Committed to 150: Psalm 13

Psalm 13

How Long, O LORD?

1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

2 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?

3 Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;

light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

4 lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed over him,"

lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

6 I will sing to the LORD,

because he has dealt bountifully with me. 

This Psalm is written for us in 3 stanzas - each expressing a different emotion:
questions (vv. 1-2), pleas (vv. 3-4), and responses (vv. 5-6). He notes that each stanza addresses God, himself, and his circumstances.

I find showing this poem as chiastic in structure to be most helpful:

1) How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

     2) How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day    

            3) How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

                       Central Axis: Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

             3) lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed over him," lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

      2) But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

1) I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me. 

So, if you throw the verse divisions out and go by the chiastic structure, we see David's repeated questions of how long? leading us to the central part of the poem. Out of David's pain and turmoil, he cries out to YAHWEH. He pleas with God to light up his eyes. And that is exactly what God is going to do ....   And so, as we will often see in David's songs, he moves steadily forward from his PAIN to PRAYER and finally to PRAISE in stanza three (coming out of the central axis). At the beginning, we remember David having sorrow in his heart because he took counsel in his own soul, BUT NOW, his heart rejoices in the salvation and steadfast love of the LORD. From negative to positive; from complaining to praising; from fear to surety.

What a change! 

We can so easily identify with David. We may not have someone literally seeking after our lives to kill us, but we are beaten down by many foes daily....anxiety, discouragement, depression, health, debt, wayward children, torn relationships... the list could go on. We all suffer. So, a question remains, how do we survive? How do we respond with praise like David did? 

We can't... at least not on our own. Oh sure, we can try to make ourselves "ok" with our situation on the outside, but our souls are still suffering. 

Why? 

Sin. 

It's awful. Sin affects everything. We need our eyes/hearts to be enlightened.

 Enter Jesus Christ.

The Perfect Man who experienced all the emotions we do. Reread this Psalm and imagine Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. In the garden, Jesus was in turmoil and tremendous emotional pain crying out 3 times "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39) As if this suffering wasn't bad enough, He went all the way to the cross and bore the pain that should have been ours. As He faced the worst foe of all - sin and death - He was forsaken by God the Father. He cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1)  We may feel alone and defeated, but friends, we know the One who has defeated sin and who was forsaken so that we might never be forsaken and even forgiven! Because of the steadfast love of God upon us, we can rest and rejoice in His salvation.

The word, salvation, points us to beyond what David was going through in his immediate circumstances and dare I say ours as well.  We long for immediate salvation from our suffering and pain and hardships, but we, like David, are in need of a greater salvation. Because Jesus defeated our greatest foe, we can praise YAHWEH. We can indeed sing to YAHWEH because He has been good to us. And we look forward to the not yet when we will see His goodness with our perfectly enlightened eyes. This beautiful little poem is packed full of the Gospel, reminding us of God's goodness in providing salvation through Jesus. He alone can enlighten our eyes and cause our hearts to rejoice.

   

Tips, Tricks and Songs

• Google Psalms coloring pages. (Pinterest would also be helpful). I am going to have a piece of art or something for my children to color for each Psalm. This will use another sense to help them remember, and it will also help Scripture to be tangible for them

• If you are the artistic sort (I envy you), try drawing each Psalm or writing it out in calligraphy to help you remember and understand it

• hymnary.org will be your friend. Search for Psalm 1, and you will find several texts to sing

• Consider buying The Book of Psalms for Worship. I believe you can purchase a version that is downloadable for an iPad  - this just helps get the words/emphasis of the Psalm in your brain using music. This will help you retain the meaning better. 
• This week is a great Psalm to write a simple melody to. My Mom wrote one to help her memorize and I will have my kids sing it later this week and share it. 
• Use technology to help you memorize (if that does help you) - I am using the Bible memory app and have a group Committed to 150 that you can join. This app sets up review and uses different ways to help you remember the verses. I am still figuring it out, because I tend to just memorize as I work on it with the children. This is a good way to keep track of what you have done and to set up review.