Psalms 13

Psalms 13:1-6

Brought up from the gates of death. To the chief musician, a psalm of David. The third psalm of the series is a resurrection psalm, as agrees well with its position. In it the soul goes down into the depths, but only to find renewal of strength, and fuller blessing. For is it not so in the case of any difficulty met with God, and mastered, as, thus met, it will be mastered? And thus, as it would seem, upon every dealing of God with us, and in every stage of His new-creative work, the stamp of resurrection will be found. We must face nature’s ruin, bury the dead, acquiesce in the setting aside of creature strength entirely, that all power may be ascribed where it belongs -to God. How interesting, in this respect, to find in each of the six days’ work wherein, in Genesis 1:1-31, we have seen the type of just this new creative work, this same stamp exhibited! On the Sabbath of rest it can be at last omitted. Thus “the evening and the morning” constitute each “day.” The day begins with light indeed, but with evening-light, destined, as it would seem, only to make haste to die out and disappear, but to have ere long its resurrection “morning.” Here, one would say, the sole purpose of the psalm is to affix this stamp: God thus snapping the ties of nature in all that sin has blighted, ending all creature -so all self -dependence, that all our trust may fasten on Himself. Then, when we make Him all, we find Him all; the natural truth, that “in Him we live and move and have our being,” becomes a spiritual truth, spiritually discerned and enjoyed. As here, the soul beginning with a groan ends with a song. We have passed through a tunnel of earth to the unveiled glory of heaven.

1. The six verses fall into three couplets, so that the six is really a 3 x 2. It is at once a discipline and a lesson in mastery that we have in them. The cry here is of one desolate indeed, although, as has been noticed, conscience is not accusing as in the sixth psalm. The psalmist cries a strange cry, bred at once of intimacy and estrangement, that Jehovah -the Unchanging -has forgotten! Then will His forgetfulness now not change? Will it be perpetual? Who, indeed, can read such a riddle as this? Clouds have hid the sun, but who would then identify the sun and the cloud? The cloud passes, but the sun abides. Simple, all this, -to see and say as to another! With the chill and the shadow upon us, is it always so easy? “Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands; thy words have upholders him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees: but now it is come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled.” (Job 4:3-5.) So it is indeed with more than Job: at the critical moment, when demand is made upon us to show strength, there is naught but weakness; the arguments that we ourselves have used with others stand where they did, but they avail not; they have not been refuted, but they do not comfort us. Ah,we need more than argument: the living strength of the God of strength alone suffices in the day of personal need; and a terrible thing it is, perhaps, then to realize how much of the energy that has carried us on has not been that! Argument? What use in argument, when a soul says, God has forgotten! He used to speak to me, He used to bless me, I used to find Him when I sought; but now! And here is one who has known the favor of Jehovah, and whose prayer has entered into His ears, telling Him he is not the same; asking, Will He remember me no more? So comes the weary “taking counsel,” the strife of thought, of little use indeed, if God be the changeable being we have made Him. All the counsel in our hearts cannot lift care indeed, if God be no more God; “if,” as Luther’s wife asked him, “God were dead.” But He is not, or we would not be at His feet, even to groan out these faithless fears.
2. And at His feet the soul grows bolder: “Consider, -answer me, Jehovah, my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep -death.” Aye, the despair of all else shows that faith is about to revive; despair of all else absolutely makes God the one grand resource. We grasp with one hand some unbreakable holdfast, and with the other some poor weed or fragile thread that could not support one for a moment; and then, when this has snapped, we cry, “Oh, the holdfast has given way,” when all that is needed is to put both hands upon it! This is now the lesson; and immediately the soul gets the right argument, not with itself but with God: “Lighten mine eyes,” it says: “Lord, Thou knowest, Thou art the light of them: yea, the light of life itself; if Thou art not with me, it is only death.” This is the argument; this is the thicket that caught for us the horns of the ram of sacrifice. (Genesis 22:13.) Our feebleness laid hold of the unique power of Christ -power that only was in Him -to bring Him in for us. He had the power, and there was none else, and He knew it: “He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore His arm brought salvation to Him.” (Isaiah 59:16.) What an argument to infinite Love to tell Him, if truthfully we can, “Lord, Thou art my one necessity: the light of these poor eyes, the light in which alone we see light; the Life without whom there is only, only death!” This is a prayer taught by the Holy Ghost Himself, -by Him who “maketh intercession for the saints according to God.” (Romans 8:27, Gk.) We put both arms round Him when we say so; and it is a prayer so possible for us all, a child’s prayer, -an infant’s, -never to be refused by the tender pity of God. He is the Light and He is the Life: simple truths indeed, yet how needful to remember. The wise of this world, with all the subtlety of human intellect, can never succeed in anything but in deceiving themselves and all that trust in them. Christ alone is wisdom, what can be ever rightly counted such, -true wisdom, because in it alone are found “righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” (1 Corinthians 1:30, Gk.)* Men are lost, and must come to God not as philosophers but as sinners. All cannot be the first; the last of these all are.
   Yet I do not say how deep the psalmist goes here. There may be more in his words than realized by himself. Death physical had not lost its shadow yet for the saint; for He had not come who has “abolished” it. The pressure of the enemy is felt all through these experiences, though by it also God is working blessing as in all things: “He maketh all things work together for good to those that love Him.” Here the psalmist pleads that the enemy may not triumph, nor his adversaries be able to exult in his being moved.
3. The third couplet gives the resurrection from the depths. First, faith finds the solid ground under its feet. It has not an elaborate argument, but a very simple one: “I have trusted in His mercy, therefore deliverance shall come!” Perhaps a little more than that: “I have trusted in His mercy: so then I will be glad at once, for deliverance is sure!” It is good to be able to honor Him thus before it comes, and not to be taken by surprise by it. Sorrowful, even in the deliverance itself, never to have given Him credit for it beforehand! Then the last verse celebrates (I think) the actual deliverance which surely follows. And now in proportion to the distress is the liveliness of the joy. The sigh becomes a song. There are no details all the way through, that we may have before us just the fact which the psalm emphasizes, that God is the God of resurrection, and that so, weaned from all self-trust, He Himself becomes the one sufficiency, -the all-sufficiency of the believing soul.