Dennis Tuuri

For the sermon text for today, I provided an outline of Psalm 6 laid out the text in the way I’ll be addressing it here in a couple of minutes. Boy, the sound is odd today, isn’t it? Or I’m just hearing improperly. There’s like a little lisp going on. Is that it? Okay. Psalm 6. Please stand for the reading of God’s Word. Psalm 6. The title is inspired, of course. So we read it:

To the chief musician with stringed instruments on an eight stringed harp, a psalm of David.

Oh Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chasten me in your hot displeasure. Have mercy on me, oh Lord, for I am weak. Oh Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, oh Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, deliver me. Oh save me for your mercy’s sake. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In the grave, who will give you thanks? I am weary with my groaning. All night I make my bed swim. I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows old because of all my enemies.

Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication. The Lord will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled. Let them turn back and be ashamed suddenly.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this portion of your scriptures. We thank you for the Holy Spirit, and we pray that the Spirit would move amongst us now. Transform us, Lord God, by the preaching and hearing of your Word. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

We held our—I believe—third or at least second Ash Wednesday service a week and a half ago. And the question is: why? Why do we mark this season of Lent? Ash Wednesday is the formal beginning, and the church as the church has celebrated it for 2,000 years, of the Lenten season.

Lent is an old-fashioned word derived from Latin. It just means lengthening. It means springtime. It has reference to the vernal equinox. The days are now lengthening. And at the vernal equinox, the spring midpoint—March 21st, I believe—the days actually become longer than the nights. So that’s kind of the reference: just a springtime. But what the church has done is the church has celebrated 40 days of contemplation of the suffering of Jesus Christ.

If you count from Ash Wednesday to Resurrection Sunday, though, you come up with more than 40 days. You come up with 46 or 47. And the reason for that is that these days were a meditation on suffering, sometimes accompanied by fasting or giving up certain things for Lent. So the expression goes. But the Lord’s Day was always seen as a day of triumph and feasting. And so it was a commanded feast day in the midst of all this contemplation of the suffering of Jesus Christ.

Now, you know, I think that like the pastoral robe or the clerical collar, Lent and its observance by the church or not is a matter of pastoral advice and use. It may be useful in some cases to celebrate and to meditate upon the sufferings of Jesus for a season of six or seven weeks, or not. Some churches are so introspective, so tied up with suffering as the end goal of the Christian life, that in those communions, it’s probably not a particularly healthy thing to do.

We know that in the Old Testament there was only one required fast day, and there were over 80 required feast days as God’s method of holiness. Holiness is not primarily helped by fasting. It’s primarily assisted by feasting. Okay? But on the other hand, there are communions—maybe ours is one—where we’ve got an optimistic eschatology. We understand the importance of feasting. We rejoice. But here it may be good for us pastorally to think a little bit about suffering and to recognize that this is certainly a portion of the Christian life.

There is an inherent temptation to what some have called triumphalism in churches such as ours, where we acknowledge the great victory of Jesus Christ and the overall march of the gospel through the world. We don’t think that it’s the Second Coming—the physical power of Jesus Christ that will transform the world. It is the power of the dynamite, as Paul called it—the dynamis—the power that is the gospel of Jesus, the good news of the ascension of the Savior King to the throne, that transforms the world.

And so we know this, and we’re confident about the future. But you know, we can enter into this spirit of triumphalism, by which it usually means that if you’ve got problems or suffering, something’s not right. The church is going to overcome all enemies very quickly, and maybe even connected to different means of doing it that may or may not be God’s means of doing it. And so we can kind of tend that way.

I think it’s good for us at RCC. It’s been my pastoral advice, and the elders have concurred with this, that we do talk a little bit about this season of Lent in preparation for Resurrection. So at our Ash Wednesday service, we have chosen—each of the last few years—to recite responsively the penitential psalms. There are seven so-called penitential psalms, and Psalm 6 is the first of these. And so we’ve also chosen during this season of time leading up to Resurrection Sunday to have Psalm 6, that we just sang, as our Psalm of the Month, which is a psalm we’re focusing on, trying to learn it, sing it better.

And so this is our Psalm of the Month as well, and that’s because of this Lenten season of contemplation of the penitential psalms. These psalms, if you’re keeping record, are 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, Psalm 130, and Psalm 143.

Now, so this is what we’re doing. We’re kind of meditating on this psalm over the next few weeks as we make it the Psalm of the Month. And I thought it’d be good to think about it explicitly here today, to preach on Psalm 6.

It is sort of confusing to read it as the first penitential psalm because there’s no overt or obvious confession of sin, which is interesting. What there is: great suffering. I think that’s instructive for us about the penitential psalms and the Lent season properly observed biblically. In other words, the sufferings that Lent focuses on—the sufferings of our Savior—were certainly not because of sin.

And so when we think of sufferings, it’s not just that we’ve done a bunch of things wrong and are suffering because of it. Certainly that’s part of what we want to take the sufferings we’re going through and think: what are we doing wrong? What may God be getting our attention on as we suffer difficulties, trials, and tribulations? But Lent is far more than that. Lent is a consideration that there are sufferings that we enter into that don’t seem to be connected to particular sins on our part at all—maybe to the sinful condition of fallen humanity, but not really for any reason that we can ascertain.

And so the first of these penitential psalms, while it has a hint of penitence going on, is really more a psalm of suffering and how to understand our suffering and what we do with that suffering, whether it’s directly for sin or not, if it’s something completely unconnected to any known sin.

So Psalm 6 is a good starting place for contemplation of Lent and the focus that the scriptures give us—that we’re to rejoice in our tribulations. The scriptures tell us we’re to have fellowship with the sufferings of the Savior. Philippians tells us all these repeated admonitions about how to understand the sufferings that God puts us through. And usually those sufferings in the New Testament are not tied to sin. And actually, in First Peter, the whole point is that we’re supposed to suffer wrongfully, right? We’re supposed to suffer when people mistreat us. And there’s certainly a note of that in this psalm as well.

The other thing I think is very important for contemplation of Lent and this season leading up to Resurrection Sunday is that Psalm 6 informs us: the suffering is not an end in and of itself. It’s to a purpose. There is a transition in Psalm 6. One of the problems with having psalms versified and sung to a tune where the same tune persists throughout the song is you don’t necessarily catch the big, huge change in the last couple of verses.

There’s a dramatic movement in this psalm from these cries, this fullness of crying out to God—seven, maybe eight, entreaties to God—and then a description of the horrible sufferings the psalmist is in, and then finally, the last couple of verses are completely different. The answer comes. Even in the midst of suffering, the psalmist booms out: “All the enemies will depart from me. I’m going to cleanse the kingdom. King David says, ‘God has heard my prayer. Victory is mine.’ In Jesus, you see. And so suffering can become sort of an end in itself, but in the scriptures, it’s tied to the purpose of this: to increase the reign and manifestation of Christ-likeness on the earth that we’re to have.

And so it’s very important to consider that 40 days is a good series of days to use. The church has given us 40 days. And 40 in the scriptures is preparatory to a new creation, right? It rains 40 days, and then the new world is kind of ushered in at the end of that time. Jesus is 40 days in the wilderness, and then he comes back. And now the new man has come through the sufferings. He’s establishing his kingdom, changes everything, heals people. The world is being restored, recreated and renewed. Philistines have control over Israel 40 years, and along comes Samson, a picture of Jesus, to bring about a new situation, a new world. After 40 days, Moses receives the law from God—a new word for the new man.

So 40 indicates to us again the same movement: fasting is preparation for victory. In our Ash Wednesday service, we read from Joel 2, the call to assemble a fast. But Joel 2 finishes by saying we’re going to be victorious and rout the enemies, you see? And so 40 days is preparation for the new creation. The sufferings of Jesus are preparation for the Resurrection.

And Psalm 6 catches that dramatic movement in the way that it’s written. It’s like it’s written in minor notes for the first number of verses. The last two verses, boom, we’re back to music that is more victorious and triumphant.

Psalm 6 is of course in the first book of the Psalter. The Psalms consist of five separate books, each one clearly marked by a doxology at its end. And the doxology at the end of the first book is found at the end of Psalm 41. So there are 41 psalms in the first book of the Psalter, but there’s really kind of 39, because Psalms 1 and 2 are an introduction to the entire Psalter, and they sort of belong together.

So really, if we wanted to speak properly of the context for understanding Psalm 6, we would look at Psalms 3–41, the first book of the Psalter. Every one of these Psalms—and there’s a couple where it isn’t obvious—but every one of these Psalms are Psalms of David, and they have a title at the beginning. Two don’t seem to, but that’s because they’re inappropriately divided off from their predecessor. There’s a continuity to this book.

In the second book, now we have a whole series of psalms written not by David but by the musicians of the Levitical people. So Book One is distinct unto itself, and it starts in Psalm 3 with troubles of David with the rebellion of Absalom. So Psalms 1 and 2 sort of picture the two paths: the enthronement of Jesus in Psalm 2. And then we have a series of psalms here in which troubles abound. Psalm 6 is in that continuation.

Psalm 3 describes a particular personal event in the life of David. And then Psalms 4, 5, 6 are specifically given as songs to be used in worship. And so we see the suffering of the old man, new man, first Adam, second Adam—David and Absalom—ultimately the coming of Jesus Christ and his sufferings, then being sung about in the context of worship. So it informs our understanding of what we’re here to do today.

And what it tells us is: a triumphalistic “paste a smile on your face, everything is okay in your life”—we don’t care what health problems you have or what difficulties you have financially or in your personal life. All that stuff, you know, it’s just so much fluff off to the side. Worship is really about the victory of Jesus Christ. And if you’re not experiencing it, maybe something’s wrong with you. That’s sort of the impression we can give off in the context of our worship.

But if we take the scriptures here, specifically these psalms, as giving us instruction on how to worship, what do they tell us? They tell us that when we gather for worship, a lot of us are going to be experiencing difficulties, trials, tribulations, sorrows. A lot of us are going to be crying out: “How long am I going to have to go through this, Lord?”

So it tells us that. But then it tells us something else. It tells us that this is to an end. It is crying, but it is confident crying, confident in Yahweh, in the Lord and his covenantal faithfulness, his mercy to us.

Now, if we were to look at this first book of the Psalter—Psalms 3–41—and we’re to take that sequence of 39 psalms, right in the very middle of this first book is Psalm 22. And in a way, that’s kind of the most obvious picture of what I’m describing here. Psalm 22 is the psalm that we usually recite or sing in Easter service, Resurrection Sunday. And it’s all those verses about the anguish of Jesus Christ, his betrayal by men, his enemies surrounding him like strong bulls of Bashan, his crucifixion woes—you know, his bones are out of joint, his mouth is so dried up that his tongue cleaves to his mouth, the dehydration of the crucifixion. All that stuff is described. But then the last few verses: “The Lord has heard me.” The Savior speaking through the mouth of the psalmist declares. And now he’ll—you know, the whole world will change, and the kingdom will be made manifest.

So again, here in Psalm 22, there’s this dramatic movement, just like in our psalm today, from tremendous sufferings and anguish, various reasons, and then victory.

You know, the only song that I know of—and I know it seems a little corny to you, and my children usually give me a hard time about singing it in the worship service, or at least singing it the way that some of us like to sing it—there’s this Easter song, right? “Up from the Grave He Arose.” “Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior.” So it has the first part: “Low in the grave he lay.” And so there’s this suffering. And then: “Up from the grave he arose, victorious and resurrection.” And then many churches—we’ve done it on more than one occasion—you sit for the singing of the suffering part of the verse, and it gets to the second half, the triumphant part, and you stand up, right?

Well, that’s what this psalm is. That’s what Psalm 22 is. This is the inspired music of God. And it’s like that. It is very much downer sort of music for the first several verses, and then right to the end, very triumphant sound to it.

This is what Lent is. It’s a contemplation of sufferings.

Now, Psalm 6 has a title. And I mentioned that Psalm 3 was about Absalom’s rebellion. How do we know that? Because it says so in the title. Sometimes the Psalms can be identified to specific things going on in the life of David or whoever else wrote the psalm. Not so Psalm 6. God doesn’t give us information about what the context is, and people have speculated, but that’s all it is.

Sometimes the thing you don’t know about a particular text of scripture can be just as important as what you do know. And I think that Psalm 6 is one of those occasions. I think it’s important that God has not chosen to reveal to us the particular kind of suffering David was experiencing. Maybe—you know, he talks about “don’t chasten me” in your anger—maybe we can infer some sinfulness. Then we’ve got a lot of physical stuff going on. Well, what was it? What kind of suffering was David going through? We don’t know. And the nice thing about that is that it makes Psalm 6 fairly universal.

Just like Lent is fairly universal. Whether you end up contemplating your sins, the sufferings you have in mind, body, soul, depression—whatever it is—the difficulties you have financially or in relationships, the difficulties you’re having with a boss at work or with a board of board members at Kings Academy, or—you know, this particular last week, a couple of pastors in the PCA that we love and think very highly of got notices from some seminary professors that they ought to resign.

So I don’t know what we’re going through, but that’s the point: all of these sufferings, trials, and tribulations that we’re each going through, you know—that we see—Lent, like Psalm 6, is a season to think about those things and understand them from a biblical perspective. So it isn’t just about suffering for sin. It’s not just about suffering in the body. It’s as comprehensive as Psalm 6 appears to be to us.

And the end result of each one of these things is that we suffer. We cry out to God, but we do so with confidence. The way the psalmist did, at the end, he says: “God has heard.” God hadn’t heard yet. Things hadn’t changed, I don’t think. But he is so confident of the answer of God that his crying is a confident crying to God. And the suffering we go through has a quiet and yet a very profound confidence at the core of it as we think about it and put it in the light of what the scriptures tell us about suffering and what Psalm 6 specifically tells us and instructs us about these things.

So that’s by way of introduction. Let’s talk now. You know, that’s kind of the general picture. And I wanted to take a couple of minutes to draw this in a wide circle. Now, some of you aren’t suffering at all right now. Some of you don’t have any big difficulties like this at all. And we’ll see that this psalm is very appropriate for you too as we get to the conclusion of this study of Psalm 6. But it’s comprehensive.

Let’s look now, then. And let’s just go through the psalm kind of verse by verse. Consider what it says, and then I want to just draw one real emphatic point of application as we look through this psalm. There’ll be others as we look at the various verses that may strike you. But I do want to draw one thing at the end that I think is universal—I’m sure is—that this psalm instructs every one of us about today.

First of all, before we get to the specifics, if you just look at the psalm, I’ve kind of bolded some things. I’ve bolded the term “O Lord,” so that you can see that eight times in this prayer, David addresses Yahweh. “O Lord, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh.” You know, sometimes you’re in prayer meetings, and I don’t want to intimidate anybody—because today’s our prayer meeting, and please don’t think about this when we go to prayer meeting. But sometimes you go to pray with people, and there’s a lot of—you know, just prayer can kind of multiply in our prayers.

Well, from the psalmist’s perspective, our cries are punctuated very frequently with references to Yahweh. That’s important because it brings the God whom we’re addressing directly into it and reminds us of his covenantal faithfulness. So there’s a punctuation in Psalm 6: the name of Yahweh appears eight times in this, and five times just in the first few verses. So there’s this emphasis of Yahweh, who he’s addressing.

There are seven specific requests, and I think I’d give them to you in italics. There’s a repeated series of requests from different perspectives that we’ll talk about in just a minute. There’s a set of eight conditions that the psalmist finds himself in. He describes his sufferings, and we’ll talk about those individually. But taken as a whole, there’s kind of a completeness of suffering with this number eight—a completeness of these requests to Yahweh. And there’s a further completeness: eight times the name of Yahweh is addressed. And then of course, the last three occurrences of Yahweh are all these assurances—three repeated assurances of the answer.

So the very way the psalmist writes this psalm, you see, is significant with the use of terms that he uses.

Now, I said “write this psalm,” and I made this point before: that in Daniel we have a very carefully composed prayer. And one of the things I’m going to just touch on briefly here, by way of application, is that it’s perfectly proper and even I would say useful to write out prayers, our Psalms class with the kids 12 to 14—this is what they’ve been doing the last couple of weeks: taking a psalm and writing out a prayer based on it. And we’ve got elders here who do this, and these prayers are mailed out and help you to see how to pray like the psalmist.

But the importance, I think, of getting our thoughts together: I think it’s good for children, before they talk to their parents, to think a little bit about what they’re going to say, you know, not to just blurt things out. You’re addressing, you know, an image of God to you. It’s important that you address authorities in your life—whether they’re parents, teachers, pastors, civil magistrates—with respect and reverence.

And the fear that the psalmist has here of God’s swift judgment, his chastisements, his anger—there should be a proper fear on the part of kids to their parents, each of us to the civil government, to the police officer, to the judge, to elders and officers in the church. There should be that carefulness in speech. And I think that sometimes we don’t do this well in our prayers.

You know, sure, God’s the Father. He wants us to climb up on his lap and pour forth our prayers. That’s all true, but we’re supposed to do it as reverent, submissive children. And sometimes I think our prayers would be assisted if we did what the psalmist did: write them out, compose them carefully.

In C.S. Lewis’s book Screwtape Letters, there’s an older demon or devil who’s instructing a younger demon or devil how to trip up this newly converted—or actually reconverted—Christian who’s come back to trying to follow Jesus in his adult life. And one of the things that Screwtape tells his nephew is: “Well, you know, the best thing to do is to keep the guy from praying. Praying is bad. The enemy uses that prayer stuff. That’s bad stuff. Try to keep him from doing it.”

And you know, you probably can’t get him just not to pray at all. But here’s what you do: you bring back to his remembrance his childhood prayers, when he recited prayers—the Lord’s Prayer, whatever it was—in the worship, right? And he was like a parrot just parroting forth these words. And get him to consider whether that’s really prayer. And get him to think that what real prayer is is just sort of speaking our heart to God contemporaneously, extemporaneously. Get him to get away from the idea of formal, considered prayers. Get him to think of prayer as just sort of “well, it’s when I feel like I need God that I talk to Him”—as opposed to having a set pattern of prayer.

You see? And Screwtape tells him: you know, most of all, get him not to think of his bodily position. Get him to discard or divide this bodily position from his view of prayer. Prayer, after all, is this impulse of our inner being. It has nothing to do with our bodies.

Well, here—and we’ll see it in just a minute—the psalmist ties together his body and his soul. You see? And this is the sort of advice that all too many of us, I think, in the modern world, succumb to—this demonic advice that we treat prayer just as something extemporaneous and you know, intermittent cries out to God. Now those are good—you know, we could go to the other ditch, right? This is a pastoral matter again. There are churches where there is so much emphasis on formal prayer where the minute-by-minute continual prayer that Paul speaks of has to be addressed importantly. But see, the other ditch is that’s all we ever do: that kind of prayer. And we never have a reverent seeking out of God, carefully constructing prayers to Him.

We know that the great men of the Old Testament—David, Daniel—that we’ve seen in the last few weeks—this is what they did. And we want to be great men of prayer. And I would suggest that this formality, making sure that you write, interesting numbers of words, even use “Lord” eight times—the fullness of your trust in Yahweh, you see. The psalmist does this. It’s a written prayer.

All right, let’s now go through the prayer kind of verse by verse and make some comments. And then we’ll draw one application point at the end that we’ll leave with.

First, that title—as I said, Psalm 6, that’s not inspired, okay? In your Bibles, that’s not an inspired thing. And a lot of Bibles have a little summary of the psalm that’s not inspired. You ought to just X them out, put a line through them. Well, the psalm itself might be helpful to find it, but don’t think of it as inspired. But the title is: “To the chief musician with stringed instruments on an eight-stringed harp”—so this is a liturgical psalm, this is a song to be used in the tabernacle of David worship. This is to be used in the formal worship of the church.

And as I’ve said earlier, this helps us to understand what worship should look like. We want to know how to worship. We’ll look at Leviticus, but we’ll also look at the inspired hymn book of Tabernacle of David worship, because God says he’s rebuilding the Tabernacle of David, right? So this is—and if you don’t understand what I’m saying, get the tapes in the library, get Peter Leithart’s book From Silence to Song. This is the sort of worship. This is kind of like New Testament worship these psalms are being written for. And so this is what’s important to notice: that the personal things of David—it is that—but it has liturgical use and it’s to be sung. It’s with stringed instruments, and specifically it’s on an eight-stringed harp.

And there’s some of your King James translation that gives the specific Hebrew word rather than translate it. And that word means “eight.” It doesn’t mean an “eight-stringed harp.” It means “on the eighth.” Some people think this is a reference to an octave, eight notes. Or some people think that an eight-stringed harp, the eighth string would be the lowest sounding string. And so it’s kind of a sober, reflective tune that’s being composed here by David.

Against that is that we have another reference to this “eighth” in 1 Chronicles 15:21. Don’t turn there, but in 1 Chronicles 15:21, David is instructing what the musical worship at the Tabernacle of David on Mount Zion is going to be like. And the Levites are to play songs on the eth. And these are songs of exultation. So while this is a psalm that’s kind of, you know, not so much exultation, the songs of exaltation were also played on an eighth. So it has reference to a particular—perhaps instrument or a particular tune—that at this stage of church history, we don’t know a lot more than that.

Now, the way the psalm begins, then, after the formal title, is this crying out. But it begins with a crying to Yahweh, right?

“Oh Lord, Yahweh, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chasten me in your hot displeasure. Have mercy on me, oh Lord, for I am weak.”

Now the first stanza, with its two parts, are two negatives, right? “Don’t do this, don’t do this.” And then a positive seeking after the mercy of God. And so the psalm begins—as I said—this is the only place where you can really get some kind of maybe implication that there is sin that he’s concerned about, because he’s concerned that God’s wrath and anger will come against him, for his potentially for his sin.

And let me just stop there and say that it’s very important that the psalm immediately has told us: in the midst of tremendous problems, physical suffering, difficulties, it’s told us that the proper way to think about that is to remember that we’re dealing with Yahweh, and a God who will indeed chastise us for our sins. So he’s going to make a case based on the grace and mercy of Yahweh. But he begins with a careful consideration of the righteousness, the just anger and wrath of God.

And again, here, you know, in the Christian church today, this is a corrective to us. We are so filled with this idea that we’re forgiven and we have cheap grace and all this stuff that we fail to see the intensity of the displeasure of God at our sins. We have too easy communion and converse with our own sins. We think they’re no big deal.

One of the advantages of Lent is to get us to think about our sins, how displeasing they are to God, and the wrath from God that they rightly call forth. That’s the beginning of understanding how to cry confidently to Yahweh. That’s where the psalmist begins: a consideration of the righteousness and holiness of a sovereign God who will bring his judgments to bear on the earth. And we have to start there.

Now, David goes on to say: “Have mercy on me.” So now there’s a cry for God not to treat with us according to these sins. And you see, it’s so important again: this is linked to a proper confession of every person in this congregation that our sins are there and real and would, apart from the grace of God, bring forth hell and damnation to us.

As we say so often, you know, we don’t ask for God to give us what we deserve in ourselves. We ask for God to give us what Jesus has earned for us by his mercy. So the cry for mercy is a cry that’s based upon a knowledge of sinfulness. Those are things that are tied together, and we want to untie them somehow and think: “Well, we don’t want to have to think about God’s wrath because he’s going to treat with us mercifully.”

But David says: “No, have mercy on me, oh Lord, for I am weak.” And what he’s saying is—now he’s given three requests, and then he’s given the first reason why he wants mercy. And this reason is that he is weak. And the word “weak” means “about to perish.” It means “drooping,” literally the way a flower would droop as it dies on the vine. You see? So David says: “Man, I am, you know, exhausted. I’m shot. I’m spent. I’m about ready to die here. Have mercy on me.”

And then he says: “Oh Lord, heal me. For my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled.”

And here we have an obvious parallelism, right? There are two words here: “troubled” and “troubled.” It’s the same word in the Hebrew. And it means “shaken.” My bones are shaken. My soul is greatly shaken. And by making this parallelism, it’s showing us the union of the human condition: that our physical state and our spiritual state, our souls, are intertwined. We don’t seek escape from the body. Our body is part of what God has created us for. And it has to be understood that way.

So David connects here together: bones and his soul. Now the bones represent the body, and it means the foundation. It’s like, you know, the innermost part of you. In Ezekiel, God raises up bones, right, and then puts muscles and sinews and flesh on them. So it’s kind of the center of our physical being. It’s our strength. You know, the bones are the sturdy, strength stuff. So at the very point that’s supposed to be David’s strength, he’s shaken. His very bones—at the middle of his being. You see, something is happening.

We don’t know what. He is absolutely in torment. And the implication is fear has overcome him as well. And so we have bones and we have the soul here combined together. Again, we don’t know what it is that is afflicting him, but we do see that there is a connection here between his body and his spiritual state.

Now we immediately can make again the connection from this psalm in Book One to the center psalm, Psalm 22, because in Psalm 22, Jesus says: “I am poured out like water. My bones are all out of joint.” So the place of strength and firmness are now shaken. And so we connect this psalm immediately with seeing in it the cries of Jesus Christ. Not, you know, in its first application alone, we have David—and maybe sin is involved in his part. In its second application, we have reference to Jesus Christ. And ultimately, we know that Jesus actually quotes a couple of portions of this psalm in his earthly ministry in the Gospels, which we’ll turn to in a minute.

But here, the connection is made. For those of us who know our scriptures, Psalm 6 has already been identified as, like Psalm 22, a messianic psalm that will ultimately be about the Savior. And the Savior’s bones being affected here, and that’s kind of picked up by David as well.

And even the soul portion—the second half of this: “My bones are troubled, my soul also is greatly troubled”—this is specifically cited by Jesus in John 12. In John 12, it’s the Feast of the Dedication or the Feast of Tabernacles, the last and great day of the feast. Gentiles come to Jesus wanting an audience with Him. And that’s the context in which Jesus says this, in verse 27 of John 12:

“Now my soul has become troubled.”

See, that’s picking up Psalm 6. Bones, soul, jointly troubled. The sufferings of Christ as He moves toward the cross.

“Now my soul has become troubled. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Thy name.”

So He’s moving toward His glorification with His death on the cross, demonstrating the wonder, glory, and grace of God that He serves us by dying on the cross for us. And in that context, our Savior picks up this same theme of Psalm 6. And this is certainly a messianic psalm. This is a psalm that already begins to remind us—and we can talk more as we go through it—but right here, at kind of the outset of the description of the psalm and its troubles, we can see definite links to the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 53 presents Jesus not as, you know, the crowned king, but as the suffering servant. We’re reminded of that every Lord’s Day at the communion table: both of the table of the King, but that He gets there through His service, through His suffering. The Heidelberg Catechism talks about this in Lord’s Day 15, Question 37, which says this: “What dost thou understand by the words ‘He suffered’?”

So they’re doing an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, which we recite frequently in this church. What does it mean when we say He suffered? And the answer according to the Heidelberg divines is this:

“That He all the time that he lived on earth, but especially at the end of his life, sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sins of all mankind, that so by his passion as the only propitiatory sacrifice, he might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation and obtain for us the favor of God, righteousness and eternal life.”

Lent is a contemplation of the Passion and the sufferings—ultimately, not of us but of the Lord Jesus Christ. That He was a man of sorrow, not just on the cross but, as the Catechism, I think correctly states, all the time that He lived on earth. But especially on the cross, our Savior is the suffering servant of Yahweh come to suffer so that He might make our suffering understandable and victorious through His work.

So this is one of the purposes of Lent: preparing us more fully for contemplation of His sufferings on Good Friday and then His Resurrection on Resurrection Sunday. And I think it’s very important for us to understand that when we suffer—whether for whatever reason we suffer—we enter into the sufferings of the Savior, and we’re to see them as connected to His once-for-all suffering in His life and on the cross.

You know, it’s interesting. There’s been a big debate in reformed circles the last year or so about the active obedience of Jesus Christ. You know, reformed people say: “Well, to be justified, we need the active obedience—the life lived in perfect obedience to the law—and the passive obedience on the cross.” You probably have heard this “active and passive obedience” language. I’ve always sort of wondered: what’s passive about what He did on the cross?

Well, in a recent article by Norman Shepherd, he points out that the actual historical origins of the term “passive” don’t mean “passive” the way we think of it. It’s related to the Latin root “passion” or “suffering.” So it’s His suffering obedience. It doesn’t mean passive in the sense of not doing anything. It means His active suffering for us on the cross. And as we look at Isaiah describing Him as a man of sorrows in his whole life, we can say that “passive obedience” involves the act of obedience as well. And we can get rid of this kind of dualistic dilemma we’re stuck on.

What we can say is: we’re justified by being united to Christ and being granted the benefits of His suffering for us in His body, in His life, in His soul, and then ultimately on the cross. So when we pray this psalm, we can identify with Jesus. And we can say that He was the one whose bones were shaken and put out of joint. He was the one who directly applied to Himself His soul being greatly troubled.

So our confidence is part of our crying to God: confident crying, not because, you know, we’re going to make it, but because Jesus Christ has fully suffered for all of our sins and redeemed us from the power of the devil.

He goes on in verse 3 to say: “But you, oh Lord, how long? How long?”

This was a favorite phrase of Calvin, who suffered greatly, by the way, physical maladies and, of course, persecution by various enemies within and without the so-called reformed camp. Calvin actually kept a detailed long diary of all his physical ailments. And he could cry, and he did. This was his favorite short prayer to God: “How long, Lord, will I suffer with this condition, this problem? How long, you know, will this person be assaulting me and Your church and the cause of Jesus Christ? How long will my depression over these things last? How long will it be before I have a good night’s sleep?”

You see? And so—and so this is really, if you want to look at the essence of the cry, this is it. And as you go through your troubles and trials—whether they’re health, sleep, finances, relationships, family, vocation, church, school, whatever it is—you know, we are given the example here liturgically as well as in the devotional life of David to cry out to God legitimately: “How long?”

God doesn’t get upset by that. That doesn’t show a lack of faith on your part in God. That shows the realness of the sufferings that the sovereign God is putting you through. Because, you know, who do you cry to? You try to seek an end to it, implying that you know that ultimately it is the sovereignty of God that brings these things to pass in your life.

Don’t think that somehow crying out “How long, Lord God, do I have to suffer like this?” is a bad thing in the providence of God. It’s interesting. These sermons—the text that I decide to preach on—you know, the preparation for my sermons certainly involves a lot of meditation on the scriptures, but they very frequently involve these specific details of my life. And I just had the occasion this last week, in the providence of God, to have a day or two where I’m crying out in terms of a physical problem: “How long, Lord God, is this skin going to pain and hurt me?”

You know, that’s what we go through. We don’t—I think it’s important that we come here on Sunday and we try to be clearly thanking God even in the midst of our sufferings. But the problem we have is that so often we can sort of think that nobody’s really suffering but me. And I think that probably—our lives, if David’s life is an example, and he was a man after God’s own heart—desire that you love God, you will suffer in this life.

Well, Lent reminds us of that. The scriptures remind us of that. And this psalm reminds us of that. The psalm says it’s okay to understand that you’re suffering. And it’s okay. And in fact, I’ll say that it’s required to cry out to God: “How long?”

You know, in the case law in Exodus, God says: “If anybody afflicts a widow and she cries out to me, I will hear her and do something about it.” The requirement for the widow is to cry out to God. She’s getting no special treatment just because she’s a widow, just because she’s a member of, you know, Jerusalem First Presbyterian Church or whatever it is. God answers as we cry out to Him. We are supposed to cry out: “How long, O Lord?”

And the psalmist gives us this pattern. And this is the cry. This is, as I said, kind of a summation of his cry in verse 3.

“And return, O Lord, deliver me. Save me.”

Return—in other words, return your friendly face to me. Return in the sense of your presence and blessing to me, and ultimately save me.

Now, I’ve got the text laid out: that’s the first part. That’s the series of requests from the psalmist. And then matching this, after the middle text, is a series of descriptive statements about what’s going on in his life. So we’ve got this prayer. The prayer is a series of requests. Then there are reasons—ultimately, that the psalmist makes to God for answering the request. And then there’s a consideration again, a laying forth of all the difficulties that he’s in without request. It’s simply a description: “This is going on. I’m crying all night long. My bed is filled with tears. It’s dissolving because of the tears. He’s weeping. A grown mighty man, king of Judah, king of God’s people, mighty warrior, kills Goliath, strong dominion, man of God—weeping all night long.”

Physical effects of his mind and being depressed. And this connection again: between physical activity and the state where we’re depressed and feeling bad. And enemies start to enter into the picture in his description. And then there’s the answer at the end, which addresses the enemy.

So at the very heart of the matter of the prayer, I’ve tried to indent this next section:

“Save me. Why? Why should God save Him?”

Well, he lists a couple of things:

“For your mercy’s sake.”

Now, this is a different word than earlier. The earlier mercy meant, you know, being kind to someone in spite of whatever they did wrong. So it’s kind of, you know, merciful in the sense we think of it. This word “mercy” is the Hebrew word “hesed.” It means the covenantal love that God has for His people. So for the sake of God’s covenantal love and the demonstration of that in the world, David makes this plea.

How important for us is it to remember that certainly we should be crying out to God: “How long?” But the reason for that, the proper motivation for asking God to hear these prayers, is for His name’s sake, for His mercy’s sake, that He would be exalted in the earth.

Because—look what the psalmist goes on to say:

“For in death there is no remembrance of you. In the grave, who will give you thanks?”

See what does that mean? Troubling verse to us. The cultists love it. Of course, cultists—you know, we be careful about finding one verse in the Bible to prove something, one or two verses, you know? And all these other verses talk about the consciousness of people after they die: “to be absent with the body, be present with the Lord.” There’s eternal suffering, conscious suffering in hell. Annihilationism is certainly spoken against in many verses. That’s not what it means here.

What it does mean is that the psalmist is considering the purpose of his life on this earth. And if he dies, he will no longer be able, in this body, to give remembrance and give thanks to God and to remember who he is, publicly speaking things. Because it’s in parallel: “In the grave, who will give you thanks?”

He can’t be saying “who will give you thanks ultimately,” because the psalmist knows that he’s going to see God in eternity. He knows he’s going to give thanks to God in the around the throne. Well, he understands these things. What he’s saying is: “I will no longer be able to give thanks in the context of men, whether it’s the liturgical processes of the church or the people that I had to deal with on a regular basis.”

So the reason for the psalmist crying out to God and assuming an answer is given as the heart of the matter of the prayer here.

And then, as I said, he goes on to describe himself:

“I am weary with my groaning. All night I make my bed swim. I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows old because of my enemies.”

Enemies. So here we have the inclusion of enemies in this list. And there’s no reason to assume here that the enemies are the beginning part of this problem. They enter in late. And it could be that David’s particular situation is one of having to deal with enemies. But, you know, maybe not.

Turn, if you will, to Job chapter 17. Job 17, verse 7:

“My eye has also grown dim because of grief. All my members are as a shadow.”

You see, that’s just what David is saying here: “My eye has grown dim because of grief.” Now go back up to verse 1 and see the context for this:

“My spirit is broken. My days are extinguished. I am weak. I’m being blighted. I’m ready to fall. The grave is ready for me. Surely mockers are with me. My eye gazes on their provocation. Lay down now a pledge for me with Thyself. Who is there that will be my guarantor? For Thou hast kept their heart from understanding. Therefore, Thou wilt not exalt them. He who informs against friends for a share of the spoil. The eyes of his children also shall languish. But He has made me a byword of the people, and I am one at whom men spit.”

So Job’s enemies were, in the first place, his best and brightest—his three mighty men, his three counselors. Job—a king, probably an Edomite king, certainly Edomite—and probably these three men are Job’s three great counselors. The way that David had his three mighty men and Jesus had His—these are the men who become Job’s enemy in the midst of his suffering, because they accuse him of sinfulness. And you know what that’s like. Some of you know: you suffer, and then people say, “Well, it’s for your sin that you suffer.” And you can’t think of any specific sin that’s brought all this on. There was none in Job’s life. God does what He wants to do, you see?

So when we read about these enemies in David, it ties this whole psalm back to Job, doesn’t it? This is like Job suffering in physical description for the most part and in the context of physical anguish. He’s got enemies now surfacing around him. And Job is the same thing. So again, this shows us that the context is not, you know, one necessarily of the enemies outside of the covenant. It’s people within the covenant who are casting aspersions upon David and assuming that his motivation is impure and that’s why God is judging him.

So enemies are referenced here in the context of his physical punishment. And then we then have the cry of deliverance after this description of David’s great suffering in the last couple of verses:

“Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. The Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication. The Lord will receive my prayer. The Lord has answered. The Lord has answered. The Lord has answered.

Three-fold assurance.

“Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled. Let them turn back and be ashamed suddenly.”

It ends in the victorious shout of an imprecatory prayer now against his enemies. This is not a private individual speaking about getting rid of my friends. This is the king of Israel. And what he says in verse 8, “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity,” can be understood not just as the private contemplations of someone, but rather of the king himself cleansing his kingdom from hypocrites, from people that would strike out at a man who’s down on his luck, so to speak, who’s down because of the providence of God.

Psalm 101 really should be seen in reference to this concluding statement: “Depart from me, all workers of iniquity.”

Psalm 101:

“A fro heart shall depart from me. I will not know a wicked person who so privily slanders his neighbor. Him will I cut off.” The psalmist, the king of Israel sings: “Him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me. He that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me. He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house”—not dwell within my political house. In other words, the answer of God to the prayer of David is the further strength for victory against God’s enemies: the hypocritical covenant members who slander people behind people’s backs and who in their pride make fun of those who suffer, not knowing the cause.

So again, suffering is to the purpose of victory against enemies. And here in David’s case, certainly in the case of Job, the enemies are those who at first appear to be friends. So there’s a movement from crying out to God. But it is a crying out to God that is highly confident.

Like Psalm 22, it ends with the victory of Jesus Christ and those who serve Him being exalted together. And of course, this great kingly cry, “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity,” our Savior appropriates to Himself directly in two places, and both in Matthew 7 and in Luke.

Matthew 7:

“People will come to me saying ‘In Your name we cast out demons. In Your name [we] performed many mercies.’ And I will declare to them: ‘Jesus says, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

Direct citation again of Psalm 6. So Psalm 6 is cited by our Savior, first in the crying out “how long” aspect—His bones are out of joint, His soul is greatly troubled, specifically—and then it’s cited in the second half: “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.”

Suffering to the purpose of victory and establishment of the kingdom of God. That’s what happens in the movement of this psalm.

Now let’s return, very briefly, to the heart of the matter—to the heart of that prayer. As I said, it’s a contemplation of the death of the psalmist and the end result of that death in the context of his life. As I said, David knows. He writes in Psalm 39: “If I make my bed in Sheol, in the place of the dead, You’re there.”

So David is not saying that God is not present with him or will be present in his death. What David is saying is: once he dies, he will no longer be able to give public remembrance and praise to God in the context of humans, in the context of his mission in this life. So what David is saying is: “If I die, Your mercy will be diminished because I will not be able to give You praise and thanksgiving.”

He makes the plea on the basis of God’s glory, not his. And specifically, that God would glorify Himself through David by allowing him to live. And life for him is equated, then, essentially in verse 5, life is equated with the purpose of his life—equated with giving praise and thanksgiving to God.

That’s why this psalm is applicable to everyone, whether we have had suffering or not. Suffering is good for us, right? Suffering, for the man who understands this—that his life is to glorify God, to give him praise and thanksgiving forever—suffering actually more thoroughly equips him for the ministry and work God has given him to do.

David is a man who knows not to deny he’s got problems. He knows where to address those problems. He knows the proper reasoning to make with God in truth as to why his problems should be brought to an end. And he is confident of God’s answer. That kind of man—whose life is for the purpose of praising God to other people—that’s what David says his life is here. That kind of man is made stronger and better by his sufferings in this life.

Because one man wrote: “Bury him—that kind of man—in the snows of Valley Forge, and you’ll have a George Washington. Bury him—that kind of man committed to praising God in the midst of all things and wanting to live so that he might praise God—raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Whether you agree with the politics or not, the suffering of these men helped form their character and helped move them into the positions of influence that God had prepared for them.

Burn him so severely that the doctors say he’ll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham, the man who set the world’s one-mile record in 1934. Death in him—and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven. Making him the first child to survive in a poor Italian family of 18 children, and you have an Enrico Caruso. Have him born of parents who survived the Nazi concentration camp. Paralyze him from the waist down when he is four. And you have an incomparable concert violinist, Yitzhak Perlman. Have him—or her—born Black in a society filled with racial discrimination. And you have a Booker T. Washington, a George Washington Carver. Call him a slow learner, retarded, and write him off as unteachable. And you have an Albert Einstein.

You see, the Lord God uses these afflictions in our lives, but He uses them primarily in the life of the psalmist whose very life exists to praise God.

That’s the application for us. Whether we’re going through sufferings or not, this psalm at the heart of the matter calls us to see the purpose of our life as giving public praise to God.

You know, when we had our Ash Wednesday service, I mentioned this. You know, we talk about apologetics and methodology and proving the gospel and convincing the unbeliever. And all of that has an important place. But the evangelism of the church, I think, is primarily advanced by the heart of this psalm and its cry: by recognizing that you are alive today to give praise to God. When you’re riding the bus, when you’re at work, when you’re in your family, when you’re in your classroom, simply thank God. Tell people: “Yeah, Lord, the Lord God has blessed me in this way and that way. Thank Him. I thank Him.”

You see, that’s evangelism. That’s doing the very purpose. It’s accomplishing the very purpose for which God has created you: to give praise to Him.

That was the thing that David feared: not being able to do anymore. When you get to heaven, when you die in the body, you’ll be ushered into eternal glory. But you will no longer have the opportunity to publicly praise and thank God in this fallen world. You see? Gone. That’s what the psalmist was fearful of. He was committed to using his life to praise God’s holy name.

Are we? I hope so. That’s why we have Fest Day. We used to have times when people would get up—little kids, adults—thank God in the midst of the congregation here after announcements or whatever and just give praise to God. We don’t have time for it anymore. So we thought, well, maybe Fest Day. But we—surgical actions of the church are to set up what we do in the week. It’s not enough for you to give praise to God on the Lord’s day if you never do it any place else in informal situations. If that’s what you think, you’ve missed the heart of this psalm, you see?

Not enough. This is to provide the pattern for the rest of our lives.

I challenge you, and I challenge myself: May this be a week at which we, if we’re suffering, cry out to God “How long?” and cry out in confidence. But may this be a week when if we do nothing else, we simply say: “Praise God. Thank God for this or that”—in the midst of people where it may not be normal to do it in the context of—we start easy today. We start in our prayer meetings. Let’s give thanks to God for something today in our prayer meetings.

Yeah, we have requests, but let’s all praise God somehow with our mouths, with our tongues, with these bodies that God has called us to serve him in today.

That’s at the very heart of Psalm 6. It’s really at the heart of Lent. Lent’s a call to renewed discipleship. And the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ know that He suffered and died on the cross for us, that our sufferings might make sense, might be transformed by Him to make us better people, that we may become increasingly aware of the need to use our short time in this life to praise God.

Let’s pray.

Father, we do pray that You would help us to understand our dependence upon You, the shortness of life, and the shortening list of opportunities we have to give public praise and thanksgiving to You. We thank You, Lord God, for Psalm 6, for this season. And we pray that You would increase our discipleship, our commitment to Christ, to praise Him in the midst of people.

In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.