Psalm 6: God Hears Our Weary Prayers | Psalm Devotion

Psalm 6 is the prayer of a worn-out man. David is languishing, and he asks the Lord not to rebuke him in anger or discipline him in wrath. In this episode of Morning Psalms and Prayers, we read the whole psalm and look at verses 1 and 2, verses 6 and 7, and verse 9.

On this side of the cross, we can pray those opening words with a certainty David did not have. Christ bore the wrath we deserved, so we will not face his wrath.

The devotional also looks at weariness. David does not keep it to himself or blame God. He cries out, and so can we. We know the Lord hears our plea, and it has nothing to do with how holy our morning was. Jesus is at the Father's right hand interceding for us, and that is enough.

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Good morning and welcome to morning Psalms in Prayer. This is June 3rd, it is Wednesday, and we begin again with a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Let us pray.

Almighty and Merciful God, by whose only gift it comes that your faithful people give to you true and praiseworthy service, grant we ask you that we may so run to your heavenly promises that we fail not finally to attain the same through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Psalm for today has us in Psalm 6. We'll be reading all of it. Hear the word of the Lord.

O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled, but you, O Lord, how long? Turn O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol, who will give you praise? I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows weak because of all my foes. Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

We start with looking at verses 1 and 2. O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Those are things that we can very easily pray. We do not want God to rebuke us in his anger. We do not want him to discipline us in his wrath. That is something that we do not desire to have because God's punishment is harsh. And so this is a great prayer for us. As we think about our sin, as we struggle with what is going on in our lives and how we have things that are happening to us that are out of our control, what do we always ask for? We want God's grace. We want his mercy. We want the confidence that he isn't punishing us for something that we have done.

One neat thing about this verse is when we read this on the other side of the cross, we can have a sure confidence that this has come to be for us. We know that God does not rebuke us in his anger, that he doesn't discipline us in his wrath, not because of anything that we've done. Now that doesn't mean God doesn't discipline us, but I'm talking about the great discipline of our death, of our being separated from him eternally. We know that God is for us because he has sent his son and his son died for us, rose again for us, ascended to the right hand of the Father for us. And now we can have a confidence that we have not been disciplined in his wrath, that we are not going to receive his anger. Why? Because we have the grace of God. He has given us the gift of faith to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for all that he has done.

And so we can actually pray this differently than the psalmist. We know for sure that we have this because we know of Christ. Now he had a confidence that God was for him, but we have the fulfillment of that in Jesus Christ. We understand completely how we are saved in a way that no one in the Old Testament could have fully understand. They were looking forward to the promise, but they didn't know the fulfillment of it like we do in Jesus. And we'll see a lot of that as we go through the book of Hebrews over the next few weeks.

Now verse 6 and verse 7, "I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with weeping. My eyes waste away because of grief. It grows weak because of all my foes." David is going through something very serious here. He is struggling, but as we've seen through all these psalms, we've looked at since we started doing this, what is his source? His source is God. His source is his word. He's calling out to him. He has these feelings, but he's not putting the blame on God. Instead he's saying, "I need you. I need your rescue. I need your grace. I need you to be with me through all of this."

And the word that kind of stands out for me, the reason that I highlighted and wanted to talk about these couple verses, is the weariness. I think one thing that I get more than anything from talking to people about all the circumstances, particularly the last week and, well, it's a week and two days now, week and a half, and then the whole entire thing with coronavirus stuff, it has been very difficult to maintain a positive attitude through the whole thing, right? And so I think a lot of people are weary. But sometimes God can really use our weariness. It causes us to call out to him in a different way. It causes us to call out like the psalmist does here, right? He could have kept this to himself, but instead he prayed to God. He said, "I'm just weary." And he called out to God.

And that's what we should do because of what we see in verse 9. "The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer." Just like I started with at the top of this psalm. We have a confidence here when we talk about this. We know that when we cry out to God, we know that the Lord has heard our plea. We know that the Lord accepts our prayers. Again, not because of anything that you or I were doing. God doesn't hear my prayer this morning because I was a little extra holy today. God doesn't hear my prayer because I picked up my Bible and did a quiet time. That is not why we know that God hears our pleas. It has nothing to do with me.

It has everything to do with the fact that Jesus is himself in our very flesh at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. And that is unbelievably good news. We have that confidence that our plea is heard. The Lord accepts our prayers.

The best part of this is if it was up to me, I know I'd mess it up. And so I am so pleased that when I read these verses, knowing that the Lord accepts my prayers, that it's because of what Jesus has done, that he is interceding for us. And so I can have a confidence that is so different than any other thing I can have. I know God hears me. And I put my trust in that. And so may we do that. May we put our absolute trust in the sufficiency of the gospel, in the sufficiency of what Christ has done for us, with everything that can happen in the world. There is nothing better than that. The sufficiency of Christ. He has done it is enough. I don't have to do anymore. I have to believe by faith that he has accomplished it. So may we do that today. Let us go to prayer.

Father in heaven, we praise you because in Jesus Christ you have not rebuked us in your anger and you have not disciplined us in your wrath. Instead your wrath was poured out on your precious son that we might be saved. Because of this great truth we know that even when we are languishing, we can know that you love us because of your grace.

Today we lift up our missionaries that are serving in the Netherlands. We pray for their ministry and we thank you for their faithful proclamation of the gospel to the people that you have called them to serve. We pray that you would prepare the hearts that will hear the gospel and trust that the Holy Spirit will be at work to bring people to faith and grow them in that same faith. We pray that you would bless these servants of the gospel and their children.

As we begin our day we know that you have heard our pleas and that you accept our prayers. This is not because of anything that we have done, but because our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ is interceding for us at the Father's right hand. It is in his name that we pray. Amen.

Well, we are at the middle of the week. I hope you are able to finish strong. Have a good day.

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