God Hears The Voice of Your Weeping

[0:00] Well, after I'm done reading Psalm 6, I'll say, this is the word of the Lord, and let's respond, thanks be to God. Psalm 6, to the chief musician on Nigonoth, that's stringed instruments, upon Shimoneth.

[0:14] That's probably a musical melody or note, but we don't know much about that ancient Hebrew term, but it actually confirms the antiquity, how ancient these psalms truly are. It's a psalm of David.

[0:27] Verse 1. O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thine hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak.

[0:40] O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed, but thou, O Lord, how long? Verse 4.

[0:52] Return, O Lord, deliver my soul. O save me for thy mercy's sake. For in death there is no remembrance of thee.

[1:03] In the grave who shall give thee thanks? I am weary with my groaning. All the night make I my bed to swim in.

[1:16] I water my couch with my tears. Mine eye is consumed because of grief. It waxeth old because of thine enemies. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.

[1:30] For the Lord hath heard the sound. The Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. Verse 9. The Lord hath heard my supplication.

[1:40] The Lord will receive my prayer. Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed. Let them return and be ashamed suddenly. This is the word of the Lord.

[1:54] Thanks be to God. You may be seated. This is God's inspired, inerrant, infallible, clear, and sufficient word. Isaiah tells us that the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord, it endures forever.

[2:10] Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we ask that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you will take these words that you breathed out, and that you will give us clarity, help us to understand what you mean with Psalm 6.

[2:34] And we pray that your Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that breathed out the Scripture, will press the truth of the Gospel upon our hearts. We pray that you will, Lord, not let anyone here leave without believing in Jesus Christ for your glory.

[2:53] We ask, Lord, that you will be glorified through the word that's preached, and in our lives as we leave here. We pray for the sake of Christ.

[3:03] Amen. Well, beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, did you hear this glorious promise in verse 8? You can put your eyes on it again.

[3:17] David said, The Lord, He hears the voice of my weeping. That's the promise from Psalm 6 that I want to try to press home to you.

[3:30] God hears the voice of your weeping. Psalm 6 is another Psalm of David. The warrior who crushed Goliath's forehead, here in Psalm 6, is paralyzed with sickness in his bones.

[3:48] Don't you love Hebrew poetry? The musician who brought comfort to others trembles with an aching soul at the thought of death. That same king who danced for joy before a whole nation, he now weeps alone before God.

[4:10] Psalm 6 is the prayer of a man in affliction. He feels buried under a tsunami of his own guilt. He says, My eyes fail.

[4:22] It's like his eyes are a dam trying to hold back the waters and they break forward. You know, we live here in Colorado and some say that Colorado has a tendency to have hard hearts.

[4:39] It's a certain type of people that migrated west, individualistic, self-sufficient people. And to cast the gospel seed here is like throwing wheat onto Rocky Mountain.

[4:53] But even John Steinbeck, the American author, was honest about this. He said, Quote, Nearly everybody has his box of secret pain shared with no one. End quote.

[5:04] So pause in light of Psalm 6 and try to be as honest at least as John Steinbeck. What is the cause of your pain?

[5:17] What is most difficult about your life? What feelings lead you to weep, if any at all? The Bible says that there is only one hope in life and in death.

[5:35] And that is if, if you are not your own, but you belong body and soul to our Lord Jesus Christ. The next question in our catechism asks, then what must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

[5:52] And there are three answers, which I chose this because it's really the progression of Psalm 6. You must know three things to live and die with the joy and the assurance that you belong to Christ.

[6:03] Number one, you must know your own guilt. You and I, we must know how great our sin and misery are outside of Christ. Number two, we must know God's grace.

[6:14] We must know how we are set free from all of our sins by God's mercy. And number three, we must know gratitude. How I am to thank God for such deliverance.

[6:27] So what you need to know is guilt first, grace second, and gratitude third. Listen for that theme as we move through the verses of Psalm 6. I've tried to pull up five biblical truths in Psalm 6.

[6:41] The first one is this. Before you can be healed, you must know how great your sin is before God. Look at verse one.

[6:52] David says, Oh Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me. Don't chasten me in your wrath or in your hot displeasure.

[7:03] See, David says that his suffering, it comes from the hands of men, his enemies, his foes. That's how he's describing his affliction. But David's guilt, it tells him that behind the suffering from the hands of man is the providence of God.

[7:17] It's the discipline of God on me, which I deserve. So it's as if David is saying, Oh Lord, I accept your correction, but please restrain your wrath or else I'll die.

[7:30] David's saying that, God, if you act toward me like a man would act, I'm dead. The beauty of the gospel, it comes in the light of who God is.

[7:44] You will never truly know how great your sin is before God until you know how truly great God is. And some within earshot, you might be saying, I've rejected God a long time ago.

[7:57] I've rejected church and the Bible a long time ago. You might have rejected a God that is not the God of the Bible. You might have rejected a church that's not a church of Jesus Christ.

[8:10] Because God is not like man. If that's the God you rejected, you rejected an idol made in your own mind. Man is created.

[8:21] God is creator. Man is emotional, but God is all virtue. Man is vindictive. That's why David's shaking. But God is unchanging.

[8:34] Man acts rashly, but God radiates his essence consistently. Man reacts, but God is pure act. And if your guilt is plaguing you, this could be the Holy Spirit beginning to soften that rock-hard soil of your heart.

[8:59] So thank Him if you feel guilt before this holy God. Romans 3 says, Isaiah 5 says, Isaiah 5 says, The Lord will be exalted in judgment.

[9:17] He will show Himself holy in righteousness. So the first thing we need to do is stop denying how broken we are. It's like a doctor trying to warn you, you have diabetes.

[9:29] If you keep eating sugar and Twinkies, you will die sooner. Stop denying that you have this disease and listen. Listen to the Holy Spirit, even if it comes through that feeling of guilt.

[9:42] Do you want to be healed? Do you want to be healed? Then you must first know how great your sin is.

[9:56] And when you feel the weight of your sin before this holy God, it will soften your heart. And if you weep for your sin, if you weep for your guilt, those are tears that will bring healing.

[10:09] So let it flow. The Lord heals by cutting open your guilt. And He must cut it open so that His medicine can get inside of you to heal you.

[10:22] So the first truth is that before you can be healed, you must know how great your sin is before God. And the second truth is that when God cuts you open with the guilt exposing you before His holy moral law, He does that because He wants you to ask for the healing balm of His grace.

[10:42] Look at verse 2. David prays, Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. O Lord, my bones are troubled. David uses this word languishing.

[10:56] He says, I am weak. Three times David describes himself and the Hebrew word is Baha'u'll. And it means faint, weak, troubled, terrified. You could take the original meaning and translate verse 2 this way.

[11:10] He's saying, Lord, be gracious to me because I'm like one who droops. I droop before you like a withered plant. Lord, be tender and gentle with this plucked flower of yours because I am so easily crushed.

[11:26] When he says in verse 2 that my bones even are troubled, he's saying the most solid part of me that should give me some stability, even that is vexed.

[11:38] My bones wobble. But David appeals to the grace of God. He says, Be gracious to me, O Lord. And he's not just making something up about God from his own thoughts.

[11:52] He's calling upon God from God's own word. It's from Exodus 34 where the Lord told all of his people for all generations, I am the Lord your God.

[12:03] I am merciful. I am gracious. I am slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That's what God says I am.

[12:15] David simply reminds God, you said you are gracious and merciful. So be gracious to me now, Lord. Heal me. Be merciful to me. David's confessing I am sick.

[12:28] I have demerited any favor I could ever hope for. I appeal to your kindness, David says, out of your grace. Cut me open. Remove the cancer from my sick bones so I can be healed.

[12:43] In verse 3, David says, My soul also is greatly, greatly troubled. So it's not just his outer man, not just his bones and his flesh. It's his soul. My soul is greatly troubled.

[12:56] He says, But you, O Lord, how long? It's like he interrupts himself in mid-sentence. But you, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord?

[13:10] Isn't it true that when we suffer, minutes of suffering feel like hours? Hours feel like days. Days feel like weeks. Some of you have been suffering for years, and you're crying out to the Lord, How much longer?

[13:28] How long, O Lord, was a favorite prayer of John Calvin's, one of the great reformers. Sometimes it's reported that was all he could pray. He faced physical ailments, tiresome burdens.

[13:42] He was frequently misunderstood. He endured constant opposition. Isn't that encouraging that we're not alone when we suffer through affliction? Martin Luther, he was a man who was so troubled often in his soul, he questioned his own salvation.

[13:58] And even in discovering the doctrines of grace, it didn't stop. To his very death, Luther questioned, How could it be that God would save me with such amazing grace?

[14:09] Am I really saved? Martin Luther wrestled with that. Charles Spurgeon in London, he suffered with depression throughout his entire ministry as a preacher, preaching the gospel, going home, and weeping in solitude, unable to even get out of bed sometimes.

[14:25] When God disciplines Calvin, Luther, Spurgeon, you and me, when we go through affliction, God is seeking one thing from us.

[14:38] It's our submission to him. So the answer to the question, How long, O Lord? The answer is, Until you surrender to me. And even then, I might not remove this affliction from you, but you will be surrendered.

[14:53] You will know sweet peace and joy in that affliction. David felt in his body, but he felt it even more in the aching of his soul, the weight of his sin, and his need for God's grace.

[15:15] He asked for God to be gracious to him and heal him, and he's asking for that gracious balm, that salve to be put on his wound that God's opened up.

[15:26] You know, a person with a fryer burns themselves with hot oil. You're going to need to put some ointment on that right away, but it's not just a one time, is it? You're going to need to keep putting more and more and more healing balm, healing ointment on the burn until God restores all those layers of skin.

[15:43] That's how his grace is with us when he cuts you open, and your heart finally receives the truth of the gospel, and he softens the soil of your heart enough for that gospel seed to take root.

[15:55] He continues pouring more and more grace on you, more and more healing ointment, and he keeps opening you up deeper and deeper and deeper, and putting more grace in until he heals you to the roots of your soul.

[16:07] What a gracious Lord we serve. That's the second truth, that when God cuts you open with guilt, it's so that he will heal you with the balm of his grace over and over and over until your soul is ready for heaven.

[16:22] Praise the Lord for his amazing grace. The third truth from Psalm 6 is that David still is troubled, and he counts the cost of remaining in the guilt of his sin by rejecting or not receiving God's grace.

[16:42] Maybe you feel like God is beginning to soften your heart of stone. Do you want him now? Do you want him to cut you open? And do you want his grace?

[16:54] Because if not, you need to do the same as David. You need to ponder the thought of life without God now and forevermore. You need to count the cost of not receiving his grace.

[17:05] Look at what David prays in verses 4 through 7. He says, Turn, O Lord. The Hebrew word is return. I knew what it was to have your presence.

[17:16] Now it feels like your back is to me, and I want you to turn back to me, Lord. Deliver my life, he says in verse 4. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love.

[17:29] Verse 5, For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol, who will give you praise? Verse 6, I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears.

[17:40] I drench my couch with weeping. Verse 7, My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows weak because of all my foes. David is full of the fear of death.

[17:54] He ponders the thought, the terror of dying and being put in Sheol. That's the realm of the dead. And that thought of his soul being away from God forever, that causes all of the fears to go up to the next level of horror in his mind.

[18:11] And he says, It's like I'm swimming in my own tears at the dread of that thought. He is pleading for spiritual mercy from the just God.

[18:23] And we can infer that David is fainting at the thought of eternal death. But in verse 4, David asks God to return to him.

[18:37] See, the sin in David's life and the weight of his own guilt, it made him feel so distant from God. Isn't that true? You're saved, but when you sin, your fellowship with God feels broken.

[18:49] You know God is unchanging, but you still feel so distant. And that guilt, it's good for us when it stirs up the thought of what life would be like for eternity.

[19:00] Away from God. He says, Lord, if you heal me now, I will praise you. But if you don't heal me, how am I supposed to praise you from the grave? Spurgeon said, Church graveyards are silent places.

[19:15] The tombstones cannot sing God's psalms to him. So if God is keeping you alive now, it's so you will sing his praise while you have breath in your lungs.

[19:27] If God would spare David's life, then David would live to praise God out of gratitude. David is appealing once again to that promise from Exodus 34.

[19:39] Who is this God? Yes, God said, I am gracious. I am merciful. I'm slow to anger. God says, I keep my steadfast love for thousands, and I forgive the iniquity, and the transgressions, and the sins of my people when they turn back to me.

[19:56] If David could have that hope of God's mercy, looking way forward into the distant, and into the king, and priest, and prophet, who would come from his line, the one and promised Messiah, and by faith in that promised Messiah, David could know God's grace.

[20:15] How much more can we have hope? We can look back at the finished work of Christ. Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 45. Whoever believes in him has eternal life, and whoever does not obey him will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

[20:35] So Jesus warns you, turn to me now and have eternal life, but if you do not repent, you remain in your sin, and the wrath of God remains on you. You need to ponder the thought of missing God's grace by rejecting him, by keeping your heart hard.

[20:54] God said, I am God. There is none else. All who turn to Christ will be saved. Anyone who forsakes Christ has eternal death.

[21:08] The message of Scripture is, weep over our sin now, and we will enjoy life with Christ forevermore. But if in our pride, we reject Christ now, we will spend eternity weeping in our sin.

[21:26] Count the cost of rejecting God in your pride. Your only hope to live is if God will cut you open, remove your infected nature, and instead fill you with his love and grace through Jesus Christ.

[21:45] The fourth truth is that if you have eyes that can weep, here's our glorious promise, God will hear the voice of your weeping, and he will transform you just like he transformed David.

[21:58] See, there's a transformation that happens in Psalm 6, and it takes place after verse 7. Put your eyes on verse 7 into verse 8. This shift is so radical that some commentators don't even know how to explain it.

[22:14] Listen to what David prays next after talking about his fear and his room, his private room filled with his tears. In verse 8 he says, Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.

[22:28] The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. And in verse 10 he says, Now it's not God who's got his back turned to me, it's God who has returned to me, and it's my enemies who've got their back turned away from God, running from him and his coming judgment.

[22:44] All of a sudden, there's no more fear in David. There's no more terror. And it's not hard to explain this shift. We should let God's word interpret it for us.

[22:55] Look at verse 8 one more time. The shift comes because God has answered David's prayer. Three times David recognizes, The Lord heard the sound of my weeping.

[23:07] The Lord heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. And it changes everything. He has heard the sound, the voice of my weeping.

[23:20] One Puritan broke this down this way. No matter who we are, no matter who you are, there is a language of weeping that God always hears and God always understands.

[23:32] Weeping is the eloquence of sorrow. It needs no interpreter. Our tears are understood even when our words fail.

[23:44] Let us think of our weeping, I love this, as liquid prayers. See, David's sad tears of guilt are transformed by God's grace into joyful tears of gratitude.

[24:04] I need to tell you, if there is hope for David, everything we know about him from Scripture, there is hope for you and me too. David felt the healing of God in his soul throughout his whole body.

[24:22] And he enjoyed the peace and joy that come from the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to confess, early in my marriage to Andrea, before we had children or maybe our oldest was very little, Andrea had to confront me that I was not leading our little family spiritually well at all.

[24:43] I went maybe 10 years as a young husband and father, 10 years without shedding a tear over anything and a very hard heart though I was saved.

[24:56] In the last five years or so, I can't really explain it except that many others have experienced something similar. The Lord just broke me down gradually through his word.

[25:10] And the kingdom of heaven, as simple as the gospel is, it's true, it's real, and it changes everything. And as the Lord grew in me a desire to aspire toward doing that work of an overseer and the thought of my sin, my unworthiness before him and his holiness and entrusted with the souls that he loves and shed his blood for, the tears have just come so quickly and it's tears of joy and I just want to know him more and more and more.

[25:42] And I share that because if there's hope for David, if there's hope for Jason, there's hope for you, for every single one. And there's hope for me for my future.

[25:53] I don't trust myself with my future, but God will keep us because David prays for God's steadfast love to hold us. And he does that by reminding us of his love and it overflows from his grace on us through tears.

[26:11] works its way out from the soul through the body. Praise the Lord. Another Puritan said, a penitent tear is a powerful ambassador.

[26:24] It never returns from the throne of God disappointed. God hears the voice of your weeping. Yes, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life.

[26:40] Romans 6. Because Jesus came to seek and to save you and me while we were lost. Hebrews 4, we're told that Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man and he is able to sympathize with our weakness, our trials, our afflictions, even our tears.

[26:59] In every respect, Jesus was suffering and tempted yet as we are, but he remained without sin because God's steadfast love was full in Jesus Christ and through him it overflows unto his people.

[27:19] Well, we've made it through all the verses of Psalm 6. Those were four truths and I said we have five. The fifth truth is this, that God's grace soaks in and he heals you as you exercise gratitude for his grace.

[27:38] You need to exercise gratitude for his grace to keep working that healing balm into your life. I'm going to take us back to verse 4. We pointed out how David says, return, return, oh Lord, and deliver my life.

[27:54] Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. And then in verse 5, David says, how can we praise you from the grave? It's like David saying, Lord, if you heal me, if you spare my life now, I will live to give you praise.

[28:11] So the lesson from Psalm 6 is that God hears the voice of your weeping and when he heals you by his grace, the only appropriate response is to live in gratitude.

[28:25] God was still there all along with David. It felt like he was distant, but God was with David through his affliction. We have a mediator that is closer to us than a brother.

[28:37] He is with us through our suffering. If you are going through anything in your life that is bringing up this weeping or this affliction that is causing you to cry out, how long, oh Lord?

[28:51] Remember that in your anguish, through the dark night of your soul, God is with you. Jesus says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And it's the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all sin.

[29:06] 1 John 1, 7. See church, Christ loves you so much that he saves you, but he doesn't just leave you, he washes you and grows you through gratitude.

[29:16] We're told in Ephesians 5 that Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her. Listen to this. That he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

[29:33] So exercise your gratitude for Christ by letting him wash over you and sanctify you by his word. God hears the voice of your weeping because our Lord Jesus Christ, God who took on flesh, he bore your guilt to kill sin so that you can have peace.

[29:59] Our Lord Jesus Christ, God became flesh to show you that truly the Father hears the voice of your weeping.

[30:11] That's why he was the man of sorrows, crushed to death to conquer Satan so that you can now live in joy. God hears the voice of your weeping because our Lord Jesus Christ who took on a body and was wounded in that body to die, to be buried, and then to be raised victoriously, inaugurating the new creation.

[30:36] And he did this so that you may be healed. And enjoy life everlasting with him. Know that God hears the voice of your weeping.

[30:48] Put your trust in him. May his grace wash over you, heal you, so that you can live in gratitude. Let's pray. Amen. God bless you.

[31:07] Amen. We read in 2 Corinthians 4.13 that the Holy Spirit works in us far more exceeding an eternal weight of glory. And Father, we ask that you will work that in your people today.

[31:22] Work in us the weight of your glory by the grace of Jesus. Fill us. Fill us to overflowing, Lord, with gratitude for your love.

[31:33] We long for that final day and we do cry out as a church, how long, oh Lord, please come quickly, Lord Jesus. We long for that final day when your warfare is completed.

[31:46] When all of your enemies have been vanquished and they've departed from the new heavens and the new earth finally, constantly, forever. We long for that day, Lord, when sin and suffering, death and Satan are no more.

[32:02] When there will be no more weeping. We will only enjoy the peace of perfect, perfect oneness with you in your new kingdom. Come quickly, oh Lord, and until then prepare us, Father, for your return.

[32:16] For Christ's sake we ask. Amen.