I. Intro:
1. To Series:
A.Since I’ll be preaching here again in about a month, I thought it would be good for me to see if I could prepare a series of sermons to preach on. I have decided to call my series “Practicing the Psalms.”
B.So often our reading in the Psalms is distracted from the wealth of helps we can get from them by the beauty of its poetry. Sometimes when we read them we might try to picture what the Psalmist or David was going through when they wrote them. But there is so much we can learn from the Psalms beyond these areas. I believe that we can take the Psalmist’s attitude and humility that is illustrated through their poetry and use them as an example about how to live a life in the faith.
C.Practicing the Psalms isn’t a new concept that I’ve come up with. Many have put them to practice in every day life. In fact, medieval Benedictine monks were required to read through the entire book of Psalms every week at least. They even used them as prayers in their daily chapel services.
D.While I was in college, I learned to use the Psalms to help me pray. When I knew I needed to pray but couldn’t keep my focus or even ran out of things to say, I learned to use a Psalm. I also learned that when I prayed through a psalm, I gained new passion for the words I was praying and the people I was praying for even if I wasn’t in a similar situation as the psalm described. It even drew me closer to the body of believers because I knew that the prayers I was praying were the same prayers that other believers throughout history had already prayed.
2.To Sermon:
A.Today we’ll be looking at “Practicing the Psalms” through Psalm 13. Through the Psalm we will be able to see the importance of praising God through the worst of circumstances. We’ll see the pattern of going throughout a struggle in life, the pattern of “Shouting, Speaking, and Singing.”
B.First, let us Pray.
C. How many of you have ever felt distant from God or maybe even like He’s left us or abandoned us altogether? Have you ever been depressed or felt like there was no hope in a situation, like the world was closing in on you? Maybe a family member died, or a relationship fell apart. Maybe you were in some sort of financial trouble. Imagine the worst situation you’ve ever been in and remember how it felt as we look at Psalm 13 this morning.
D.Psalm 13:
1How Long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; 4my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 5But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.
E.I only hope the way I read this psalm gives it justice because I believe that the way it sounds represents the three different attitudes that the psalmist uses to approach God in his situation. The three sounds you should have been able to hear were shouting, speaking, and singing.
II.Shouting: vv 1 – 2
1.Passage:
A.As we look at the first two verses of this psalm I envision the psalmist screaming, shouting, crying out in agony to the Lord about what’s going on in his life. He’s been going through something terrible for a good period of time and he wants relief. We see him talk about God turning from him, an internal struggle, and even enemies defeating him.
B.We don’t know exactly what the psalmist was going through, but we know that he felt alone, stranded, desperate. We know he was pinned or cornered in some sort of extreme circumstance and that he wasn’t able to see that God was with him so he cried out to God.
2.Illustration:
A.All of us have witnessed a baby crying for its mother right? Even when the mother sets the baby down do something else only for a moment, the child will feel like it’s all alone. This type of feeling happens especially when the child is put to sleep in a room and the mother leaves to go do other things around the house. The child will inevitably wake up and see that nobody’s there. They think they are alone and fear seeps into their mind, not to mention the complete dependence they have on their mother so they cry out.
B.But it’s that same cry of desperation and loneliness that the baby feels that we can all go through at times. We all go through similar times in our adulthood with our family, with our friends, and even with God! Sometimes we feel like the entire world is against us and that maybe God has even left us. We can lose hope quickly. We can lose sight completely of God’s big picture when we’re in this type of situation too.
C.But that’s not what the psalmist does here. This is not the end of the road for his situation and since we’re looking at this as something we might be able to put into practice in our lives, we know it doesn’t have to be the end for us either. There’s more to it!
III.Speaking: vv 3 – 4
1.Passage:
A.As we move to the next two verses, we can almost hear the psalmist’s tone change. He moves from crying out or shouting out to God, to speaking with God and pleading for relief. Instead of continuing with his worried questioning of what God’s doing in his life, he turns to specific needs.
B.The psalmist shows that there is at least some possibility of getting out of his situation now. He knows that God has the solution and asks specifically for it. However, he still knows that there are circumstances that will take place if God doesn’t get him out of the situation.
2.Illustration:
A.Now earlier, I related the psalmist’s cries to those of a baby. Now though, it seems our psalmist has aged a little more. He’s moved to negotiating almost like a teenager would if there was something they wanted desperately. Now I know we can all relate because we’ve all been teenagers, seen teenagers do this, or been the people that they’ve done it to. They’ll ask very specifically for what they want and then make some big dramatic story for what will happen if they don’t get it.
B.Have you ever caught yourself doing this with God? You’ve passed the stage of complete despair and entered a stage of specific need. Even though we’ve grown out of the stage of desperation and into a stage of reasoning, this still isn’t a good place to be.
C.We’re still the ones telling God how things are going to work even though He’s the one writing the script! However, the psalmist doesn’t end here and neither should we. We still have more growing to do!
IV.Singing: vv 5 – 6
1.Passage:
A.Finally, the last two passages give us yet another tone we can hear. He gives us singing, or praise and worship! He shows us that despite everything that he’s gone through up to this point and everything that he was probably still going through, he trusted in God to keep him throughout it.
B.He illustrates to us the characteristics of God that we can always and must always rely on. God’s unfailing love and salvation are always there. We cannot let our circumstances fog up the window and hide these facts from us. So this is how we can practice this Psalm.
2.Illustration:
A.The cries of a baby because of complete despair, and the reasoning of a teenager because of lack of confidence are both places we shouldn’t be in our faith. The psalmist moves past these phases and into one of a grown man and his father. In fact, the perfect example of this would be Jesus and his father. When Christ was struggling with the fact that He had to die on the cross, He constantly humbled himself and recognized that His father was in control. He said “not my will but yours.”
B.Christ knew that God had everything under control. The psalmist came back to this understanding. He grew up into it. We need to constantly be growing up into it as well.
V.Close:
1.We all go through a growing process in our faith. For the most part, it’s not just a one time process either. It happens over and over again every time we hit a brick wall in our lives. We end up going back to an age of infancy filled with doubt and fear. Then we might grow into an age of adolescence and try to reason or bargain with God and tell him what to do. This isn’t really a problem though. As long as we keep growing.
2.The way that we need to put this Psalm into practice is to keep growing into confidence in God. We need to always come back to a place where we can trust in His unfailing love and rejoice in His salvation. A place where we can always sing to the Lord because we know He has been good to us.
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