Psalm 6
Date: February 11th, 2024
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Psalm 1
Exegetical Outline
MIT: David weeps before the Lord, begging for deliverance, and the Lord delivers him.
6:1-3 – David pleads with the Lord to move, being kind to David and destroying his enemies.
6:4-5 – David pleads that the Lord will save him so that the Lord will have a witness.
6:6-7 – David’s enemies cause him great sorrow and pain.
6:8-10 – Depart evil doers because the Lord has heard David’s plea and will punish his enemies.
Homiletical Outline
MIS: The Lord delivers the broken hearted for his own glory.
Suffering is the product of sin.
The Lord hears the brokenhearted.
He delivers for his own glory.
Introduction:
Have you ever known someone that was so awful you just couldn’t stand to be around them. Perhaps they were initially your friend but they hurt you in some way. Perhaps they are a parent that was actually not a parent at all. Unlike the parents of your friends, your parents didn’t put your needs before their own. Actually, it was more like you parented them then they parented you. Perhaps it was a spouse or an ex-spouse, that was only ever selfish. They were so self-centered that they blew up your marriage and left you picking up the pieces of your life.
Do such people deserve to be delivered? Do they deserve salvation? Toward the end of David’s life, David left a wake of misery and pain in the lives of people he supposedly cared about and was responsible for. He committed adultery, he fabricated elaborate conspiracies, and he murdered people for his own benefit and to cover up his sins. He created misery and suffering in thousands of people’s lives, and yet he wrote the majority of the Psalms and is remembered not as a villain but as a man after God’s own heart.
How could God deliver someone so dastardly and undeserving as David? Let’s read Psalm 6 and find out.
Psalm 6
6 To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments; according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
6 I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.
8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
Psalm 6 is the fourth psalm that David writes as he is fleeing from Absalom. This major episode in David’s life can be read in about 10 minutes if you read 2 Samuel 13-19, but you do not fully understand how it affected David unless you read Psalms 3-7. Psalm 3 and 4 center around the peace that God offers to all that take refuge in him. Psalm 3 is the peace that David prays for in the midst of his flight. He puts his trust in God and lays his head down at night to rest. Psalm 4 is an evangelistic plea to his enemies to find the same peace. He explains to them that they must turn from their sin and find joy in David’s God.
Psalm 3 and Psalm 4 go together like Psalm 5 and Psalm 6 go together. In Psalm 5, David deals with his own guilt and sin. He throws himself on God’s grace in order to find forgiveness and protection. Psalm 6 continues this theme. David begs the Lord for deliverance, not merely for David’s good, but for God’s glory. This is what we are going to see in Psalm 6. The main idea of our sermon is that God delivers the brokenhearted for his own glory.
We will see God’s deliverance in 3 ways. First, we will see the need for deliverance in our first point: all suffering is the product of sin. If you experience pain, heart ache, futility, dissatisfaction or anything negative in this life, the ultimate cause of that suffering is sin. David is experiencing suffering because of his own sinful failings. The tragedies in his life are not happen stance, but the direct discipline of God for his sin with Bathsheba. So I would like to develop a brief theology of suffering in point one. We will see three types of suffering in Scripture: suffering for the sake of futility, suffering for the sake of sin, and suffering for the sake of Christ. None of which would exist without sin in the world requiring God to deliver us from our suffering.
The second thing we will learn about suffering is that the Lord hears our cries of pain. He is not disinterested. Paradoxically, God is both transcendent and imminent. He is both completely other and separate from this world and he is near to us, hearing our deepest groanings and heartaches. When David cries to the Lord, God hears him and delivers him out of his troubles, but why? Why does God deliver?
The third and final lesson to learn about God’s deliverance from Psalm 6 is that God delivers for his own glory. David begs the Lord to deliver him, because if he does not, there will be no witness to his deliverance. How will anyone know God as a deliverer if he does not deliver those that cry out to him? David’s suffering is great. David’s suffering is deserved. Yet God delivers him, not because David deserves it, but so God would be known as a deliverer.
Lament over sin is a Christian virtue. We should be broken hearted over how we have offended and turned away from the God that loves us, but our sorrow would be futile if it were not for the Gospel. If God was not a deliverer, we would be left to our tears. The beauty of the Gospel, and what we learn from Psalm 6, is that God turns our tears into joy when he delivers us from our sufferings. His kindness is on display when he delivers sinners because our God delivers the brokenhearted for his own glory.
Suffering is the Product of Sin
Let’s consider our first point: suffering is the product of sin. As we have studied Psalms 3-7, we have been given an insider look at the prayers of David as he fled from his son, Absalom. David’s prayers cover a whole range of emotions. They have fluctuated between absolute faith in God’s deliverance and peace and lamenting the sin and suffering in his own life.
In the first three verses of Psalm 6, David is again lamenting the consequences of sin in his life. Let’s reread Psalm 6:1-3:
Psalm 6:1-3
6 To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments; according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
In some ways, it is really hard to feel sorry for David. The suffering and pain that he is lamenting in his life is his own fault. We saw this last week in 2 Samuel 12. Nathan says that the punishment for his sin with Bathsheba and murdering Uriah is that the sword will never leave his house and God promises to raise up evil in David’s life from David’s own house. Everything that has taken place from the rape of Tamar to the rebellion and death of Absalom is a direct result of David’s sin with Bathsheba.
One error that we could make is to look at David’s prayers for deliverance and think: who is this guy? How selfish and arrogant he is to ask God to forgive him and deliver him from sin that he is clearly being punished for. It’s not really punishment, its justice.
Before we are tempted toward that conclusion, consider your own prayers. How many times have you asked God to deliver you from something that was your own fault? If David’s prayer for deliverance fell on deaf ears, what hope would any of us have that our prayers would be answered?
In order to be able to pray correctly and in order to be able to have compassion for other Christians caught in the consequences of sin, we must first have a robust theology of suffering. We must come to the realization that all suffering is a product of sin and that anytime anyone laments their suffering and asks God to deliver them, they are asking God to deliver them from what they deserve.
So, I want to briefly develop a theology of suffering so that we will be more prepared to have compassion on David in his lamentation and cries for deliverance. There are three types of suffering in Scripture: suffering for the sake of futility, suffering for the sake of sin, and suffering for the sake of Christ.
First, suffering for the sake of futility. To begin our understanding of suffering, we must first understand that there would be no suffering of any kind in the world if sin did not exist. In Genesis 3, God cursed the man, the woman, and the serpent. Listen to God’s curse against Adam in Genesis 3:17-19:
Genesis 3:17-19
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
Paul, in Romans 8:20-22, describes this curse as the curse of futility.
Romans 8:20-22
20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
Genesis 3 and Romans 8 describe a kind of suffering that is present in the world simply because the generic wrath of God is being poured out against sin, meaning things do not work like God originally intended. The ground yields thorns, not fruit. Our bodies decay and are diseased when he designed them to be eternal. The world is broken and does not work like it is supposed to because of sin and God’s anger against it.
So there is an entire category of suffering that you will experience that is futile, it has no point, and the suffering of futility comes on the righteous and the wicked alike. All of creation is subjected to this futility because of sin.
The appropriate response to such suffering is lamentation and compassion. When your neighbor gets brain cancer or when your sister miscarries her baby or when a hurricane wipes out Puerto Rico, it is an ever-present reminder that sin is still a reality in this world. There is an ache that every Christian should feel at the wrongness in the world. We should weep with those that weep in those moments because it should not be this way. The suffering of futility will strike all of our lives for no other reason than the world is broken.
The second type of suffering is suffering for the sake of sin. Psalm 107:17 says:
Psalm 107:17
17 Some were fools through their sinful ways,
and because of their iniquities suffered affliction;
This type of suffering is the type of suffering that David is experiencing. He sinned and is reaping the consequences of his error. Your sin will always lead to suffering. It separates you from God and prevents you from experiencing his grace and his mercy.
As I was preparing for this sermon, I came across this story that I thought was helpful. A man and woman were celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary, and as they were driving back from dinner, the woman was looking out the window feeling nostalgic. She said, “Remember how we used to drive around at night when we had no money and we would sit next to each other and just enjoy each other’s company? What happen to that?” The man thought about it for a second and said, “Well, I haven’t moved.”
If the woman would have oriented herself toward her husband instead of looking out the window at the world, then she would have seen that the distance between them had not changed. She could very easily experience the closeness that she was missing, but she was facing the wrong direction.
When we are facing the world, we cannot face God. Our position before him does not change, but our enjoyment of him is diminished. Sin will always lead us away from God to look for satisfaction in things that cannot satisfy. So, when we experience suffering because of sin, it is because sin always leads us away from God.
The appropriate response to suffering for the sake of sin is to repent. We must turn back to God so that we can experience the deliverance promised in Psalm 6.
Finally, the last type of suffering is suffering for the sake of Christ. Philippians 1:29-30 says:
Philippians 1:29-30
29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.
How many of you were taught that in Vacation Bible School? Scripture puts your call to believe in the Gospel as high as your call to suffer for the sake of Christ. This is an inevitable reality for the Christian. To follow him is to suffer for his sake. Peter affirms what Pauls says in Philippians 1 in 1 Peter 2:20-21:
1 Peter 2:20-21
20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.
This type of suffering is also the product of sin because you are being sinned against. Of all three types of suffering, Peter tells us that this type of suffering identifies us with Christ. It is a comforting reassurance that we belong to him when we suffer like he suffered.
The appropriate response to this kind of suffering is to endure. We must peacefully persevere to the end because this is the example Christ gave us. Peter goes on in verses 22-25.
1 Peter 2:22-25
22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
So, when David prays for God to deliver him from suffering, we should feel a compassion toward his predicament because we all will experience suffering in our lives. Whether it is the suffering for the sake of futility, or suffering for the sake of sin, or suffering for the sake of Christ, we are guaranteed to face suffering in this life. There will come a moment when you need to ask or grace that you do not deserve, or when your sorrow is so great all you can do is cry out to him and ask, “How much longer will this go on?”
And in that moment, Psalm 6 will be a comfort because you will remember that God hears the lamentations of his people. We never deserve to cry out to him because all of our sufferings are a product of sin, of our rebellion against him, but how comforting is it to know that he hears us anyway?
The Lord hears the prayers of the broken hearted.
Which brings us to our second point: the Lord hears the prayers of the broken hearted. For this second point, I want to jump over the middle of the psalm and come back to it in the end. Let’s skip verses 4-5 and read 6-10:
Psalm 6:6-10
6 I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.
8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
This psalm really takes us into the depths of David’s lamentation. Just look at verses 6-7. David is crying so much that he has exhausted himself with his tears. He says that he has flooded his bed with tears and drenched his couch with weeping. This begs the question: is the normative for the Christian experience? Should it be normal that we are so emotionally moved by our sin?
Brothers and sisters, lamentation is a Christian virtue. James 4:7-10 says:
James 4:7-10
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
James clearly expects that Christian should be broken over their sin. As we draw near to God, our sin becomes more and more discernible and visible. We come to a greater understanding and realization of the sin still present in our lives and it should break our hearts. Before we move on to grace too quickly, we must first be brokenhearted over our sin.
Which means you actually have to feel contrition, you have to be brokenhearted over your sin. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7:10:
2 Corinthians 7:10
10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
How many times have you sinned and apologized to God only to turn around the next day and do the exact same sin? I know I have. You must ask yourself, did you truly repent? Not according to Scripture. To repent is to genuinely lament over your sin and to turn away from because you hate it. You hate that sin and everything it is doing in your life. The way it makes you feel about your wife. The way it keeps you cloistered in your room unable to get up and feel happy. The way that it distances you from God and robs you of the joy of his grace. We must be genuinely broken over our sin and turn away from it.
God is still the one driving the truck in the life of the Christian. We are the ones that can’t quit looking out the window at the world.
David, in Psalm 6, understand what it means to be brokenhearted. He has poured his heart out before God and God heard him. His enemies that are attempting to work evil against him will be put to shame because the Lord has heard the sound of his weeping. God hears the lamentations of his people. In Psalm 34:15-18, David said:
Psalm 34:15-18
15 The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
and his ears toward their cry.
16 The face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
17 When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears
and delivers them out of all their troubles.
18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
When the Lord hears the cries of his people, he acts on their behalf. That is the great comfort. When we are suffering and lamenting the sin that has caused us pain, the Lord is not idle. He delivers us from our troubles.
The question is: why? We have already established that all suffering is because of sin. That is, all suffering to some degree or another is our collective fault. We brought it on ourselves in the fall. And while we should weep and lament over our sin, what makes us think that the Lord should deliver us? Isn’t our suffering exactly what we deserve? Isn’t David getting exactly what he deserves when he is writing Psalm 6?
He delivers for his own glory.
This brings us to our third and final point: The Lord delivers for his own glory. Let’s go back to verses 4-5:
Psalm 6:4-5
4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
David understands something that most of us struggle with. Why does God deliver anyone? It is not because we deserve it. David clearly does not deserve God’s kindness. He turned away from God and did horrible and awful things to an innocent family that he was responsible to care for and shepherd. Everything that is taking place in David’s life is justified and deserved. We have already established that this is true of every single person in this room. There is not one of us that deserves to be delivered, so why does God do it?
God delivers so we will know him as a deliverer. Isn’t that amazing? God delivers so we will know him for who he truly is, a rescuer of those that put their faith in him. God does not save you for you, he saves you so he will be known to all of his creation. We can see this in verse 5. If David dies, there will be no one to testify to God’s salvation. God saves so that his steadfast love and kindness would be known throughout all the world.
Which brings up two questions for us that I want to ask of the text to better help us understand what is going on in Psalm 6. The first question is: does this make God self-centered? And the second question is: what are we supposed to do in response?
So first, does God delivering people for his own glory and fame make God self-centered? Yes, and it is the greatest good possible in all the world for men.
God’s self-centeredness is not like our self-centeredness. If someone were to call me self-centered, that would be meant as a rebuke for sinful behavior, but that is not the case with God. For God to be the center of all things is the greatest good possible for God’s people. Psalm 16:11 says:
Psalm 16:11
11 You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
The prize of this life is God. To be in his presence is to experience joy unending and pleasures forevermore. For God to be so focused on his own glory is to be focused on your happiness because he is the only thing that can satisfy you.
This is what Christ died to purchase for you. 1 Peter 3:18 says:
1 Peter 3:18
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit
Christ did not die to save you from your sin. He is far too valuable for such a mundane outcome. Jesus Christ died on the cross to bring you to God. To give you life so that you can behold God’s glory. To see the effulgence of his majesty is the chief end of life such that all eternity would not be long enough to enjoy the splendor of his beauty.
What David understands in Psalm 6 is that God is radically God-centered and we should be too. When God is focused on his glory, he is focused on our happiness because he is the most valuable, beautiful, pleasurable being there is. When we have him, we are happy.
Second question: how are we to respond to the reality that God delivers for his own glory? Let me answer the question by giving you one thing not to do and one thing that you should do.
First, you should not be angry when God delivers someone who has wronged you. Think of Uriah or Bathsheba’s parents. Think how they would have felt watching David flee from Jerusalem and how they would have felt when he came back a couple weeks later triumphant. Absalom would have been your hero. Justice was finally being served on this corrupt king,. Then when David came back into the city, triumphant over this rebellion, you would be tempted to be angry at God for being gracious and kind to someone that has done so much to wrong you.
Brothers and sisters, for God to be known as a deliverer, he must deliverer those that do not deserve it. The more someone doesn’t deserve grace, the more beautiful it is when God saves them. At some point in your life as a Christian, there will be someone that has done you wrong or has done something so horrible to someone else that you think they are beyond salvation. They are not. To be God-centered like David is in Psalm 6 is to pray that that person would be forgiven and that God would deliver them.
Which also means that if God forgives them, we must too. Could anyone sin against you more than they have sinned against God? If God forgives them, we must too. Christians must forgive because they have been forgiven, and they must celebrate when God delivers even the most reprehensible sinner because our God is a deliverer.
Finally, we should sing God’s praises when he delivers sinners. David’s point is clear. Deliver me so that I may be a witness to your deliverance and sing praises to you. Therefore, when God delivers, we should glorify his name, meaning, we should share the news with others. This is challenging for my introverts in the room, you are starting to sweat. That’s ok. If you take anything away from this sermon, take this: your greatest joy and pleasure in life comes from beholding and sharing God’s glory. That is what Scripture has taught us. You need to cling to that promise in faith and do something that is really scary for you: you need to share what God has done in your life. You cannot magnify God’s glory in silence. You must share what he has done.
It could be something as simple as calling a close friend and telling them how God has been faithful. It could be sharing about God’s faithfulness in a Members Meeting with the Church. It could be sharing your testimony with someone who is not a Christian. Our happiness is dependent on God’s glory being seen, so if we want to be happy people, we must spread God’s glory throughout the world.
Conclusion
In Psalm 6, we have seen that the Lord delivers the brokenhearted for his own glory. David was suffering because of his sin. In this case his own sin, but we can be compassionate towards his lamentation because we live in a world dominated by suffering because of sin. What Psalm 6 calls us to do is be broken over our sin. We must genuinely be contrite and sorrowful that we have turned away from God to things that will not satisfy us. When we are truly broken over sin and when we cry out for deliverance, God delivers his people. Not because we deserve it, but because God is seen as beautiful and glorious when he saves sinners.
So, Mosaic Church, who in your life deserves your forgiveness? Who deserves your kindness and mercy? The truth is: no one does. But if you forgave people who have wronged you because they deserved your forgiveness, it would no longer be forgiveness. It would simply be agreement that there was no harm done. To forgive, by its nature, means that the person has unjustly wronged you and does not deserve your forgiveness. But how could you, who have been forgiven so much, not turn around and forgive others. God is shown to be a God who delivers when his people who have been delivered forgive others.
Let’s pray.