“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,
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.” – Psalm 13:1-6
We aren’t told what kind of trouble David was enduring as he wrote this. We don’t need to know. These are the Lord’s words, spoken to us through David, so that we might be strengthened and comforted in the troubles we are enduring.
“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, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?” (Vs. 1-2)
How often does your own hurting heart cry out with David’s, as he penned those verses? Trouble comes upon you, and it seems to have no remedy. You spend your nights in tears. Your whole body groans beneath the crushing burden of grief and pain. You struggle to simply live through each day. Your aching soul stretches up to the Lord with the lingering, anguished question – Why? Oh, Lord, why? What are You doing? Why aren’t you fixing this?
The Lord heard David’s cry. He hears our cries. And, wonder of wonders, His own heart breaks with His heartbroken creations. Jesus Himself was a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief; surely, Scripture says (Isaiah 53:4), He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. (Hebrews 4:15) How the Lord loves us! Could He have forgotten David when he wrote this psalm? Did He need reminding? Had He suddenly stopped caring and become callous? No! David may have felt forgotten, or he may have felt as though the Lord had hidden His face – as we so often do – but emotions and moods have nothing to do with the truth. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) He did not bear the full weight of His Father’s righteous wrath against our sin in 33 AD, shedding His very heart’s blood in the process, just to forget about us in 2011 AD. The infinite love of the Cross stretches across eternity. If God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16), He is not going to leave His redeemed to rot through carelessness or uncaringness. Yes, David was in trouble. He was in pain. He was in sorrow. And the Lord knew all about it.
So why, we might ask, did He permit the trouble to continue? Why was He letting David’s enemy be exalted over him? Why was he letting His beloved child endure such sorrow and tribulation? Why does He allow all of us, all His children, to endure these things?
It was because David was beloved that the Lord had sent him trouble. God does not just allow trials in our lives; He creates them. He uses suffering like a smelter uses the heat of a crucible, refining precious souls in the fire. We are worth too much to Him for Him to allow us to remain mere ore, full of dross, ugly, and unusable. It would certainly be easier to leave us that way. It would certainly be more comfortable. But would it be better? The more you allow the word of God to fill your heart, the more you see how much of a pain in the neck your flesh – that is, your innate nature of sin – really is. And the more you see your flesh and the black, rotten fruit it bears, the more hideous it becomes, and the more you want it gone. Dead and gone. Gone, gone, gone. Gone and buried. Gone and burned! As Paul writes in Romans 7:24-25, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Jesus delivered us from death! The Man of Sorrows, the great High Priest, the Mediator – He stood in the gap between us, sinners, and the righteous Creator. He bore the wrath that should have been ours and became Jacob’s ladder, making a way for us to become children of God. He put to death the enmity and has imputed His own spotless righteousness to those who choose to appropriate His sacrifice by faith. I have been born again into His likeness; I am no longer in bondage to sin or to my flesh. My inward (wo)man delights to do the will of my Father in heaven!
And yet, while I’m alive on earth, fulfilling the plan the Lord has fashioned just for me, my spirit is at war. It is harnessed to a body of death (also known as my physical form), and while there remains breath in my lungs, those two natures will be at war. The flesh against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; they are incompatible, and are constantly at odds. That’s where trials come in. If you allow the Lord to have His perfect work, those trials will become incredible blessings – the extent of which we can’t even imagine! Trials subdue the flesh, burn away impurities, and drive you to be strengthened in the Spirit. Compared to eternity, David’s trouble in this psalm was a “light affliction,” working for him “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” (2 Corinthians 4:17) And David knew it! He writes next, “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.” (Vs. 3-4)
Enlighten my eyes. Not “save me,” not “make me more comfortable,” not “thunder from heaven and blast my enemy into the dust,” but instead, “enlighten my eyes.” Whatever he might have been feeling at the moment, David did not pray for deliverance from his earthly trial. He prayed for his eyes to be enlightened. In doing so, he was praying for wisdom, for understanding, and for eyes of faith to see his circumstances in the light of the Truth. He was praying that he would have what it took to respond to his trouble in a way that was obedient and glorifying to his King.
David’s enemies – physical and spiritual – were waiting for him to stumble. They were waiting for him to lose sight of the truth and give them the chance to prey on his weakness. They were waiting for him to despair, give up, and “sleep the sleep of death.” David’s earthly enemies had their own goals, certainly, but that does not change the fact that, wittingly or unwittingly, those “enemies” were merely pawns in the hands of Satan and his demons. Don’t be deceived! Peter writes in his first epistle, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.” (1 Peter 5:8-10)
We, as human beings, see the physical world. But the physical world is not all there is. The spiritual realm exists, it is active, and at the moment, our physical world is under Satan’s spiritual dominion. He is the prince of the power of the air, permitted by the true King of kings and Lord of lords to work his will in the sons of disobedience. (Ephesians 2:2) Because Satan has made himself the enemy of God – even though he has no power except that which God allows him to have – and believers are of God, Satan is thus the enemy of believers. He seeks to hinder and destroy, and our wretched flesh plays right into his hands. Satan does not even have to work hard at “tempting” us. Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed, James says in James 1:14-15, and when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. Trials, temptations, tribulations, troubles, infirmities – they are all blessings. But only if we allow them to be. David cried out for his eyes to be enlightened so that he would not stumble, and would not allow Satan a foothold in his heart. David knew that, alone, he did not have a chance. He was weak. He was a sinner. He was vulnerable. He needed the Lord.
It is indeed a fearful array of spiritual forces that is deployed against us (believers). But the battle is not ours! In the time of Israel, the king of Syria sent “horses and chariots and a great army” (2 Kings 6) to Dothan in order to take and kill Elisha, the man of God. The horses and chariots surrounded the city, and Elisha’s servant was terrified. He cried, “‘Alas, my master! What shall we do?’ So he [Elisha] answered, ‘Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ And Elisha prayed, and said, ‘LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.’ Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” Greater is He who is in us than he who is the world! I am weak, but the Lord is strong. I will stand, because He is able to make me stand.
But Satan is not to be toyed with or taken lightly. I need my eyes enlightened. I need my mind renewed in the word of God. I need His Spirit in me. I need to be constantly surrendering my will to His. “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might,” Paul urges in Ephesians 6:10-18. “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints —”
I’m going to trip up. I’m going to lose battles. I’m going to sin. But by the grace of God, the war is won. I sin less. With each bout in the crucible I am being purified to better reflect the image of my Savior. My eyes are being enlightened. Truth is being rooted in my heart. And a day is coming when my body of death will finally die, and I will stand face-to-face with Jesus – and be like Him!
Oh, David’s enemies were growling at his heels. They were foaming at the mouth, baring their teeth, and slavering for the kill. Likewise, they are at your heels, and at mine. They lie in wait. They are patient. They are persistent. They are ruthless. They are deadly. BUT –
“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”! (Vs. 5-6)
See how David concludes his psalm! He began in tears, but he ended with song! The Lord has dealt bountifully with us indeed. He is our Shield, our Savior, and our exceedingly great Reward. He has neither forgotten nor forsaken, and He never will. By the blood of Jesus, we may come boldly to the throne of grace, to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need! (Hebrews 4:16) We dwell in the secret place of the Most High – the mercy seat, the Holy of Holies – and abide beneath the shadow of the Almighty. (Psalm 91) His word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. The war is already won! The only question that remains is: how will you carry yourself through the final battles? Will you allow Satan to rob you of blessings, opportunities, and treasures that the Lord longs to give you? Or will you live with eyes of faith, eyes that are filled with the light of His countenance, and make your choices accordingly?
It is up to you.
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