Psalm 13

Psalm 13

How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
Having sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
And my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
And my adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken.

But I have trusted in Your lovingkindness;
My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
Because He has dealt bountifully with me.

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This Psalm is the Psalm of the great “but” of faith; but I have trusted in Your lovingkindness. No matter what appearances may be, I have trusted in You. No matter what happens to me, I have trusted in You. This “but”, this insistence that I will trust in God, in His character, in His love and grace and mercy regardless of circumstances, regardless of the natural/fleshly outcome of the circumstances…this “but” is a watershed of faith, a continental divide – on one side of the divide the water flows toward “self” while on the other side it flows toward God. On one side of the divide self is the focus, its preservation, its comfort, its agenda; on the other side God is the focus, His glory, His holiness, His love and mercy and justice.

It may seem at times as if God has forgotten us: How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? It may seem as if death is our lot and victory the enemy’s prize; Paul wrote that he and his companions had a sentence of death in themselves, such was the despair they experienced. But Paul wrote in the same breath that this was in order that they should learn not to trust in themselves but in God who raises the dead (see 2 Corinthians Chapter 1).

On the God side of the divide we hear Job saying, “Though He slay me yet will I trust Him.” We witness Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego declaring, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand O king, But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” We read the words of Justin Martyr to the Emperor, “And if you also read these words in a hostile spirit, you can do no more, as I said before, than kill us; which indeed does no harm to us…”

Abraham believes in the God “who gives life to the dead and calls into being what which does not exist” (Rom. 4:17); Paul doesn’t look at the things that are seen but those that are unseen (2 Cor. 4:18); Jesus looks beyond the Cross to the joy that is set before Him (Heb. 12:1-2).

When we cross the great divide from a self-oriented life to a Christ-oriented life we can rejoice in God’s salvation, we can sing to Him because He has dealt bountifully with us – no matter what appearances may be. How has He dealt bountifully with us in the midst of heartache, sorrow, and apparent defeat? By freely showering us with His love and mercy, by forgiving our sins, by dying and rising for us, by bringing us from spiritual death to spiritual life, by securing an eternal future for us with Himself and His saints; and so Paul writes in Romans Chapter 8:

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Meditations on 1 John – X

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone love the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and its lust; but the one who does the will of God abides forever, 1 John 2:15-17.

I think this passage ranks among those Biblical passages that are often misappropriated, misunderstood, or ignored. There are those who know this passage well and who use it in their preaching and conversation without understanding it – their image of obedience to this passage is not always the Biblical understanding. Then there are those who explain away the passage so that it does not apply to them. I think a sign of spiritual life and growth is a life-long engagement with this passage, an engagement characterized by tension. This passage is particularly difficult to respond to (at least it should be difficult) in a society that has so much of everything; this is not to say that those who live in poverty are immune from the toxic temptations that John portrays because sin, like water, finds its own level – one can drown in a bathtub as well as in an ocean. I confess to being no farther along with this passage today than I was over forty years ago – unless progress can be measured by tension and an awareness of how utterly I fall short of obedience to its warnings.

Consider the parallel between 1 John 2:15 – 17 and Genesis 3:6; When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate, Genesis 3:6.

                        1 John                                                 Genesis

            the lust of the flesh                             the tree was good for food

            the lust of the eyes                            it was a delight to the eyes

            the pride of life                                   the tree was desirable to make

                                                                        one wise 

Those who ignore or explain away 1 John 2:15 – 17 ignore or explain away the portal by which sin entered humanity; that which was then our downfall continues to be our downfall, and the serpent’s words continue to be, “Has God really said?...You will not die!...You will be like God.” We witness the crescendo of our folly and of God’s grace in John’s book of Revelation – those who insist on living by the words of the serpent will die, those who repent of their sin, who trust in Jesus Christ, who learn to live by Him (the Tree of Life) will abide forever.

A third passage helpful to our interaction with John’s text is James 1:12 – 15: Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished it brings forth death.

The Apostle Paul equates covetousness and greed with idolatry (Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5) – the lust and pride of which John, James, and Paul speak is not sexual, though it can have sexual elements – these things are matters of the heart, they go to the root of who we are and who we worship and where we will spend eternity – to trivialize the Bible on these matters, whether by gross legalism, by “name it and claim it” libertarianism, by mainstream and respectable  materialism, or by outright rejection of the Biblical text is an act as foolish as Eve’s – indeed it is more foolish, for we have only to look around us to see the carnage such choices unleash, this is knowledge Eve did not have.