An Argument God Loves: The School of Honest Lament Text: Psalm 13:1-2
Introduction: The Discipleship of Emotion
We live in an age of shallow piety. The modern evangelical church, in many quarters, has developed an allergy to the kind of raw, honest, and frankly desperate language we find in the Psalms. We are told to put on a happy face, to never be negative, and to confess our way out of any trouble. If we are struggling, the assumption is that we must have a faith problem. But the book of Psalms is God's inspired prayer book, and it is given to us for our emotional discipleship. God does not just want to discipline our minds with doctrine; He wants to discipline our hearts, our affections, our sorrows, and our joys. And He does this, in large part, by giving us a vocabulary for every conceivable circumstance of life, including the dark ones.
The psalms of lament are not expressions of unbelief. They are the expressions of a robust faith, a faith that is strong enough to argue with God. This is not the insolent back-talk of a rebellious teenager. This is the desperate plea of a son who knows his Father's character, knows His promises, and is bewildered by the apparent contradiction between those promises and his present reality. A faith that cannot lament is a faith that has not read the Psalms. A faith that cannot ask "How long?" is a faith that has not yet been tried by fire.
Psalm 13 is a master class in this kind of faithful lament. It is a prayer offered from the very edge of despair, and it provides us with a divine pattern for how to conduct ourselves when troubles arrive on horseback and seem determined to depart on foot. This psalm moves through three distinct phases: the raw lament before God (vv. 1-2), the desperate petition for deliverance (vv. 3-4), and the climactic expression of confident faith and joy (vv. 5-6). We are only looking at the first part this morning, the complaint department. But we must understand that this is where the process begins. You cannot get to the "But I have trusted" of verse 5 without first wrestling through the "How long, O Yahweh?" of verse 1. To skip the lament is to cheapen the praise that follows.
Many Christians, in a kind of false piety, shrink back from this kind of language. They think it sounds disrespectful. But what is more disrespectful? To pour out your heart to God honestly, as He invites you to do, or to stand before Him with your arms crossed, pretending everything is fine while your heart is full of sorrow and turmoil? God is not honored by our stoicism. He is honored by a faith that is tenacious enough to cling to Him and cry out to Him, even when His face seems hidden.
The Text
How long, O Yahweh? 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?
(Psalm 13:1-2 LSB)
The Fourfold "How Long?" (v. 1-2)
The lament begins with a rapid-fire series of four questions, each beginning with that agonizing phrase, "How long?" This repetition is not for dramatic effect; it is the sound of a heart hammering on Heaven's door. David is in a desperate state, and he levels his complaint directly at God.
"How long, O Yahweh? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1)
The first question is a shotgun blast of pain. "How long, O Yahweh?" He addresses God by His covenant name, Yahweh. This is crucial. He is not crying out to some generic deity. He is appealing to the God who makes and keeps promises, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The entire force of the lament rests on the character of the one being lamented to. And the question is, will the promise-keeping God forget? David feels forgotten. The feeling is so intense that it feels like an eternity: "Will you forget me forever?" This is hyperbole born of anguish, but it is an honest expression of what it feels like to be in the furnace of affliction. When God is silent, the clock ticks very slowly.
The second "how long" specifies the nature of this feeling of abandonment. "How long will You hide Your face from me?" In Scripture, the face of God is the source of all blessing, life, and salvation (Num. 6:25-26). For God to hide His face is the ultimate terror for a believer. It is to be cut off from the fountain of all comfort. David is not experiencing a mere absence of good feelings. He is experiencing what feels like the active withdrawal of God's favor. He is in the dark, and he knows that the only source of light seems to have been deliberately turned away from him. This is not atheism. The atheist does not believe there is a face to be hidden. This is the cry of a true believer who has known the light of God's countenance and now finds himself in a terrifying eclipse.
The lament then turns inward, describing the internal chaos that results from this sense of divine distance.
"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?" (Psalm 13:2)
The third "how long" describes the torment of a mind turned in on itself. "How long shall I take counsel in my soul?" When God is silent, we are left to our own devices. David is trapped in a feedback loop of anxious thoughts, running through endless scenarios, trying to figure a way out, and finding none. His own soul has become a committee meeting where every member is panicking. This is what happens when we are cut off from heavenly wisdom; we are left with the frantic and futile counsel of our own fallen minds. And the fruit of this internal counseling is "sorrow in my heart all the day." It is a constant, grinding grief that does not let up from morning to night.
The fourth and final "how long" brings us to the external pressure. "How long will my enemy be exalted over me?" This is not just an internal, spiritual crisis. There is a real-world enemy, whether it is Saul or some other adversary, who is winning. The enemy's victory is a public reality, and it is a reproach not only to David but to David's God. The enemy's exaltation seems to be proof that God has indeed forgotten His servant. This is the salt in the wound. It is one thing to suffer silently; it is another to suffer while your enemy stands over you, gloating.
So we have four dimensions of this lament. The first is directed at God's apparent inaction: He seems to have forgotten. The second is directed at God's apparent disposition: He seems to be hiding. The third is the internal consequence: a mind in turmoil and a heart in sorrow. And the fourth is the external reality: the enemy is triumphant. This is a comprehensive picture of a saint at the end of his rope. And it is here, at the end of our rope, that we are taught by God to pray this way. He puts these words in our mouths so that we learn to bring our complete, unedited anguish to Him, because He is the only one who can handle it.
Praying Through the Pain
What do we do with this? We must first recognize the legitimacy of this kind of prayer. This is not sinning. This is faith fighting for its life. This is what Jacob was doing when he wrestled with the angel and said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." David is grabbing hold of God in the darkness and refusing to be silent.
Second, we must see that this is only the beginning of the prayer. David does not stay here. The rest of the psalm shows him moving from this desperate questioning to a direct petition, and finally to a declaration of trust. He prays his way through the darkness and into the light. The Psalms teach us that the way out of the pit is to cry out from the pit. We are not to pretend we are not in the pit. We are to acknowledge the reality of our situation and, from that very place, call upon the God who is mighty to save.
This is a profound comfort. It means that your deepest sorrows, your most bewildering trials, and your most agonizing questions are not barriers to fellowship with God. They are the very raw material of fellowship with God. He invites you to bring your "how longs" to Him. He wants you to take counsel with Him, not just in your own soul. He wants you to present your case, to lay out the sorrow of your heart, to point to the exulting enemy, and to ask Him to act in accordance with His own name and His own promises.
And as we will see, when a believer does this, when he honestly pours out his lament before the Lord, he is preparing his own heart for the answer. The act of crying out is an act of faith, and it is that very faith that God will honor, turning our sorrow into singing.