Sorrow & Love

Please remain standing now for the reading of

God's Word. We're going to be looking at

Psalm 6 this morning. Again, Psalm 6. Please

listen to the reading of God's Word.

To the choirmaster

with string instruments

according to the sheminith,

a psalm of David.

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 sha'ol, 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 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Please be seated.

In June

of 15 20,

Spanish control over the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan

was quickly

unraveling.

A few weeks earlier, the tension in Tenochitlan

had reached a boiling point

and full rebellion against the Spanish had broken

out after Spanish conquistador

Hernan Cortes left the city and traveled back

to Veracruz

to defeat the troops that the Spanish governor

in Havana

had deployed to arrest Cortes

for insubordination.

In Cortes' absence, the man he had left

in charge,

Pedro de Alvarado,

had ordered a massacre

of the Aztec nobles and priests who were

participating in a pagan ceremony

at the great temple in Tenochtitlan.

The attack

was brutal

resulting in many deaths and sparking a fierce

uprising.

After Cortes defeated the Spanish troops from Havana,

he returned to Tenochtitlan

to find that the fragile peace with the

Aztecs

had been shattered.

And he immediately understood the great peril of

his circumstances.

With the Spanish troops besieged

from within the city walls,

Cortes decided that a hasty retreat

was their only hope.

So, exactly 504

years ago today,

on the fateful night of June 30th,

15 20,

Hernan Cortes led his troops,

under the cover of darkness in a daring

escape out of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.

2 things conspired against him and turned that

attempted escape

into a catastrophe.

1st,

the greed of his troops significantly

slowed down their movement

since not only were they traveling

under heavy armor, but they were also weighed

down

by the gold they had stolen from the

Aztec treasury.

2nd,

on the night of June 30th 15 20,

there was a full moon.

So their greed deprived them of agility

and the bright moonlight

deprived them of stealth.

And they moved as they moved along the

causeway

that connected the inland city the island city

to the mainland.

Having become aware of their movements, the Aztec

warriors launched a fierce attack.

Chaos erupted as the Spaniards fought desperately to

survive.

Many fell under the barrage of Aztec spears

and arrows,

and many more drowned

in the Lake Texcoco's dark waters,

submerged under the unbearable burden of their stolen

gold.

Though the Aztecs have removed part of the

causeway that connected the Nocitlan to the mainland,

as the bodies of men and horses piled

up along the shallow waters of the lake,

their lifeless bodies

formed a morbid bridge

that ironically permitted Cortes and others to reach

the mainland

and preserve their lives.

Exhausted and defeated,

Cortes and those who escaped regrouped near a

large cypress tree with a trunk over 10

feet in diameter and about a 150 feet

tall.

The few remaining hours of the night became

a nightmare

that Cortez would never forget.

The Aztecs had managed to capture scores of

Spanish soldiers. And for the rest of the

night, the Aztecs devoted themselves

to ritualistically

sacrifice

every single one of them.

So under the massive cypress tree and the

unrelenting witness of the full moon,

the air became thick with the weeping and

wailing of the sacrificial victims.

And Cortes, overwhelmed by the agony of his

men, succumbed in despair

and whipped bitterly.

That tree came to be known as el

arbol de la noche triste or the tree

of the night of sorrows.

A tree whose trunk still stands,

a silent witness to the deep sorrow that

can befall

the human soul.

I pray none of us ever find ourselves

in the shadow of that kind of tree.

But King David, the primary human author of

the Hebrew Psalter,

not only experienced nights like the one Cortez

experienced exactly 505104

years ago under the tree of the night

of sorrows,

but thankfully,

he also recorded his raw sentiments

in the Psalter,

providing the church in God's providence and under

his guidance

with a compass

to guide us out of a state of

deep sorrow and into the light of God's

love.

Psalm 6 is precisely

that kind of godly compass.

Now many consider Psalm 6 to be the

first of 7 penitential Psalms in the Psalter.

In such Psalms, the psalmist expresses

sorrow for sin

and he pleads with God for mercy and

deliverance.

Think for a moment how extraordinary this is.

Many people today suggest that the Christian God

is either despotic or uncaring,

and that Christians are self righteous and hypocritical.

However,

penitential Psalms, like Psalm 6,

demonstrate

that far from being or far from being

called by the scriptures

to be self righteous,

or or in far from being encouraged by

the scriptures to be hypocritical,

the scriptures call us and encourage us to

confess our sin and to express sorrow for

it.

And far from God being despotic and uncaring,

the scriptures teach us that He has compassion

for His people

and that his saving work is an act

of mercy and a demonstration

of his love

for them.

This is why Psalm 6 presents a message

of hope for you this morning.

Since it reminds you that because God is

who He is,

you can come to Him as you are,

in the depths of sorrow,

in the shame of your sin,

in the agony of persecution.

And not only will He not turn you

away,

but because of the love that is yours,

by virtue of your union with Christ,

He will have mercy on you and He

will deliver you from the attacks of the

wicked

and from the fear of uncertainty,

and even from the seemingly

unbearable weight of deep despair.

And that's not all.

God will also work in you even painfully

if necessary

to purify you,

to cause you to repent

from your sin,

to teach you to hate your sin, and

to turn away from it, and to turn

in hope to Christ

that you might become more and more like

Him.

You see, the Psalms are not only a

window

into our hearts.

They are they are the uncensored voice

of the Christian soul

confessing to God our remorse,

our fear,

our shame,

and our sorrow, and doing so with the

expectation

that our good heavenly Father hears our prayers

and acts for our benefit.

If I could distill the message of Psalm

6 into a singular proposition,

it would be this,

In your distress

do not despair,

but turn to God for deliverance.

Again, in your distress do not despair,

but turn to God for deliverance.

So the message of Psalm 6 is a

message that we all need to hear this

morning,

for it offers us many practical lessons that

will enable us to draw near to God

in our time of need.

Consider first the title or superscript of the

Psalm.

We read,

to the choirmaster

with string instruments

according to the sheminith,

a Psalm

of David.

The first thing I want to point out

to you is that like like Psalms 45

before it, Psalm 6 is addressed to the

choir master.

Furthermore,

the title intimates that the psalm is to

be recited or sung with stringed instruments

according to the sheminith.

The sheminith means the 8th.

So it probably

refers to an 8 stringed instrument

or to a musical beat.

You might ask, why should we care about

these kinds of details?

The reason is that we ought to worship

God in the way that He commands,

neither taking away from His ordinances

nor adding rituals according to our own preferences

or to the traditions of men as Moses

instructs in Deuteronomy

12

and Jesus confirms in Matthew 15.

This is known as the regulative principle

of worship,

which asserts that the worship of God should

be based solely on what is explicitly commanded

in scripture.

This is why our worship services

are not a concert,

nor a political rally,

nor a platform for a self improvement TED

talk,

nor your weekly cappuccino with Jesus check-in.

Instead,

we strive to worship God in spirit and

in truth as Jesus commands us to do

so in John 4:24,

John 4:24

and to do so decently and in order

as Paul instructs in 1st Corinthians 14:40.

And to do it in a way that

God himself prescribes

in the entirety

of his word.

And we learned in Psalms and we learned

in Psalms, like Psalm 6,

that music and singing has always been an

important

and God honoring element

of worship.

Even in our simple worship services,

we worship God by singing hymns

accompanied with a stringed instrument. In this case,

the piano, which even though it has a

keyboard,

is,

its sound production relies on strings being struck

by hammers.

Our first lesson, therefore,

is that we sing in our worship services

not primarily because we enjoy it, though we

do,

nor because singing together brings us closer together,

though it does,

but because singing

to God in worship is prescribed

in his word.

Now, the title also teaches us that this

Psalm is composed by David.

However, unlike Psalm 3, for example, which tells

us the what the Psalm is about,

Psalm 6 does not give us the historical

background

for its composition.

We do know,

that Psalm 6 is a prayer that David

offers in terribly difficult circumstances,

perhaps under his own tree of sorrows.

So, in the midst of his agony,

let us first of all consider David's posture.

In verse 2, we read that David is

languishing

and that his bones are troubled.

And in verse 3, we read that his

soul is greatly troubled.

The word languishing has the sense of withering,

of drying out,

of dwindling away.

It's as if his very life is dissipating,

like it is vanishing into thin air.

His bones, which are the frame of his

body or the scaffolding, one might think, of

of his very existence

are troubled,

or better yet

distressed,

and his soul

is greatly troubled.

The word languishing,

like I said, has this this sense of

of of withering. And and David is,

feels like his whole existence is withering, like

he is falling apart.

His body cannot withstand the burden

that is that he is carrying and his

soul is in abject terror.

He is utterly dismayed, one might say.

That's the sense

conveyed by David's poetic language in this Psalm.

In verses 6 and 7, we learn more

about David's ruinous condition.

His pain has provoked an intense moaning

that has debilitated him.

And at night, tears pour out from his

eyes without ceasing,

so that his couch is drenched

by his unconsolable

weeping.

So profound is his grief is his grief

that his eyes are wasting away from so

much crying. And he feels that the constant

torment

from his foes might cause him to lose

his eyesight altogether

as his eye grows weaker

and weaker.

Darkness

is encompassing David and he is about to

black out as the world, his world is

spinning out of control.

Worst of all,

verse 1 shows that David is concerned that

God has set his anger and his wrath

against him.

You see that

in his words in verse 1.

In other words, David's despair

is deepened

by his concern

that God has forsaken him.

So in Psalm 6,

David's posture is that of a man who

is forlorn,

physically frail,

spiritually faint,

emotionally

fading.

He feels forsaken

and forgotten by God.

Have you ever felt this way?

Perhaps not all at once, but can you

identify

with that sense

of sorrow that is conveyed in the first

seven verses of Psalm 6?

Problems in your marriage, for example,

can lead you down very very dark paths.

Especially because conflict with your spouse

can make it seem as if you had

made an adversary

out of the very person whom God has

provided to encourage

and support you in your adversity.

And if you're not careful,

that can cause you to lose trust in

your spouse,

and to lose trust even in God's promises.

And that can very quickly and effectively be

used by Satan

to cause you to

feel physically alone,

and emotionally abused,

and spiritually abandoned.

Relational conflicts with family or with friends can

cause you to experience a deep sense of

betrayal.

When one of your children, or grandchildren,

or when one of your parents is not

walking with the Lord,

that can provoke a profound

sense of sorrow.

The loss of employment

and the uncertainty that comes with it

can lead to unbearably high levels of stress

and anxiety

as you consider the potential repercussions

on your family,

not to mention the unwarranted

guilt and shame that often accompany

the loss of a job.

And speaking of guilt and shame,

hidden,

indwelling sin

over time

can not only stunt your spiritual maturity

and your growth in godliness as well,

But Satan can use it to cause you

to doubt your salvation,

leading you to spiritual despair.

Of course, chronic illness,

deteriorating health,

an unfavorable diagnosis,

and the prospect of death, either yours or

that of a loved one,

can lead you to a very dark valley

indeed,

causing you to drench your pillow with tears

night

after night

after night.

My father was diagnosed with a very aggressive

form of cancer in September of 2011.

And he passed away 2 months later at

the age of 59.

I love my father deeply and those couple

of months were a nightmare to me. It

It was a nightmare to my sisters. It

was most of all a nightmare to my

mother.

I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to

spend the last 10 days of my dad's

life with him, although the remembrance of those

days can still be disquieting for me.

In particular,

the night before he died was especially ghastly.

I remember it was about 3 in the

morning and I couldn't sleep. So I went

to the living room and, there was a

window in our living room that,

faced the front of the street.

And I opened that window and noticed that

there was no breeze.

It was eerily

quiet and still outside,

as if death itself had moved into the

neighborhood.

The only sound I could hear was that

of my father's labored breathing

as he gasped for air with greater and

greater difficulty.

I thought to myself,

what a nightmare this is.

I was in my last year of seminary

and I remember praying that God would have

mercy on my father.

Since he was a believer, I prayed that

if God was not going to heal him,

that he would take my father to enjoy

his presence.

I also prayed that God would use my

profound sense of pain to teach me how

to minister to his sheep

whenever their hearts were hurting

like mine was.

In that night of sorrow, instead of questioning

the goodness of God, I was thankful that

the Lord permitted me to seek comfort in

him through prayer.

And you see that is the pattern that

David lays out for us in Psalm 6.

While the circumstances of his life have given

him a posture of sorrow,

David doesn't protest against God.

Instead he prays to him,

pleading with him before

God's throne of grace.

And that is what we must do

when we find ourselves under the tree of

sorrow.

We are not to run away from God.

We are to take comfort

under the shadow of His wings.

So having looked at David's posture, let us

now consider David's plea.

Notice first of all that David addresses his

plea to God

using his covenantal name, Yahweh,

translated Lord in the ESV.

In the 10 verses of Psalm 6, David

uses God's covenantal name 8 times.

So when sadness sets in,

when anguish

agitates you,

when doubt depresses you,

when conflict confounds you,

when fear makes you faint,

when iniquity

isolates you.

Beloved Christian, do not believe even for a

moment

that your privilege

of calling upon your heavenly Father for help

has been revoked.

On the contrary,

that is when Christ's work for you

is most beneficial.

And when he most clearly demonstrates

his unfailing love for you.

Remember that your standing before God has never

been grounded

on your goodness

or steadfastness,

nor on your happiness or confidence,

nor even on the strength and extent of

your faith.

No, the reason

why you can turn to God in prayer

even and especially

in your night of sorrow

is because of Christ's perfect and finished work

for you.

The circumstances in your life may change.

The vibrancy of your walk with the Lord

may vary.

The fortitude of your faith may fade

or may flourish.

But what never changes,

but is always

steadfast

and is always sufficient

is the merit and efficacy

of Christ's work for you.

Saying snares,

the fallen world's lies,

and your own sinfulness will constantly remind you

of your inadequacy

to stand before God.

Ah, but in so doing,

your adversaries are doing you a great favor.

For you see, a great a greater apprehension

of your personal inadequacy

should result in a correspondingly

greater appreciation

for Christ's work.

Remember Jesus' rebuke of Simon the Pharisee in

Luke 7

when Jesus asked him, If a lender cancels

a man's debt of 50 denarii

and another man's debt of 500 denarii,

which man will love him more?

And Simon answered, I suppose the one who

had the larger debt.

So Jesus replied, You suppose correctly.

He who has forgiven much

loves much.

Far from invalidating your appeal before God's grace,

it is precisely

through confessing your necessity and poverty

and your personal unworthiness

before God

that the chambers of the king shall be

open wide to you.

Through the abundantly merciful ministrations of Jesus

who is never ashamed of you, but who

will gladly anoint your head with oil and

prepare a table for you in the presence

of your enemies.

When the devil reminds you of your inadequacy

and need,

discern

that you have been forgiven much.

So love much.

So in your distress do not despair,

but turn to God for deliverance.

For a sound travels faster through water than

it does through air,

so also

your tears

expedite your appeal for mercy before the very

heart of the God of consolation.

The second thing I want you to notice

about David's plea

is that in verse 1, David doesn't ask

that God not rebuke him nor discipline him,

but that God does not do these things

in anger

or in wrath.

There are 2 things I want you to

take away from this. 1st,

you may find that the rebuke and discipline

of the Lord is painful,

but you can be assured that it is

always good.

If we rebuke and discipline our own children

because we want to help them grow in

maturity,

steering them away

from a direction that will lead them to

trouble,

and helping them to experience instead a life

of blessing and joy and peace,

how much more

should we benefit

from the rebuke and discipline

of our loving

heavenly Father.

So don't despise the Lord's rebuke and discipline

when they come, but learn from them

and grow through them.

2nd,

notice that David prays that God restrain his

anger and his wrath.

Now can God restrain his anger and wrath

from us

even when our sinful actions merit it?

Would this not violate God's justice?

No, it would not.

The Christian can indeed pray that God withhold

his anger and wrath from us without putting

God's justice in jeopardy.

The reason for this, of course, is that

God has already fully satisfied

his anger and wrath for our sins

when Jesus was judged on the cross of

Calvary.

Thus David prayed relying on the future fulfillment

of God's promise.

But you can pray remembering

God's past demonstration

of his faithfulness. The

third thing I want you to notice about

David's plea

is that he reminds God of his covenantal

promises for to his people.

In verses 2 and 4, David asked for

grace,

healing,

deliverance,

and salvation.

Not because he deserves them,

not because it would be just for him

to receive these blessings,

but for the sake of God's steadfast love.

What David is doing here is reminding God

of the promises

that God made to his people.

In Exodus 3:8,

Exodus 3:8

when God appears before Moses in the burning

bush, he tells him, I have come down

to deliver

my people out of the land out of

the hand of the Egyptians

and to bring them out of that land

to a good and broad land, a lamb

flowing with milk and honey.

In Exodus 52,

after God delivers Israel from bondage in Egypt,

Moses and the people of Israel praise God

by singing a song saying,

The Lord is my strength and my song,

and He has become

my salvation.

In Exodus 1526,

as Israel begins its journey through the wilderness,

God made this promise.

If you will diligently listen to the voice

of the Lord your God,

and do that which is right in his

eyes, and give ear to his commandments, and

keep all his statutes,

I will put none of the diseases on

you that I put on the Egyptians,

for I am the Lord,

your healer.

And on Mount Sinai, in Exodus 34:6,

Exodus 34:6

as God hands Moses the tablets of the

10 commandments,

that are going to go inside the ark

of the covenant, God identifies himself in this

way.

The Lord

the Lord, a God merciful and gracious,

slow to anger,

and abounding in steadfast love

and faithfulness.

So you see the lessons the lesson for

us

is that it is always good for us

to pray God's words back to Him,

especially

reminding him of his promises to his people

and claiming them because of his steadfast love.

This underscores the practical importance of reading the

Bible.

For it is only by reading the Bible

that we will be able to learn and

claim God's promises

for us and for our loved ones as

they are contained

in the Bible.

The last thing I want to highlight about

David's plea this morning is the purpose that

he attaches to it. Look at verses 45

with me.

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?

David says that the reason why God should

be gracious to him, and heal him, and

deliver him, and save him

is so

that David can remember God's faithfulness

and give him praise.

Beloved Christian,

it is good for us to write down

our prayers, not only because it will help

us remember

who to pray for and what to pray

for,

but also

because it will help us remember God's faithfulness,

which will increase our gratitude and love for

Him,

and it will encourage and embolden us to

give Him praise, which will help others

trust in Him.

In verses 8 to 10, David's tone changes.

He writes,

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.

It's as if David's sorrow has dissipated

and he is confident

that the Lord has heard his weeping,

has heard his plea, and most importantly

has accepted

his prayer.

So in this prayer

of Psalm 6,

we have seen that David's posture of sorrow

led him to plead God's promises

for the purpose of praising God.

Now we see David's prayer end with a

prophecy.

Instead of David being concerned

about God's anger and wrath, he warns his

enemies that God's anger and wrath will fall

upon them.

Altogether certain that in a moment,

they will be put to shame.

This shift in the Psalm is so abrupt

that it has left secular biblical scholars confounded

leading some of them even to posit that

these verses were a later edition written by

a different hand.

Christians, of course, have no excuse for indulging

such folly.

You see in verse 9, David tells us,

The Lord

accepts

my prayer.

And that

tells us everything we need to know about

the source of David's confidence and the reason

for his change in tone.

The reason the Lord accepts David's prayer

is the same reason why God's anger and

wrath are no longer set on David.

You see, as David prayed God's promises,

David himself remembered them.

And he understood that God himself would provide

and offer up

the lamb who would appease God's anger and

wrath.

So David trusted,

fully trusted,

in that promise.

You and I get to fully trust

in that fact.

Look at how the author of Hebrews puts

it in Hebrews 10.

He writes, and every priest stands daily at

his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices

which can never take away sins.

But when Christ

offered for all time a single sacrifice for

sins,

he sat down at the right hand of

God,

waiting for the time until his enemies should

be made a footstool for his feet.

For by a single offering,

he has perfected for all time

those

who are being sanctified.

Christ is both our Passover lamb which satisfies

God's anger and wrath and our high priest

who is at God's right hand,

interceding for us, guaranteeing

through His perfect merit

that God accepts our prayers

as they are sanctified and offered up by

Jesus Himself.

In a moment,

your enemies and His enemies

will be made a footstool

for His feet.

This liberates us to pray as Jesus commanded

us for our enemies

since vengeance belongs to him

and not to us.

You know, we live in a time

during which revisionist history

is everywhere.

And this movement has not spared even the

tree of the night of sorrow.

Early in 2020,

just before the 500th anniversary of Cortez's fateful

night,

the authorities in Mexico City renamed

the tree

from the tree of the night of sorrow

to the tree of the victorious night

commemorating the victory of the native Aztecs over

the European colonizers.

And although I'm no fan of revisionist history,

in this instance, I do find good precedence

for that revision.

You see, as Cortes wept bitterly under the

tree of sorrow,

he vowed to return one day to avenge

his men's death

and conquer

Tenochtitlan. Well, that reminds me of a different

vow under a different tree.

On the night of his arrest,

our savior was greatly troubled,

sweating drops of sorrow as he prayed beneath

an olive tree.

Yet he vowed to do his father's will

no matter what the cost.

The next day, under the shadow of another

tree on Calvary,

the drops of sorrow transformed into drops of

love.

As our Lord fulfilled his vow

not to avenge his men by killing his

enemies,

but to redeem his bride

by dying for her while she was yet

his enemy.

Thus, while it's true that our savior hung

on a tree of sorrow,

that tree became a tree of victory when

he was raised on the 3rd day.

That's why like David,

if you're in Christ, you can be sure

that God's anger and wrath are no longer

on you.

That's also why like David, if you are

in Christ, you can be sure that God

accepts your prayer.

So in your distress,

do not despair,

but turn to God

for deliverance.

Let's pray.