I’m looking forward to opening God’s Word with you tonight. Not to get too sentimental or anything like that, y’all are a great group to preach to. Y’all take preaching real well! And preachers appreciate that. I love it when people take preaching real well.
Sometimes, maybe for some of you not very often, for some of us more often than we would like, for some of us more days than not perhaps, sometimes we find ourselves in a dark place. And maybe sometimes dark enough to say that we are alone in the dark. Darkness is real darkness. True darkness is incredibly isolating, isn’t it? You can’t see that anyone else is around you. And there’s an aloneness that comes in a situation like that that’s really in some ways gripping. Sometimes we feel in our hearts, in our souls, for a season, for a reason, that maybe where we are there are circumstances beyond our control – the health or safety of a child, or a spouse, or a parent, or another loved one. Maybe it’s a business reversal that threatens to cost us everything we’ve worked for. Maybe there’s the perpetual hounding of enemies. We’ll talk more about enemies as this psalm unfolds, that never seems to stop ringing in our ears. And the other thing that never stops ringing in our ears, the temptation of old sin. Not new sin; old sin that seems to have been with us since almost the day we were born. It never stops ringing in our ears. The never-ending temptation, the yearning for deadly, old ways it still creates. That will put you in the dark. When you fight and you fight and you fight and you’re so tired of fighting, and here it is, meeting you one more time, there’s one more failure. How can this go on?
Whatever it may be, we all know there are times that you find yourselves alone in a dark place and you’re saying to yourself, “How can I reach God? How? I don’t even know how to pray to Him right now.” Let me tell you something, Psalm 143 is your prayer. Put a bookmark there. Put a post-it note there. You don’t even have to count it out to figure it out. And if you’ve got a Bible with roman numerals, definitely do that post-it note, because you may faint before that 143 counted out! That’s your approach to your loving Father. This is your appeal to Him. This is the prayer of the desperate, the prayer for someone who’s too far gone to wait much longer for relief. As we read these twelve verses together, you’re going to count if you’re paying attention, especially if you are a grammar person, you are going to count nine exclamation points. An exclamation point is a punctuation mark that begs to be overused, but the Scripture does not overuse exclamation points. Nine of them in this one psalm. That’s very unusual. This is the prayer of a desperate soul.
It’s also a psalm, as we get into it, of compelling imagery – darkness, an enemy’s crushing pursuit, even crushing one’s life to the ground, stretching out of the hands of parched land. That imagery is meant to paint pictures in our minds to stay with us, to help us cast ourselves before our Father as people who need Him desperately. And those times are significant in our minds and in our hearts when they happen. Let me just give you a quick outline. If my introduction didn’t make you feel bad, my outline really will. I’ve got five points! You know, there’s no algebra here, so it’s pretty straightforward and we’ll make our way through fairly, fairly evening. Help, verses 1 and 2. Hurt, verses 3 and 4. Hope, verses 5 and 6. Hurry!, with an exclamation point, verses 7 to 11. Hallelujah!, with another exclamation point, verse 12. Let’s get into it. Let’s open God’s Word, and first pray.
Father, we are Your needy children. We need this psalm. We need this psalm is today is a sunny day for us, we need this psalm to file away for that dark night of the soul that You at some point will inevitably drag us through as You dragged David through this one. And so, Father, help us remember to resort to it. Speak now to our hearts. Speak to us as we remember other dark times. Speak to us about how we understand them in the light of Your presence. Father, thank You. We love You. Hear our prayer, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Psalm 143:
“A Psalm of David.
Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my pleas for mercy! In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness! Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead. Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled.
I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands. I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah
Answer me quickly, O Lord! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
Deliver me from my enemies, O Lord! I have fled to you for refuge. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!
For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble! And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies, and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul, for I am your servant.”
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.
Well let’s go back to the beginning. Help, verses 1 and 2. David begins with the plea for help, specifically a plea for mercy. Why? Well, he’s in a terrible place, as he’ll let us know as the psalm progresses. He’s alone. He’s desperate. He is desolate. He’s threatened. He feels endangered. He’s in a place that he cannot help himself. And he specifically asks for mercy. “Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my pleas for mercy!” What’s mercy? It’s God’s pity, because of our misery, moved to action. He’s asking God to do things. He’s asking God to do things because he is miserable. He is in a miserable state. And he is appealing to God’s pity, God’s compassion, moved to action. And he includes this business of faithfulness – “In your faithfulness answer me. In your faithfulness have mercy. I need your pity in faithfulness.” Does he have to talk God into faithfulness, into faithful action? No, not at all. But it is the reason David can approach God. Catch that. It is the reason, the faithfulness of God is the reason that David can approach God. And he is going to approach God in urgent, desperate, very pointed ways as this psalm develops. He is asking God to be faithful to His covenant promises.
Look at the covenant references, the covenantal references in this psalm. And I am particularly going to look at the latter verses in the psalm. Verse 8, “In you I trust, for to you I lift up my soul.” David has owned Yahweh as his God, and so, and so he’s initiated or he has responded to God’s initiation of covenant with his own faith and his own trust. He has responded to God. Verse 9, “I have fled to you for refuge.” Verse 10, “You are my God.” Verse 12, “I am your servant.” He is trading on, he’s making his plea before God on the basis of God’s own promise. “For I will be your God and you will be my people.” The whole history, the whole history of Israel has been founded upon that promise and David stakes his plea on it right now. He is, he is pleading for God’s faithfulness.
That plea of faithfulness can be ours too. Remember, the promise has meaning, the covenantal promises of God have meaning for us as Gentiles. We have been grafted in. Paul, remember, tells the Galatian churches, chapter 3 of his letter to the Galatians, verse 29 – “If you are Christ’s, if you belong to Christ, you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” That plea for faithfulness can be ours too because God has engrafted us into the covenant realities that we find so prolific in the Old Testament. Jesus is the Mediator of the new covenant. God has grafted us in. We plead with Him for that kind of covenantal faithfulness as well. David is staking his prayer and his appeal to God there, and he appeals to God for righteousness. Did you catch that? “In faithfulness answer me, and in righteousness.” He is pleading with God to defend the cause of justice. Spurgeon says this. “It’s a sign of our safety when our interests and those of righteousness are blended. With God’s faithfulness and righteousness on our side, we are guarded on the right hand and on the left.” David is pleading with God for His faithfulness and work in concert or according to His righteousness.
Note that David approaches the mercy seat and not the judgment seat. Let’s understand that. Do you see that in verse 2? “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.” David knows, he can’t make a claim of innocence before God. He knows himself to be the Lord’s servant, but he cannot claim before the thrice-holy God innocence or perfection. The searchlight of God’s holiness reveals him to be a sinner and he is aware of it. As he is approaching God in this hour of great need, this hour of incredible need, he knows he cannot appeal to God with standing before the law. He has no standing before the law of God. He is appealing for mercy. “Don’t judge me. Don’t bring me into judgment. Enter not into judgment with your servant. No man living is righteous before you.” He’s got no standing on the law. His plea is for mercy. God’s faithfulness and His righteousness in His mercy.
We would say the same thing. And John says it for us. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” That’s David’s plea. John puts it in words that we are familiar with from the New Testament, but that is David’s plea right there. Help.
Hurt, verses 3 and 4. “The enemy has pursued my soul.” Who is the enemy here? Well, it’s a psalm of David. He may well have in mind flesh and blood enemies, men with names and faces that he knows. The prophets faced flesh and blood enemies. Jesus certainly faced flesh and blood enemies that He knew, the apostles. Maybe you face enemies of the same type. If we walk faithfully with Jesus, He said we’d create plenty of enemies, but we are also reminded that Paul talks about enemies that are not flesh and blood. He says in Ephesians chapter 6, “Our fight isn’t against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Like David, and all of God’s people, especially the Lord Jesus, we’ve got powerful spiritual enemies. We may have powerful flesh and blood enemies, but we have powerful spiritual enemies arrayed against us and they are working against us and working us over at every turn. Their actions against us have the same impact that David describes here. Think about it. “The enemy pursues my soul, he crushes my life to the ground.” Do you ever feel that? Do you ever feel crushed to the ground in your struggle against sin, your struggle against the devil’s accusations, your struggle against a temptation? Do you ever feel crushed to the ground? “He has made me sit in darkness like those long dead. My spirit faints. My heart is appalled.” The King James uses the word “desolate” – “My heart is desolate.” Have you ever felt that way as you have felt the enemy’s power against you and his trickery and his snares and his wiles and his incredibly creative designs against you?
David’s point, and I think we need to recognize this, is it is his enemies actions that have brought personal impact. We don’t know what they did. David doesn’t tell us what his enemies did. We don’t know what they did. We do know the impact their actions had on David, which is exactly as he describes here. He feels separated from God. He feels alone in his suffering. His suffering is intense enough that he is not sure he is going to make it all the way through this business. That’s why he is pleading to God for mercy and faithfulness to His covenant promises. He is alone in the dark with no clear way out. His enemy taunts him and accuses him. He is ringing the life out of him. Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever feel like your enemy is just literally ringing the life out of you in your struggle against sin, your struggle against whatever that old sin might be that we were talking about a moment ago? His enemy would extinguish his hope if he could.
My mind goes to Zechariah chapter 3, the image of Joshua the high priest, standing before the Lord in those filthy garments, and there is Satan, accusing him before his God. My mind goes to Revelation chapter 12 verse 10, talking about Satan, “who accuses our brothers day and night before the throne.” He doesn’t need to make anything up, does he? We give him enough ammunition, don’t we? He’s got plenty of true things to say about us. He is the father of lies, but you know, in a situation like that, he doesn’t need to lie. He just needs to keep telling the truth about us. But then, remember Job. Chapters 1 and 2 – Job was a righteous man. And Satan turned his righteousness around on him. “He is only obeying You because You are so good to him. That’s the only thing You’ve got. You give him everything, and he responds to You with obedience. You take all that away.” He uses Job’s own righteousness against him. That’s why David is ground in his soul. That’s why David is literally broken because of the treachery, the wickedness, the ugliness, the wretchedness of what his enemies do to him. Do you ever take time to hate your enemy? The enemy of your soul? Do you ever take time to hate the enemy of your soul and hate his wiles and hate what he would do to you if he could and hate everything he puts against you? Do you ever recognize the role of a holy hatred of the evil one? He’s not playing. He’s not playing. He would kill us if he could. Not just here and now; he would kill us for eternity if he could.
Notice what David does here. Help. Hurt. Hope. Look at verses 5 and 6. In the midst of that darkness, in the midst of that despair, that ugliness, that wretchedness, “I remember the days of old; I meditate on all you have done; I ponder the work of your hands.” What’s he doing? His spirit is fainting, he is desolate, but he is remembering. In the darkest of dark places, he is remembering the days of old. That’s Bible code. “Days of old” – that’s Bible code for remembering the deliverances that God has performed for His people in the past. The great plagues culminating in the death of the Egyptian firstborn, the Passover that brought the people of God out of bondage, the parting of the Red Sea and its return to its place after the last of the Israelites passed through, drowning the Egyptian army of chariots following them. They never saw the Egyptians again. That’s manna in the wilderness for forty years, water from the rock, the conquest of the land under Joshua. Remembering the great deliverances of the past, the great acts of God for His people, writ large in their history.
He says he meditates. David says, “I meditate on all you have done.” I think that’s Bible code too, but I think that’s a more personal nature. God’s protection. Remember how he described to Saul how he would go out to Goliath in his own tunic with his own weapons and not with Saul’s armor because God had protected him from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, “He will surely protect me from this uncircumcised Philistine.” David remembers his personal history with God. I think that’s what that language tells us. That moment facing Goliath, the anointing by Samuel, Jonathan and all the great benefit he had from that friendship, the ways God kept him and his men in the fugitive years when Saul was trying to seek his life. He’s meditating on all that God has done in his own personal history, here in the darkest of the dark places. His mind is remembering God’s great actions in the past and God’s personal dealings with him. He says, “I ponder the work of your hands.” David learned from creation that God cares for all that He has made. God cares for all that He has made.
What’s the point of that? The point of that is that David is going to draw a conclusion. “God did all these great things for our people, God has done all these great things for me, God has cared for the creation as I’ve certainly seen it in my walk in the world – God will not forget me.” He’s drawing a conclusion. He’s remembering, he’s meditating, he’s pondering in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of the worse place in the world, he’s drawing this conclusion that God will answer his prayer. He’s not just praying pointlessly. He’s remembering and concluding “God, Yahweh, my Father can be trusted now.” That’s an important step. He’s reflecting and he’s mining the past. I think that’s a huge story for us here. He’s mining the past. Let’s not forget to mine the past. We’re sitting in the darkness, we’re broken, we’re tortured, we’re wretched, we’re desolate. And in that moment, let’s not forget to mine the past, the past of God’s dealing with His people, the past of God’s particular dealings with us. He’s feeding and caring for everything He has made. “Surely, He won’t forget me. Surely, He won’t forget the loved one I am so burdened for. Surely, He will help me in this terrible mess that my business is in.”
He says, “I stretch out my hands” – what a beckoning gesture. “Come help me. Come get me!” How many times does a child reach out that, just like that to us? Well that’s just wasted on children, isn’t it? I always say childhood is wasted on children. They can’t appreciate it! I would love to stick up my arms and have somebody come pick me up! I would love to be picked up! Now that I am old enough to appreciate it, ain’t nobody going to pick me up! That’s what the gesture says – “Come get me. I’m here. Come get me.” And he does that because he believes that Yahweh is going to come get him. “I raise my hands, I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.” Think of that, all those pictures – and maybe you’ve walked through it yourself, all the dry lake beds you’ve seen in your life with those gaping cracks. They look like, they look like open mouths, don’t they? “Give me some water!” That’s the image that David is trying to paint for us here. And notice his language. “My soul thirsts for you.” He’s not saying, “My soul thirsts for what you are going to do for me to get me out of this mess.” “My soul thirsts for you, not just what you can do for me.” Surely, he wants God to do things, but it’s God Himself that David is thirsting for – God’s nearness, God’s presence. “My soul thirsts for you like a parched land.”
Well – Help. Hurt. Hope. Hurry. This is the largest section of this psalm. Of the nine exclamation points we were talking about earlier, seven of them you find in this section. Catch the language here. “Answer me quickly! My spirit fails! Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love. Make me know the way I should go.” “I can’t take another stop without Your clear direction,” is what he appears to be saying. “Deliver me from my enemies! Teach me!” There is just an overwhelming sense of hurry, of desperation, of utter need and total despair should God tarry. We all know that God works according to His own timetable. He is never late, but rarely early. And David is calling out, “Be, right now, be punctual. This is the point of time. We can’t tarry here. Let’s not play any games here. I’ll be dead without You,” is what he appears to be saying. “I have no one else. Hide not your face from me lest I be like those who go down to the pit. In you I trust. To you I lift up my soul. Deliver me from my enemies. I have fled to you for refuge. For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life!” David is saying, “Your reputation for Your name’s sake, because of our covenant relationship, Your reputation is tied up in my wellbeing, O Lord.” He is trading on covenant promises here, the promises that God has made to care for and to keep loving His people for the foundation of David’s cries now.
He calls in urgency; he calls in desperation, but he calls with confidence because God has promised. He is desperate. “It’s got to happen. It’s got to happen. I’m just about out. I am just about all done-in here. Everything is on the line.” But he’s calling with confidence. This is a movie – I don’t know what the musical term is, but the strings are urgent and ardent. If it’s The Lord of the Rings, this is where the great eagles show up, this is where the marching trees show up, this is when the riders of Rohan show up. What a great scene that was. It’s all happening right here.
And it brings us to verse 12 – Hallelujah! After all the urgency and desperation, you have a quiet, settled declaration of faith. “In your steadfast love, you will cut off my enemies, you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul, for I am your servant.” Again, notice the covenant references. “Your steadfast love. I am your servant.” Pleas become assurances here. David is ultimately confident of God’s willingness to help him. How could God forsake him and keep covenant with him?
What David wouldn’t know is that this psalm is peppered with references to the work of his greater Son, the ultimate covenant keeper. I’ve made references throughout this sermon to being alone in the dark because it’s certainly the feel of the psalm as David has laid it out for us. But verse 12 gives us the sense that we are not alone in those dark places, and if we look back at different lines through the psalm we can see – look back at verse 7. “Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit.” Well, we know that the Father did indeed hide His face from His Son who did go down to the pit, the grave, after the horrors of Calvary so we wouldn’t have to. Verse 8, “Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” Jesus set His face like a flint to go to Jerusalem, knowing what was awaiting Him there – rejection, death, the agony of bearing sin alone. But He went, even with discouragement, He went; even with trying to be talked out of it, He went. Even with dragging His disciples, He went.
Verse 9, “Deliver me from my enemies, O Lord, for I have fled to you for refuge.” Jesus was delivered over to His enemies and there was no refuge found for Him, for your sake, for David’s sake, for my sake. Verse 10, “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.” Remember how Jesus agonized in prayer at Gethsemane before He was betrayed and arrested. “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will but as You will.” Three times He prayed that prayer in deep agony of soul. Verse 11, “In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble.” Yet God afflicted His Son precisely because of His righteousness, allowing His Son, in fact causing His Son to be crushed under the weight of sin as our sin-bearer. David wasn’t alone in that dark place. You and I are not alone in that dark place. Jesus has been there before us and when we are there, He knows the way to take to be with us in our time there. He knows how to hear our prayer there. He knows the cry of our hearts that words can’t utter when we are there. He knows the despair because He endured it on the cross so that you and I wouldn’t have to. There’s the Hallelujah! We have a Savior who’s known the deepest and the worst who conquered and who now reigns, and He knows how to hear and help us.
You may be hearing this, as we wrap up, without the assurance that Jesus is your Savior. You can’t see Him in that dark place. But you can. You can turn from your sin, you can turn from your efforts to make yourself pretty and acceptable in God’s sight. You can trust Jesus. Trust Jesus as your Savior. Trust His work, His perfectly obedient work and His death in your place to make you right with God, and He will lead you out of that dark place and into the light of the love of the Lord. You don’t have to stay there. Jesus has been there and came out again and you can come out too. Will you come with Him? He knows the way out. Come with Him.
So David would say, were he here today, what I’m going to say right now – “Hallelujah! What a Savior!”
Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, we thank You that You are indeed, in the Lord Jesus, reconciling the world to Yourself. Father, You have made a great Savior. Father, thank You, thank You for being in those dark places with us. Thank You for remembering us. Thank You, our Father, for sending Your Son to be, to be the sacrifice for us. We are lost without Him. And thank You that He has not lost a one of those who You have given Him. And so when our times are despairing, help us remember that He has been there before us and He knows the way out. Thank You, our Father. We make our prayer in Jesus’ name and for His sake. Amen.