Psalm 13

⁰³          Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;

                        enlighten my eyes,

            lest I sleep the sleep of death,

⁰⁴          lest my enemies say,

‘I have triumphed over him.’

lest my adversaries rejoice because I am shaken.

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Consider My Circumstance

For the Lord’s Day:  the 2^nd of November 2003

Introduction:  In the same sense as we left off last week, Calvin would remind us that there is in this Psalm a quiet recognition that David shows us how to pray whenever we have a short memory or nagging doubts.  Then there is also the sense that is a small glory to the Judeo-Christian tradition.  This is what I mean: the ancient pagan needed a symbol of some idol in order to pray. 

 

The Protestant Christian, like David - however, needs no geography, no specific posture, time of day or icon in order to pray.  A lot of early morning and late afternoon prayer occurs in suburban traffic: some immediately purposeful of course, but this can also be a calm and purposeful use of a quiet time not always subject to interruption by electronic distractions.

 

Calvin also notes another aspect of the language here in the first two lines of verse three.  He notes that my modern conceptual word “Consider” can also be translated “look upon me.”  When you repeat that same theme in the second line as “enlighten” you have what Calvin describes as “the same thing in the Hebrew language as to give the breath of life.”  This confession is of an implicit knowledge of having salvation from the hand of God, so then we may understand that given nature of the saving graces leads David to return to the same fountain from which he has already been sustained.

 

Further, we see in these first two lines for today, that David first desires the Lord’s gaze and second that he might know an answer for his immediate problem.  Well might we in our more peaceful day and age think that there is no immediate comparison to David’s age, when death threatened his very existence day after day.  Well, I can certainly testify – that in my prior profession, I certainly did sense the protective hand of the Lord more times than you might imagine.  The very fact that I was able to survive twenty-five years in the public sector, given my conservative attitude, active Christian faith and old-fashioned male charisma – is a small miracle.  There were many different times when my career could have been cut short for a variety of politically correct reasons.  At long last I was able to retire at my pleasure, when I was ready and willing to leave!

 

Development:  Now, we are ready to look briefly at three reasons for which the Lord should consider and answer David in his predicament.  And just like the first section of this psalm where the words “How long,” echo line by line, here the ongoing refrain is the archaic word: “lest.”  And so, we can summarize this brief section in this sense:  that the Lord should save and answer David, lest three sad and tragic results be played out on the world’s stage.  In the various media, Jewish mothers are often portrayed in a similar but false martyr sense, that the children or husband should immediately do something to affirm their love and devotion lest, something dreadful happen.

 

At the very least, we have something higher and better going on here.  It is God’s name, person and character that are at risk within the world at large, unless He will occasionally reveal His divine will and purpose.  By the time of Christ, most of the pagan nations in the Middle East respected the Lord God of the Hebrew people almost more than did the promised elect did themselves.  There was within the whole of the Mediterranean basin a real hope and expectation that the Jewish Messiah would come very soon and transform the old pagan order.  This is why Paul’s evangelism was so wonderfully blessed in Antioch and on to the very foundations of Rome itself.  Adherents there were in some number to the Jewish synagogues, who once having heard the gospel rushed over to the new Christian faith, because they finally felt at home with the loving God revealed in the Old Covenant and in the person of Jesus Christ.

 

The first of these three “lest’s” is this: “lest I sleep the sleep of death.”  Calvin comments on the implications here:  “The word sleep, as it is used in this passage, is a metaphor of a similar kind, being put for death.  In short, David confesses, that unless God cause the light of life to shine upon him, he will be immediately overwhelmed with the darkness of death, and that he is already as a man without life, unless God breathe into him new vigor.  And certainly our confidence of life depends on this, that although the world may threaten us with a thousand deaths, yet God is possessed of numberless means of restoring us to life.”

 

Countless times, in the course of both Covenant histories, the cause of Christ has appeared dim indeed.  Certainly, while there are others who supported the crown rights and claims of David, but - still the whole future of God’s Covenant promise is centered in his person and family down to the time of our Lord’s appearing.

 

In the course of history, military commanders and rulers very often send more than one messenger with the same message.  Napoleon always sent three and sometimes five, just to make certain that his orders got through.  And only upon the arrival of a signed receipt did he count that order signed, sealed and delivered. 

 

The Lord God of heaven and earth does not need to have a back up plan, since the one plan is sufficient and the persons given their assignments are always protected, guided and certain of achieving that for which they were purposed.  We are left to wonder, how much David knew.  We do know that Abraham made his way with many false starts and side trips that conceivably could have clouded the genetic line of the Messiah to come.  So did David father many others who contested Solomon’s rightful claim to continue the course of the Davidic Kingdom.  Since we do not know when in David’s life, this psalm was written – we cannot speculate further about how much of the future course of his kingship had to run?

 

“Lest, I sleep the sleep of death,” David begs his Father God to consider his fallen estate.  Spurgeon observes: “David feared that his trials would end his life, and he rightly uses his fear as an argument with God in prayer; for deep distress has in it a kind of claim upon compassion, not a claim of right, but a plea which has power with grace.”

 

Delitzsch leads us on towards the next phrase in this sequence.  David, “upon whom God looks down in love, continues in life, new powers of life are imparted to him, it is not his lot to sleep the death …. Such is the light of life for which he prays, in order that his foe may not be able at last to say, I am able for him, a match for him, I am superior to him, have gained the mastery over him.”

 

Calvin to speak in a similar vein:  “David again repeats what he had a little before said concerning the pride of his enemies, namely, how it would be a thing ill becoming the character of God were he to abandon his servant to the mockery of the ungodly.”

 

Does this circumstance give us new boldness in our own day and age where the worldly and down-right wicked persecute the Churches of the Living God!  We are beginning to understand that the focus of the Sodomite element in Canada is not to justify their standing before the courts of law, but that it is deployed  primarily against the churches, who must according to their vindictive curse, swallow their claims of obedience to God.  And in renouncing the revelations concerning sin: embrace them instead!  The church would be better off dead, than subscribing to those demented lies of Satan and those who love him!  In our own country – we should be giving more help and encouragement to the Boy Scouts who on the front lines of this terrible and costly fight.  The worldly press never minds that it is precisely the scouting principles that would protect young Catholic altar boys if they were in effect more widely!

 

It is for that worldly reason as well as for many more that the humanists, atheists and secularists of every stripe infiltrate the Church of the Living God – not to bring her an increase in stature and influence, but thereby to destroy the very Bride of Christ.  And so, David’s lament is real and purposeful:  “lest my enemies say, ‘I have triumphed over him.’”

 

And further goes the third concern in this litany of worries for the cause of Christ:  “lest my adversaries rejoice because I am shaken.”  Calvin describes the sorry host of hell in these terms:  “David’s enemies lay, as it were, in ambush watching the hour of his ruin, that they might deride him when they saw him fall.  “And as it is the peculiar office of God to repress the audacity and insolence of the wicked, as often as they glory in their wickedness, David beseeches God to deprive them of the opportunity of indulging in such boasting.”

 

Application:  Spurgeon weighs in with a delightful encouragement for our consideration:  “It is well for us that our salvation and God’s honour are so intimately connected, that they stand or fall together.  Our covenant God will complete the confusion of all our enemies, and if for awhile we become their scoff and jest, the day is coming when the shame will change sides, and the contempt shall be poured on those to whom it is due.”

 

As we close this meditation, let us take the long view of things within the real and kind providence of our Creator God.  Heaven and Hell are extreme opposite concepts in life as well as in the final and eternal reality.  Never, the twain shall meet, we might say poetically.  So therefore, we may understand that the agents of each of the great spiritual powers shall have the protection of their sovereign.  However, what the enemy does not fully comprehend and realize, is that there is finally and ultimately: only One absolute and divine and Triune God of all heaven and earth.  While we like David give Him honor and glory – our souls are untouchable by Satan.  Yes, the body, mind and emotions may be tweaked even as Job well knew, but in the end, even as David realized:  we belong to the Lord of all the earth and therein is final relief and safety.  May we learn the confidence of David and turn to our Lord Jesus Christ in earnest prayer day after day as long as we have breath.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.

Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament – Psalms.

Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.

The Westminster Confession & Catechisms.

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