Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 6 | Date: July 9, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Today, Psalm 6. O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord, how long? Turn, O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol, who will give you praise? I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of my grief. It grows weak because of all my foes. Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, we are learning from these Psalms of lament, not only how to lament, how to bring our concerns before you. But we learn in our laments to trust. We learn to hope, and we learn to praise. And we pray that you will teach us that again this morning. Help us to learn from the example in the psalm of David, to look to Jesus and take every hope in the great promises of God that are bound up in him. We pray in his name, amen.

Well again, as I say, this is a psalm of lament, a lament psalm. We have the markers of that right off the bat. You have the direct address, “O Lord,” that signals that this is a psalm of lament. Remember that the psalms of lament, although we call them that, usually the heart of the lament psalm is the petition. He’s asking God for something in the context of lament and complaining and languishing, as the word he uses here, and we will see that.

But we have all of those elements of a lament psalm here in Psalm 6. In verse 1, we have the direct address. In verses 1 to 5, we have the petition with the lament. Here the lament and the petition are combined together. We have seven petitions here. Then verses six and seven, we have the lament again. And then verses eight to 10, we have the expression of confidence or trust and some implicit praise with it as well. So all of the components of a lament psalm we see here.

Now the occasion of the psalm, we don’t know exactly. Implicitly we find in the psalm that the occasion is David’s suffering, but specifically he’s suffering some severe illness of some kind. Verse 2, he tells us, “I’m languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.” And then verse 4, “Turn, O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love.” And then verse 5, of course, death seems imminent. So he’s languishing here with some severe kind of physical illness.

And that illness, we will find, is compounded by opportunists of some sort, who seem to—they can’t wait for David to die. And they’re looking forward to what—they’re cheering what’s happening to him. He’s falling apart, he’s on the brink of death, and they’re happy for that. We have a hint of that in verses seven and eight. “My eye wastes away because of my grief. It grows weak because of all my foes. Depart from me all you workers of evil.” So we have enemies of some kind who are emboldened somehow by David’s impending death and somehow they are hoping that will work to their advantage. So David is suffering a severe illness on the brink of death and we have people around him who are cheering it on and hoping it will go through.

Now we’ve tried to keep an eye also on the literary context of the Psalms. We’ve seen that the editors of the Psalms have arranged the Psalms not only in the five books that we will see this evening, in the big arrangement of the Psalter, but also in the individual placement of the Psalms within those books. There’s often some hints as to why the editors placed them in the order that they did. And we have some of that here, and I think I’ve mentioned it before.

In Psalm 3, we have a morning prayer. That’s verse 5 of Psalm 3, “I lay down and slept, I woke again for the Lord sustained me.” So he’s praying in the morning. Then Psalm 4, we find an evening prayer. That’s Psalm 4, verse 8. “In peace I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” So Psalm 4, he’s looking forward to going to a good night’s sleep. Psalm 5, we have a morning prayer again. Psalm 5, verse 3. “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” And now in Psalm 6, again, we have an evening prayer. “I’m weary with my moaning every night. I flood my bed with tears.” So we have this alternating of morning and evening prayers in Psalm 3, 4, 5, and 6.

And then in Psalms 3 to 6, we have also here—it seems that the editors are trying to show us some varied sufferings, varied kinds of sufferings in the life of David. So in Psalm 3, as we saw, David is at war. His son is the enemy. Absalom is leading a rebellion against his father. In Psalm 4, we saw that there’s a drought, and he has a cabinet who’s disloyal to him. And then in Psalm 5, we saw last time that David is suffering the slander of lying and deceitful rebels in his kingdom. And now in Psalm 6, there’s a severe illness. He’s close to death, and we have opportunistic traitors of some sort around him who are cheering it on.

The Petition With The Lament

All right, then, Psalm 6, we have David lamenting his severely weakened condition, and calls on God to help. In verses 1 to 5, as I mentioned, he combines his lament with his petition. Verse 1, “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.” And the idea here is not “don’t do it” simply, but “stop doing it.” Stop rebuking me in your anger, stop disciplining me. He’s sick, he’s debilitated, he’s convinced here that God is chastening him, and yet he hopes that God will still hear him, and so he’s praying, “don’t do this, stop this.”

Now I suppose we ought to say something up front about something where there’s always questions that come up about this, and that is: is sickness the result of sin? And there are a couple of answers to give to that. Of course, on one level, yes. Adam and all fallen humanity, sickness is the result of sin. But if we’re thinking in terms of a tit-for-tat arrangement—that if I am sick right now, it’s because of a sin that I have committed—we can’t know that. There’s nothing in the Bible to tell us that. We all are going to suffer the general sufferings of a fallen humanity.

However, this is one tool in God’s toolbox that he may use to chasten his people. Paul makes mention of that in 1 Corinthians 11. “For this reason, many of you are sick among you.” So it could be the case. When is that the case? I don’t know. I remember one time, I was a brand new pastor, 24 years old, pastoring in a church, and one of the young men in the church was the son of a deacon in the church, actually, asked me, he said, “I’m dating a girl, a fiance, and I’ve asked her to marry me, will you marry us?” Well, I’d be happy to do that, let me talk to you.

And so they came in, and we talked. Long story short, she had no clue of what the church was about. She had no clue of the gospel. She had no clue of anything to do with—I mean, she was clearly not a believer. And this man was a professing believer. And so as tactfully as I was able to do at age 24, I said, “You know, we need to talk about this further because we can’t move forward with this right now because you clearly don’t have an understanding of what it is Bill says he believes,” and, you know, trying to be tactful about this. And so let’s meet again and let’s talk and I want to pursue the gospel with her.

Next morning, phones were ringing and his mother is on the phone to everyone in the church. “Pastor Fred won’t marry our son.” And this is my first pastoral crisis. I don’t know if it was a few days or a week later, maybe two, but it was not long later at all. I get a phone call, she’s in the hospital, and she’s been diagnosed with cancer. I go up to see her in the hospital, greeted her, and I think the first words out of her mouth, at least after the greeting, were: “I suppose God is doing this to me because of what I’ve been doing at church.”

Now what do I do? I don’t know that God is doing this to her, but I don’t know that he’s not. And so I just said, “Is that what you think?” Now I don’t know, and I can’t give you the answer to it still today. But if she’s convinced of that, I’m not going to try to talk her out of it. And those are what you’re left with in these situations. My point is these are not always clear, and you can’t give a clear answer to the question.

In this case, in Psalm 6, David is convinced that his suffering is God’s chastening. “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.” Now this is referred to always as the first of a string of six or seven penitential psalms. The most famous of the penitential psalms is Psalm 51. When I first saw that—that Psalm 6 is a penitential psalm some years ago—I wondered, what is it that makes this a penitential psalm? There’s no mention of his sin, there’s no repentance of sin, there’s no penitence on David’s part. Why is this referred to everywhere as a penitential psalm? Well, it seems that in verse 1, and then through the psalm we’ll see other hints of it, that David understands his sickness to be God’s chastening. It is God’s displeasure on David as to why he is suffering. And so David concludes that, and so implicitly, we could call this a penitential psalm. Perhaps this is post-2 Samuel 11 and 12 that we’ve seen, David’s sin with Bathsheba, don’t know. But in any case, David sees himself as under God’s chastening hand, suffering under God’s displeasure, and his petition basically is: please stop. Please heal me.

So verse two, instead he prays, rather than rebuking me and chastening me, “be gracious to me, heal me. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.” I’m languishing—that’s the word “withering.” He’s feeble, he’s faint. “I’m hurting, Lord, down to my bones I’m hurting, and I can’t take much more.” So David is in extreme kind of suffering, and then notice how he reasons with God in verse two. “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for… for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, because my bones are troubled.” So he’s grounding his case in a conviction that God is compassionate. “I’m suffering. This is as much as I can take. Lord, I’m withering away. Heal me.” So he’s grounding his petition in the truth of God’s compassion.

One theologian in the 11th century made a comment here on Psalm 6 that “for I am faint, for I am faint” is the first and best argument for God’s mercy. And I think he grasped exactly what’s going on here. Heal me. And I think the expression “heal me” in verse two probably is intended to mean more than simply physical healing. “My Lord, forgive my sin. And may we be done with this. Put it behind me.” There’s some precedent for the use of those words in the Old Testament in that sense. And I think that’s the connotation here.

Then verse three. Not just physically broken, but David is emotionally hurting also. “My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord, how long?” And you find that expression often in the lament psalms. We’ve seen them before. “How long? How long? How long will this go on? How much of this can I take? Will you never give me any relief?” So David is under prolonged suffering, and it’s wearing him down, and he’s going to God with it. “Lord, will you at last be gracious to me? Give me healing. Bring me back.”

So David is lamenting some physical ailment of some kind. It’s severe, it’s prolonged, and now it’s—it’s kind of like a child after a spanking goes back to daddy. “Daddy, I love you.” And it’s kind of like that. He’s going back to God. “You’ve been chastening me. Heal me now. Be gracious to me again.” Though he’s chastened, he goes back to God then with his petition for healing. Verse two, “be gracious to me, heal me.” Verse four, “turn O Lord, deliver my life, save me for the sake of your steadfast love.” Turn, or the Hebrew here “return”—it is often translated return as well. But the idea is not spatially, but the idea is “come back not with chastening, but come back this time with blessing.” Turn from chastening to blessing and compassion on me. Will I never again know your favor and your kindness to me? Turn from anger and instead give me pity and give me grace.

So David is clearly suffering in an extreme way and it’s been prolonged and he’s to his wit’s end and he’s suffering in the extreme and it’s been prolonged. Now notice how he reasons with God. I’ve mentioned this in terms of verse two, but let’s notice it again in verse four, how David reasons with God and why he asks God to heal. Verse four, he gives an argument based on God’s character. “Save me for the sake of your steadfast love.” And there’s that word again that we keep finding in the Psalms: steadfast love. I think it’s translated that way all the time in the ESV. In the older versions it was “loving kindness” or several different expressions. It’s that word that we have no English equivalent for exactly. It has the idea of affection, and so you have to have the word love in there somehow—tender mercies—but it also has the connotations of loyalty, of covenant loyalty, that God has pledged himself to help, and “a steadfast love” captures it pretty well, a steadfast love. And so he’s saying, “be merciful to me, have compassion on me, because you said you would. You’ve made a promise to me, you’ve given a covenant promise that I would be king. Be merciful to me now because you said you would,” is the idea.

Now this might be what he might have in mind if you’d like to look back—look at 2 Samuel chapter seven. You remember this famous passage where God makes his covenant promise to David. And he says, “your son will rule on your throne forever and ever.” And he tells him that that throne will prosper, but he has a little caveat in there in verses 14 and 15. 2 Samuel 7 verse 14: “I will be to him a father, he shall be to me a son.” There’s the beginning of this language of the Messiah as the son of God. The king is God’s son. “I will be to him a father, he will be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the son of men, but, my steadfast love will not depart from him.” God says your son comes along, he’s not faithful to me, he’ll be disciplined, but I will keep my promise. And so David may be thinking in those kinds of terms—that God has made me a promise that he will make me king, and it is his word and his promise that is at stake. If I die, and if these guys win, then your promise is not kept and your character is at stake. So he’s pleading not only for God’s compassion, but he’s arguing that God is involved in this, that he has made a promise that just must be kept. He’s praying for God to keep his promise.

In verse 5, David bases his argument on his own praise of God. That’s kind of a puzzling verse. He’s not saying here, obviously, that there’s no life after death. We know that because David himself in other Psalms says differently, as well as the rest of the Bible arguing differently. He’s simply reasoning, I think, from the purpose of this life, which is praise, and he’s probably thinking in terms of corporate praise. If I die, who will lead your people in praise?

The Lament

Verses six and seven then, David laments. His lament is itself the argument. Verses six and seven, his lament furthers the argument that he’s making. “I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping.” So his argument is grounded in God’s compassion. “Surely you care. I’m crying my eyes out.” So in verse two we have, “be gracious to me for I am languishing,” or “heal me because my bones are wasting away.” And now here it is, “heal me because I’m crying my eyes out and I can’t cry anymore. This has gone on so long.” Verse six expands on the effects of prolonged and severe suffering. Then, how much more of this can I take? I’m beat. All I do as it is, is cry.

And then we have the familiar words, “how long?” How long will this go on? We have a couple of familiar expressions in the lament psalms. One is this, “how long, how long will this continue? How long will this go? How much more of this can I take?” And the other is this expression, “cry.” There are several different expressions in the original that are translated that way, but one of them that’s used quite often is this idea of crying aloud. It’s almost like a scream. “I can’t take this anymore.” The point of all of this, cumulatively, is that David is expressing the emotional effects of prolonged suffering. He’s been reduced to sobbing. There’s too much of this. I can’t take any more.

We probably don’t know a lot of that kind of suffering in our Western world with the medical help that we have, but still we do see it sometimes. There are times in our home after Gina’s, our daughter’s prolonged sickness in the most severe ways, there are times when all you can do is you grab hold of your wife, you hug her, and you just cry out loud. And here’s where David is.

And then verse seven. Besides all of the emotional effects and the physical effects of this illness, we have in the second part of the verse the first hint that some are glad that he’s down. In fact, they’re hoping that he’s on his way out. “My eye wastes away because of my grief. It grows weak because of all of my foes.” So we have opportunistic people around him who somehow feel that they’ll be advantaged by his premature death, and they’re cheering it on. And so David’s lament is that his grief, his suffering is overwhelming. He’s sick. He seems to be dying. People around him are happy about it. He has uncontrolled tears. “I’m wasted. I’ve cried my eyes out. My bed’s wet every day with my tears. I’ve soaked it.” And then add to this, we’ve got these unscrupulous people around him that are glad for it.

Now David’s assumption in all of this is that God is merciful and God is compassionate, that he cares, and that he will keep his promise. He’s convinced that God is like Jesus—that he will be moved with compassion, and so heal David.

The Expression Of Confidence Or Trust

And so in verses 8 to 10, we have David’s confidence. Not only his lament and his petition, but now we have his expression of confidence and trust in verses 8 to 10. In verses 8 and 9, we find this often in the Lament Psalm: he rhetorically addresses his enemies. “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.” Notice how the tone has changed now. “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer.” So David’s frame of mind now has changed from lamenting and feeling helpless now to confidence. He’s encouraged that “God has heard my prayer.”

And notice the language. Verse 9, “the Lord has heard my plea. The Lord has heard my prayer. He accepts my prayer.” But verse 8, notice the language there. Not just the words, but he’s heard the sounds of my weeping also. Again, the idea is that God is compassionate. He takes into consideration all that is going on. Not just what David says, but his feelings and his emotions and all of his tears. This is not far from that psalm we find later in the Psalter where “God has put all of my tears in a bottle.” Isn’t that a great expression? That God has kept track of all of our suffering—of his people. He puts all the tears in a bottle. He measures them up and he keeps good track, and he has compassion accordingly. And in fact, this is not far at all from what we find in the familiar verse in Romans chapter 8, verse 26, that when we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Well, somehow here in verse 8, when we get to verse 8, God has given David assurance that he will in fact intervene. Verses 8 and 9, three times over, we have the expression, “the Lord heard,” or its equivalent. “Depart from me, you workers,” is verse 8. “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.” Verse 9, “the Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer.” So now he has confidence. God has heard me. He will intervene.

And so he says in verse 10, this final expression of confidence, “all my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.” Now before we go on with this, maybe it would be helpful to have here to point out just a practical lesson on prayer. When you pray, you wonder how to pray. Here’s a pattern that we find often in the Lament Psalms with King David, and that is you reason with God. You take your argument and make your case before God. You plead his attributes, you plead his promises, but you make your case before God.

We find that here. David’s arguments in his prayer here:
* Verses one to three, he’s arguing that “I’ve already suffered so much that further suffering will just overwhelm me. I won’t be able to handle it.”
* Verses 2 and 4, he argues that he is God’s covenant partner, and that God is his covenant partner, and that God must then display his promised unfailing love.
* Verses 4 and 5, he argues that rescuing David will promote God’s praise.
* In verses 6 and 7 again, he argues, “I’ve already suffered so much that further suffering is just going to overwhelm me. I can’t take it.”
* And then verse 10, implicitly he’s arguing that shaming his enemies will fortify the faithful. “All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.”

So when David goes to God with this concern, it is unthinkable to him—he fortifies his mind with this. It is unthinkable to David that God would not show compassion. It is unthinkable to David that God would be insensitive to what is hurting David. It’s unthinkable to David that God would not keep his promise. It’s unthinkable that God would abandon his steadfast love. It’s unthinkable to David that God would not promote his own praise, verses four and five. And it’s unthinkable to David that God would vindicate the wicked in their rejection of this king.

Now, not all of those arguments are fitting for us in every moment of suffering, but it teaches us how to pray. Take your concerns before God, think it through, make your case, put it in perspective of what you know about God and what he has said, and pray accordingly. Well, in verses eight to 10, as I’ve said, David has turned the corner. And he says, in effect, in verses eight to 10, in this confidence and praise section, “get away from me, all of you. God has heard me. He will vindicate me, and you who oppose me will be put to shame.”

And like we’ve seen in the other lament psalms, by the time we get to this last section, where he expresses his confidence and his trust in God, the outward circumstances of the setting are no different. As of yet, David is still sick. We still have unscrupulous men around him who are cheering it on, looking for self-advantage in his sickness. But David himself now, when we get to verses 8 to 10, is very different. From a lamenting anxiety to a confident trust that God will vindicate him. And of course, his confidence was well-founded. David did not die prematurely. But he lived out his reign in old age.

A Call To Trust

Well, then how again? How do we take this song to ourselves? Well, Psalm six, like all of the lament Psalms, is a call to trust. That’s always the message of these Lament Psalms with that confidence or trust section of the Lament Psalms. Psalm 6 is a call to trust God in spite of the circumstances. All of the Lament Psalms are marked by this expression of confidence. God will do all that he has promised to do. We may not understand all of his purposes and why he is doing what he is doing at this particular time, but we may be sure that God will do all that he has promised to do.

It’s a call to trust. Sometime back on Facebook, there’s a friend on Facebook who was suffering, and I can’t remember now if it was COVID or what, but he was very ill, and he was expressing it with great emotion on Facebook repeatedly and asking for prayers. And he messaged me at one point and asked if I would pray for him. And I wrote back and said, “Of course I will.” And I did. And he wrote back again, just in a desperate emotional state. “I’m not able to see God’s hand in this.”

I don’t say it to fault him, to criticize him. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been where our emotions get ahead of our brain and we say things that are ill-advised. But it came to mind: what you see and what you understand in all of this has nothing to do with anything. Whatever the circumstances, God is deserving of our trust. Whether you see it or not has nothing to do with it. In whatever circumstances, we honor God with the trust that he deserves. It might be in sickness, it might be in bereavement, it might be in disappointments, it might be in financial loss, it might be in a culture that’s going to hell in a handbasket. God is deserving of our trust at every point. And whether we understand his purposes is completely aside from the point. He is deserving of our trust and we will honor him with it.

Now again, we don’t have the same promises that David had and I keep trying to repeat that in these messages on the Lament Psalms. David claims the promises of God. Some of his specific promises were different and they are not ours. But we do have our own promises. “I’m with you always to the end of the world,” or “there’s no testing that has taken you but such as is common to man, I’ll make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.” We have our own promises of the all-sufficient presence of God and his care and his infallible providence.

But it occurred to me while thinking through this psalm late this week, that there’s more to it than just that. And that is because of God’s promise to David. Because of those specific promises God gave to David, we do have our own corresponding promises as well. God has promised us, for example, that we will reign with David’s son in his kingdom forever.

Let me give you a couple of verses on that regard. Daniel chapter seven I think is probably the most prominent. In Daniel chapter seven you remember we have the raging nations pictured as the beasts coming after each other and the nations are in a roar and an uproar and they’re devouring each other and there’s one after another and then the son of man appears and he stands before the Ancient of Days and he receives a kingdom and now he brings order among the chaos and all the nations worship him. And we have in Daniel 7 verse 18, “the saints of the Most High,” notice that, “the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.” And then chapter 7 verse 27, “the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High. His kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom and all dominions shall serve and obey him.” His promise that we will reign with Jesus in his reign and share in his glory.

And we have plenty of New Testament promises that correspond to that. Paul in Romans chapter 8 speaks of Christ as the heir of God, receiving the inheritance of God’s kingdom. And he speaks of us as children of God, sons of God. And if sons, then heirs—no, joint heirs with Jesus. And then next breath: “We know that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that shall be revealed in us.” Or in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, “this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” Somehow, somehow our faithful endurance of suffering works to accumulate glory.

All of that is to say that this life is just a small picture of what we have. Jesus will return. He will bring God’s kingdom to its grand climax. And in the meantime, we learn from David how to pray. We learn from David how to persevere. When affliction overwhelms us, we take it to God. We make our case. We reason with God. We trust. We claim promises. Claim the promise of his presence. Claim the promise of his coming glory and the glory that we will share with him. Claim the promise of the eventual destruction of all of his enemies. And in the meantime, and in every case, we honor God with the trust that he deserves. He will do all that he has promised.

It occurred to me many years ago that part of the job of a pastor is to prepare people for suffering. It’s coming. And part of the job is to expound the word in such a way that it fortifies the mind so that you’re prepared for it. And we learn from Psalms like this that there is no affliction—there is no affliction so severe that it warrants a mistrust of God. There is no affliction so severe that it warrants a lack of trust in God. He will do all that he has said he will do. Now you may have had some false expectations along the way, but God’s promise is sure, and we can bank on it always.

But as we’ve also tried to see in these Psalms, David is more than just a model of persevering trust, although he is that. David is also a picture, an anticipation of his greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice verse three. “My soul also is greatly troubled.” Does that ring a bell? These are the words of Jesus. Jesus takes these words on his own lips in John 12, just before the cross. Like David, Jesus’ soul was deeply troubled because of his impending death. But like David, he trusted God and submitted himself to God’s plan.

And in fact, the Lord Jesus, like David, suffered in the extreme under the displeasure of God. Only unlike David, it was not for sins of his own. It was for the sins of his people. The whole reason he came was to bear the sins of his people and to stand in their place and to bear the judgment of God against their sin and so rescue them for God’s kingdom. And so like David, Jesus was also confident in God’s—not only God’s faithful care, that God would vindicate him.

Listen to Hebrews chapter five and verse seven, and tell me if some of this rings a bell to some of the lament psalms. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with cries, with loud cries and tears.” That’s the language of the lament psalms. “He offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” He was heard. God vindicated him. He vindicated him in resurrection.

And in fact, we find then that the Lord Jesus is also confident, like David was here, in the eventual destruction of all of his enemies. In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus, at the end of his Sermon on the Mount, presents this scene of final judgment. And you remember he has people coming past him, and “I’ve done this, and I’ve done that, and I’ve done the other in your name, I’ve done all of these things.” And Jesus finally says in Matthew 7 verse 23, “depart from me, you workers of evil.” That is Psalm 6 and verse 8. These are the words of Jesus. And he takes them as his own to say that he will triumph in ultimate victory as judge over all the earth.

In fact, once we’ve said that, I think we might as well say that verse 10 might be the words of Jesus as well. “All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.” The Lord Jesus, or let’s say it this way, King Jesus, will not fail. He will bring God’s kingdom to its grand culmination. He’ll destroy all of his enemies and we, his people, will share with him in his reign. And then all of our laments will be behind us forever. And all of our confidence and all of our trust will be fully vindicated and we will find that God has kept his every promise. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father.