accusations against
him and persecutions, yet what does he do? What does he do when
he's in trouble, when he's in the greatest trouble, in the
lowest place? He calls. He pours out his complaint to
the Lord, doesn't he? And that's such a comfort that
God wants us to know that no matter how low we are, we are
to pour out our complaint to the Lord, to let him know what's
going on. He knows. He knows what his hand
can do to draw us to himself. And so David felt this abandonment,
he felt this being left to himself as if God had forgotten him and
hid his face from him and wondered about this. We have a limited
sense, a limited view of what God is doing in our lives most
of the time, don't we? In terms of the details. We feel
things, we experience things. But we can't put our finger on
and say, yeah, I know exactly what God's doing here. When I
feel like this, that's the Lord's hand in this way, and I can get
myself out of the sense of despair and low feelings here, because
even though I can't hear from him, I know what he's doing,
so everything's okay. That's not that easy to do. In
fact, that's only possible when God gives us the grace to do
it. So we have this natural, we experience this ebb and flow
in our relationship with the Lord, and that ebb and flow is
due to us. It's due to God using our, bringing
in our sense of His presence in our lives, this ebb and flow,
in order to draw us to Himself and to depend more upon Him. But even though our view of God's
will and God's work is limited, God is not limited by our view.
And that's what I wanted to say here. We might feel one way,
but the Lord's view is entirely different than our limited view.
One of the things I was drawing from the previous psalm that
we studied in Psalm 9, verse 18, it says, the needy shall
not always be forgotten. The needy shall not always be
forgotten. The expectation of the poor shall
not perish forever. So there's a promise there. God's
people are needy people and their hope, their expectation is not
going to perish forever. It may seem that their hope has
faded. It may seem that God's presence
has been taken from them, but they shall not be forgotten and
their expectation shall not perish. The Lord keeps a record. He keeps
a record of the way we feel. He knows exactly what's going
on. He says this in Psalm 56, verse 8. He says, Thou tellest
my wanderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle. Are they not
in thy book? When I cry to thee, then shall
my enemies turn back. This I know, for God is for me.
In God will I praise his word, in the Lord will I praise his
word, in God have I put my trust, I will not be afraid what man
can do to me." So this is very comforting. How much detail does
the Lord show in our lives in terms of his tender mercies?
So much so that he puts our tears into a bottle. Now, that's just
not a literal bottle there. But when God speaks of these
physical comparisons is to to bring them into a sharp focus
for us, because we're familiar with that, what that would look
like. Did you gather up the tears of your children and put them
in a bottle? Well, no, because you didn't have enough time,
you didn't have a bottle, you couldn't catch the tears. But
you would like to let them know as much as you possibly could,
that you feel their sorrow, you feel their pain and you want
to comfort them. And you might use that expression
if you could do that. But the Lord can. He has so much
micro detail thoughts of his people that is as if he expresses
it here as putting our tears into his bottle. So we should
be greatly comforted for that. Another scripture is found in
Isaiah and it's about a woman and her nursing child. It says
in Isaiah chapter 49 and verse 13, Sing, O heavens, and be joyful,
O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains, for the
Lord has comforted his people and will have mercy upon his
afflicted. Listen to verse 14 of Isaiah
49, But Zion said, The Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has
forgotten me. And God answers, He reasons with
them. Can a woman forget her sucking
child? That she should not have compassion
on the son of her womb? We would say, no, but he says,
yes, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. So God is
saying, you are more precious to me than a woman whose nursing
child that she bore from her own womb is to her. Because God
birthed us by his spirit through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And then in verse 16 of Isaiah 49, it says, Behold, I have graven
thee upon the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually before
me, speaking to Zion, to his people. So God's care of his
people is great and detailed. He doesn't miss anything. He
doesn't forget anything. He addresses this feeling of
being forgotten because we are prone to forget. I mean, we're
prone to think that he would forget us. We're prone to think
that he's limited like us in the way he thinks about it, and
God uses this thing that we're very familiar with, forgetting
and remembering, in order to bring his care and his love for
his people into our understanding. So, notice here. He says in another
text of scripture, I want to bring your attention to this
matter of God forgetting. In fact, there's a hymn that
we sing, and I wrote that in the notes. It says, the title
of the hymn is, I Will Not Forget Thee. And let me read that hymn
to you. It says, sweet is the promise, I will not forget thee.
Nothing can molest or turn my soul away. Even though the night
be dark within the valley, just beyond is shining an eternal
day. And then this is a quotation,
he took it from Isaiah 49, the hymn writer did. I will not forget
thee or leave thee. In my hands I'll hold thee, in
my arms I'll fold thee. I will not forget thee or leave
thee. I am thy Redeemer. I will care
for thee. So God directs us to himself
as our redeemer, as our father, even as a mother here, because
he compares his relationship to us to exceed the care a mother
has for her nursing child, the one she birthed from her own
womb. But there's another verse I want
to draw your attention to, and that's in Isaiah chapter 43.
In Isaiah 43 and verse 24 it says, the Lord is showing us
what we are, how we have treated him. He says in Isaiah 43, 24,
thou hast brought me no sweet cane with money, no sweet cane
with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy
sacrifices. He's speaking about his people,
Israel, who served idols and brought sweet cane to their idols
and filled their idols with the fat of their sacrifices. He says,
no you didn't do that, but thou hast made me to serve with your
sins. You have wearied me with your
iniquities. And then in verse 25, listen,
in light of the abysmal failure of his people in their sins,
what does God do? I, even I, am he that blotteth
out thy transgressions for mine own sake. And I will not remember
thy sins. And then he says something very,
very interesting. Put me in remembrance. Now, I
like that phrase. Don Fortner used to use it frequently
in his sermons. I would hear him say it all a
lot. And I know it was because it was precious to him. But here,
notice how God is telling us, as it says in this Psalm 13,
when he says, how long will thou forget me, O Lord? This corresponds
to what he says in Isaiah 43 and verse 26, put me in remembrance. Remembrance of what? Remembrance
of what God has said. Remembrance of what he's done.
I, even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine
own sake, and I will not remember thy sins. To put God in remembrance
is to ask him to do as he has said. It is to call his word
and promises to Christ, to mind, to our mind, in remembrance for
the salvation of his people. That's putting God in remembrance
when we bring to our remembrance what he has done in Christ to
save us. God cannot forget his son. And
so we bring that to remembrance. He cannot forget the covenant
he made with his son. and the covenant He made with
Him as our covenant head, all those who were given to Him.
And God cannot forget Christ's precious blood that He shed when
He took our sins. He cannot forget those He gave
to Christ because He cannot forget His Son. They're joined to Him. He cannot forget that He laid
our sins on His Son. He can't forget that. He can't
forget the cries of His Son under the submission of His Son to
His will in love, the love of the Son for the Father, so much
so that He submitted Himself to be made sin for us, so that
He could take our sins and in bearing our sins, fulfill the
righteousness of God for us. He trusted himself and he trusted
his people into the hand of his father. And so God cannot forget
him. He can't forget that trust. He
can't forget his love. He can't forget his obedience
or his submission in all of this. He can't forget his prayers.
Could he forget his humility? No, God laid upon his son all
the sins of all those he gave to him to save. The Lord Jesus
Christ confessed their sins as his own. God can't forget that
love. He can't forget that submission
and faith and hope of his son, the love of his son and bearing
our sins in his own body on the tree. And he can't forget that
having died to sins, we also died with him. God can't forget
that. He can't forget the wrath of
his justice he demanded and poured out on his son. And he can't
forget the loving obedience of his son under that wrath and
his trust, even though he was made a reproach for the sins
of his people. God cannot forget Christ's prayers
for his people. He can't forget that he entrusted
to Christ all those he gave him to save and keep them and feed
them and bring them and give them eternal life. He can't forget
the promises he made to Christ. And he can't forget that he made
those promises from before the foundation of the world. God
just cannot forget these things. These are things of eternal importance
and weight. Though our great God and Father
cannot forget, in Isaiah 43 and 26, He tells us to put Him in
remembrance in order that we might not forget His word and
His promise in the gospel of Christ to us. We might forget, and we need
to be reminded that God can't forget, and so when we speak
of all that he's done in Christ, it brings to our remembrance
what he's done, and God, through that, gives us the same increase
of faith, the same upholding of faith as he did when he first
showed us Christ, and showed us that he laid our sins on him,
and by doing so blotted out our transgressions and our iniquities.
So I say all that in order to bring attention to the fact that,
A, God doesn't forget. And he comforts his people as
a mother and as a father, speaking to them in the dearest way, as
catching our tears in his bottle and telling us to put him in
remembrance of all that he did for us in Christ, in order that
we would realize, no, he hasn't forgotten. He hasn't forgotten.
No matter how we feel because of our sin or the loss of God's
presence, a sense of the loss of God's presence, God hasn't
changed. He hasn't forgotten. Everything in our salvation depends
on what God remembers, what God thinks. That makes the difference. He will do all that He thinks,
He will do all His thoughts, and it's knowing what God thinks
of His Son and of His people. that is our eternal comfort and
our unspeakable joy. Therefore, the father teaches
us to look to Christ as he does and to trust him in this by putting
him in remembrance of his son and his blotting out our transgressions
for his own sake and know that he has graven us on his hands. We are his children and he will
not forget us. It's so much detail that he catches
our tears in his bottle. Then in verse two of Psalm 13,
look back at Psalm 13. He says, how long shall I take
counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall
my enemy be exalted over me? When David was feeling the loss
of God's presence and communication, what did he do? He started thinking
within himself. He started talking to himself,
as it were, taking counsel in his soul. And it seemed that
he couldn't figure things out. I've thought about it, and I
can't come to a resolution here. Why is God so far from me? Why
can't I hear from him? Has he forgotten me? But when
he looked within himself, he couldn't find the help he needed. There was no taking counsel in
his soul, having sorrow in his heart daily, and then his enemies
added to the problem. his own conscience would afflict
him. And we know what that's like,
don't we? It seems like your boss gets
onto you, and then your conscience afflicts you because this, that,
and the other, and it seems like the whole world is crashing down
on you. It doesn't have to be your boss. It can be anybody.
Just something someone says or something that happens to you.
Maybe you get a letter in the mail. Maybe you face financial
difficulties. Maybe you face health issues.
We could just go down the list, couldn't we? All these things
can trigger a feeling that God has left me because trouble is
present with me. But I want to, in consideration
of this, I want to read from Isaiah chapter 50. In Isaiah
chapter 50, in verse 10, it says this. This is the Lord talking
to his people. Who is among you that fears the
Lord, that obeys the voice of his servant, that walks in darkness
and has no light? Okay? Did you get that? Who among
you hears the Lord, fears the Lord and hears His voice and
obeys His servant and yet walks in darkness and doesn't have
any light? This is what the Lord says to do. Let him trust in
the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. No matter if it's
dark or not. He says, you trust in the Lord
and you stay, you rest, you wait, you lean upon him, you roll your
case upon him, you roll yourself upon the Lord. And then verse
11, he says, behold, all you that kindle a fire that compass
yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire
and in the sparks that you have kindled. This you shall have
of my hand. You shall lie down in sorrow.
So in Isaiah 50 verses 10 and 11, he's saying, when all is
dark, trust the Lord, and don't try to start things happening.
That's what we do in works religion, right? We wait on the Lord. We set our expectations, our
expectations aren't met, either for ourselves or our circumstances,
and we immediately try to make it happen, don't we? The Lord
says, no, you look to the Lord and you wait, you stay upon your
God. Is the enemy coming? You wait,
you stay upon your God. Are your sins greater than you
can bear? and the guilt of them or the power of them, then you
wait on your God. You trust in the Lord. There's
no one else who's going to save you. No one else has mercy. And
then in Second Corinthians chapter two, verse 14, he says this.
Now, thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in
Christ and makes manifest the savor of his knowledge by us
in every place. All right, so there we have it.
The Lord is faithful. David took counsel in his soul.
He couldn't find an answer. He was in sorrow daily in his
heart so low and his enemies also were exalted over him. They were able to afflict him. They were they were taking advantage
of the fact that God was afflicting him and they were joining in
to bring more sorrow on him. That's a that's that's a very
The very worst time to speak a negative word to somebody is
when they're sorrowful, isn't it? And how often do we do these
things? We're careless and cruel and
merciless when we do these things. And we have to be very sensitive
to the fact, what does the Lord do for us when we're at the lowest
point? Does he beat us up more? No,
he directs us to Christ. He shines the light of his countenance
upon us. And that's what we should do
for our brothers and sisters and for others. OK, so David,
Wrestling in his counsel of his soul, he might have asked these
questions. Did I misunderstand the truth
of scripture? Did I twist it, perhaps, to interpret
it for my own salvation? Did my God and Savior truly promise
to save me from all my sins? Can my sins be stronger than
He is? Where did I go wrong? Where did
I leave the path? How do I get back on it? Or did
God actually leave me? And so David takes this counsel
in his soul and as he turns it over and turns these things over,
these troubles and the sorrow that he's feeling, this was his
experience. And it was for a long time. Will
you forget me forever? How long, Lord? And so you can
see he was very low, wasn't he? And he also says his enemy. Now,
our enemies can be people, they can be circumstances, they can
just be anything, but we are really our worst enemy, aren't
we? Isn't it our sins? Isn't it our expectations of
things when they're dashed, when we don't get what we think we
ought to have, or we aren't what we ought to be, and we fall short,
and then we spiral downward, don't we? So it's not only this
sense of the loss of God's presence, but it's our own conscience,
and it's the enemy of our sin, and it's the enemy of God-hating
works religionists, who tell us to do what we can't do, and
set all of our hopes in that direction, and then we crash
and burn. The enemy always makes God's
grace condition on our work, doesn't he? God's goodness to
you is going to be conditioned on your faithfulness rather than
on Christ's strength and Christ's work and Christ's faithfulness.
In 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 13 he says, Yet he abides faithful and he
cannot deny himself. There's a comfort, isn't it?
The enemy of my soul always makes my sin a cause to accuse God
of weakness, that he could not be holy and take away my sins,
that he couldn't be a savior who saves unless I do something
to help him, as if I could actually show strength in order to overcome
this sin. But if I could have done it,
then why didn't I do it? If I could have done it, then
why don't I do it? The fact is, is that we need
a savior who saves us from our sins because we're impotent to
do that. And the way he does that is he
works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. God
is at work in us to do that. He directs us to Christ. Then,
Psalm chapter 13 and verse 3, look at this. He says, Consider
and hear me, O Lord, my God. Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep
the sleep of death. After rolling these things over
in his own conscience, in his own mind, what does he do? Lord,
hear me. Lord, you are my God. Lord, lighten mine eyes, lest
I sleep the sleep of death. If the Lord doesn't speak, what's
going to happen? will just remain in darkness.
We can't generate the truth, can we? We can't produce light.
God has to speak the light into our darkness. And we come to
that realization and we're actually helpless. Lord, unless you speak,
not only will I not hear, not know, but I'll actually die if
the Lord doesn't do this. Father, in Mark chapter 9, I
believe. Lord, help my unbelief. Lighten
mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. And then in verse 4
he says, lest my enemies say, I have prevailed against him,
and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved. Here's another
God-given view and plea that he brings to the throne of grace.
He comes by the blood of Jesus. And so coming, he sees that God
has saved us for his name's sake. And if the Lord leave his people,
if he forget them, if he left them to the enemy to destroy
them, then God's enemies will be able to say it was because
he was not long-suffering. He ran out of patience with his
people. Is that possible? He forgot to
be gracious. or he did not count the cost
it would require of him to actually save this sinner. That's what
the enemy would say. He would say that he didn't know
how much it would truly take to save an ungodly sinner, as
I am, from the wrath of his own justice, that his justice demanded,
or to fulfill his righteousness, or to bring me to himself, and
to give me faith. He didn't consider that, and
so he left me. But that's the argument that God himself shows
why he saves for his name's sake. Remember in Numbers chapter 14,
Moses made that argument. He says, Lord, if you destroy
this people, then the enemy will say you couldn't save them. You
brought them out here and you destroyed them because you were
unable to do what you claim to be able to do. And so that was
God the Holy Spirit inspiring Moses to speak God's mind, I'm
not going to fail because I'm going to do it for my name's
sake. So we pray, Lord shine the light, shine the light of
Christ into my dark heart and be all of my salvation so that
I can see that you are all of my salvation and take the victory
over my enemies that you have acquired by your precious blood
and give it to me so I can live upon you by faith. And then in
Psalm 13 and verse 5, he says, but I have trusted in thy mercy.
My heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. Here we see David
going from the lowest point to the very highest point. He has
cried out of his out of his despair. And now he's at the point he's
saying, I've trusted in your mercy. My heart shall rejoice
in your salvation. The only thing an honest sinner
under the chastening hand of God can do is to trust his mercy
in Christ, isn't it? That's the only thing we can
do. But in so trusting Christ, we rejoice in him. When we actually
trust Christ by God's grace, then we our shoulders relax,
don't we? The blood pressure meter goes
down. That's just the way it works. God, when he gives us
faith in Christ, stress, we de-stress, don't we? At least we feel it
in our body somewhat. Yeah, I'm at the end of my rope,
and here God's word comes to me in saving rescue, and he tells
me that your salvation is in Christ, and that he can't fail,
and his strength is stronger than your sin, and that he's
going to finish the work he started in you, and that he finished
the work of your salvation for you already at the cross. He
sits in glory, and there's nothing that can prevent him from bringing
you to himself, because that's what he intended to do. He's
given you, he wouldn't have showed us all these things if he wasn't
going to save us. He just wouldn't. And so we trust
him and we come to him. And so he says in the last verse,
I will sing unto the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with
me. Oh, how much grace God has shown us. From the depths to
glory, he's taken me from the low, from the dunghill, he says
in 1 Samuel 2, I think it says there. He lifts those people
out of the dunghill and he sets them among princes. Isn't that
what he's done here? But notice in this psalm, even
though we can identify with David in some sense of this experience
of being low, sensing God's communication being taken from us, we haven't
heard, we can't pray, it seems like everything's dark, we don't
know what to do. So we cry to the Lord, and that's
a mercy if we do cry, but here we see not only did David actually
do the right thing here, but in his prayer, in the prophecy
here of this psalm, we see the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the
Lord Jesus Christ perfectly understanding how God deals with us. He knew
that whatever trouble came upon him, the Lord was faithful. He
knew that he had committed his case and the case of his people
into the hand of his father. He submitted to his will. He
bore their he took their sins. He bore them as his own. He stepped
under the judgment of God in the garden. Remember, my soul
is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death. And he was very heavy. And he's crying to the Lord.
It says in Hebrews 5, verse 7, that he was heard and that he
feared. Let me read that to you. I'm
trying to remember what it said there, but I don't remember it.
In Hebrews 5, verse 7, it says, who in the days of his flesh,
when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong
crying and tears to him that was able to save him from death,
and was heard in that he feared, though he were a son, yet learned
he obedience by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect,
he became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey
him." The Lord Jesus Christ wept. Sorrow, tears, sorrow of heart,
bearing the shame and of the guilt of our sins as his own,
confessing them to God in that you could not have gone lower.
David seems low. The Lord Jesus Christ actually
went to the lowest place. He went, he says, from the belly,
as Jonah did, from the belly of hell, I cried. And so, That's
what we need to see here. When he cried in Psalm 22, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from
helping me? And from the words of my roaring,
oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not, and in
the night season, and I'm not silent. But notice, even though
he went to the lowest place because of our sin and his submission
of obedience unto God, what happened? The Lord, he was doing the Lord's
will, he says, but thou art holy. He trusted in the Lord, in the
darkest possible case, in all of time and eternity, the Lord
Jesus Christ, under the judgment of God, with no light, even the
light of nature was cut off. No light. and no one to speak
comfort to him, he trusted himself into the hands of his father.
Psalm 22 and verse 7 puts it this way. All they that see me
laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip. They
shake the head, saying he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver
him. Let him deliver him. Seeing he
delighted in him. Truer words could not be spoken.
The Lord Jesus Christ rolled himself upon his father's will
and his promises and his almighty power. He entrusted himself to
his father. And because of that, Because
of that, he not only underwent this great suffering and sorrow
of soul, but he was delivered from his enemies. And he was
raised to the highest place. Let me read this text of scripture
to you in Matthew. Turn to Matthew, chapter seven,
and then we'll close with this. I was reading this the other
day. Matthew, chapter seven. Verse one. A familiar text, judge
not. lest you, I'm sorry, judge not
that you be not judged. Okay, that's pretty clear. Verse
two, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. And with what measure you meet,
it shall be measured to you again. Whatever you dish out, that's
the way you're going to be judged. Now, we think of this, this is
the Lord Jesus speaking in a sermon to people. And he came into the
world in this part of his ministry, revealing the depth of God's
requirements. And he exposed the Pharisees
as saying, but not doing. Remember, they were hypocrites.
You say, but you do not. Here the Lord himself, Jesus
Christ, is saying, and he's speaking these things as our requirement,
but notice what he says here. With what measure you meet, or
you give out, it shall be measured to you again. What did the Lord
Jesus do? What did he receive as a result
of doing it? That's what I thought when I
was reading this verse. What did he do? He took the sins of
these ungodly, sinful people as his own, and he offered himself
to God under those sins in order to save them from their sins.
He justified them by his blood, by his knowledge that this is
what God required in order to bring them to himself. He did
the will of God for them. And in doing that, he justified
them. He showed mercy to the ill deserving. And what did God do? He highly
exalted him. So when you read these these
sermons of the Lord Jesus, the sermon of the Lord Jesus Christ
in Matthew five, six and seven. Remember, God is here showing
us what he requires of us, but he's also showing us who fulfilled
it and where. the fulfillment of it is, it's
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So when we read this Psalm in
Psalm 13 or any of the Psalms, think of what the Lord Jesus
Christ did. He himself was honest, he spoke of being low, brought
low, and we know it wasn't because of his own sins, it was because
of his submission to his Father in order to save us from ours.
And not only was he brought low, but he trusted God in that state
of darkness and abandonment, It was as if God had forsaken
him and cut off communication from him. And yet he speaks in
triumph over his enemies, in triumph over all these things
that were come upon him because he rejoiced, he trusted in God's
mercy, he rejoiced in his salvation, and therefore what did he do
in the last verse? I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt
bountifully with me. What is God saying here? He is
giving us the privilege of looking into this psalm and hearing the
very song of the Lord Jesus Christ in his victory for us. And that's
our salvation. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for
your mercy that the Lord Jesus would be appointed to stand for
us. And in his standing for us, he did all. And in doing all,
He triumphed. And in His triumph, He rejoiced
and sang praise to Your name. And He did this for us to hear,
so that we might know that our salvation is in Him, our victory. So that when we experience any
chastisement in our souls because of our sin, that we would not
despair. We would know that this is the
purpose you came into the world to save us from our sins, and
we would trust you. We would not try to make the
light. We would wait for you to give us the light, to show
us Christ, who is our light. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.