PRCH 7301 – Preaching 1

Eli Gutierrez
Sermon on Psalm 13

Life is not perfect, God's love is.

Subject: What is the proper attitude towards God in face of trials and suffering?
Compliment: Honesty to express our questions and complaints, petition for God’s real presence,
and trust in who God is, has been, and will be.
Exegetical idea: The psalmist shows that the proper attitude towards God in face of trails and
suffering is to be honest with God even expressing our questions and complains, asking for
his presence, and trusting in who he is: a faithful God yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Purpose statement: I want to provide my audience with a biblical way of facing suffering and
approaching God in the midst of pain in order to trust God even in the season of trials and to
be prepared in helping others who are grieving.
Homiletical idea: (Do not look for answers, look for God), (Are we there yet? No, but he is here
already), (When we suffer we desperately need God), (In suffering, what we need is God).

Life is not perfect, we all know that. And I suspect that we do not like it that way. However, it
is a reality, sooner or later we all suffer. Whether we like it or not, pain is an essential part of
human experience in the fallen world where we live. In his book The Problem of Pain C. S. Lewis
said: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is
his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” I think he is right but the reality is that our culture is not
well trained to face pain; therefore, we are not usually prepared to approach God and hear his voice
when things are not going exactly the way we want. That is why I love the psalms of lament
because they provide us with a way to speak to God in the midst of pain. Maybe you are in pain
right now and you could use a prayer of lament. Maybe you are not in pain right now but probably
you could use it in the future. And whether you are in pain or not, we need to be prepared to provide
a biblical answer to human suffering if we want to serve people in a suffering world.
Psalm 13.
The psalmist repeats the question “how long?” four times. With each repetition, the intensity
of the complaint increases. Certainly, this is a psalm for a time of crisis. “How long?” is a question
of endurance. They say that the greatest pain is not the sharpest but the longest. The psalmist asks
“How long? How much more? Until when?”
These questions remind me when I was a little boy and my family and I used to take long trips
across Mexico. As soon as I was in the back seat of the car I began to ask the question that any
child keeps asking during a trip, “are we there yet?” I could ask that question a million times during
the trip. But, interestingly, I would not ask it if I was having a great time, while watching a movie
or playing a game. But as soon as I was bored I asked again “are we there yet?”
We are impatient, we want things to be our way, and when things are going according to our
will we want them to change immediately. But the world does not work in that way, we live in a
fallen world where there is evil, pain, suffering, and sometimes it seems even chaos. And that is
why we have in the Bible Psalms like this, Psalms of lament. Those are authorized ways to
approach God in difficult circumstances. Prayers that believers in God have been praying for
centuries and that we can use to learn how should be our attitude and prayer before God when we
go through the season of pain.
 We do not know exactly why the psalmist was suffering and I think it is not important because
it was preserved as a prayer to be used in a variety of difficult circumstances. Questioning God is
not uncommon in the Bible. Cain, Moses, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, and perhaps the most famous
questioner Job. And what we learn is that when we suffer we can approach God with honesty. We
can open our hearts. We do not have to hold back anything from God. We can pour out even our
complains to God. That is not lack of faith, that is part of the human walk of faith. This was a
prayer attributed to David, the great king of Israel. How much more can we pray in that way?
The psalmist feels abandoned by God and asks “will you forget me forever?”. He does not
sense his presence. And, let’s be honest, sometimes we have felt in the same way, that God is not
here, that he is not active, perhaps even that he has abandoned us. And not only that God has
passively forgotten us but that he is actively hiding from us. The psalmist says “how long will you
hide your face from me.” There is this sense that God is deliberately not intervening in the situation
of the psalmist to deliver him, protect him, and comfort him. I have been there, and I am grateful
that the Bible provides a prayer for times like this. Perhaps you have felt like that too, and that is
fine.
The complaints continue. First, the psalmist asks questions related to God’s abandonment. Now
he says “how long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?”
These are questions related to the self. Have you ever been so stressed, so worried, so overwhelmed
by anguish that you cannot even sleep? Sometimes we try to solve the situation by our own strength
only to end even more frustrated. We do everything in our possibilities and we are still in the same
place. At that moment, when everything seems lost we can go to the Lord as well.
The last complaint refers to others. The lament of the psalmist goes from God to the self, to
others, encompassing the entire spectrum of human suffering: spiritual, emotional, and physical.
He says “how long will my enemy triumph over me?” Have you felt like that? That all of your
problems are over you. Even then you can approach God with honesty.
There is much that can be said on Psalm 13, but if we go to the heart of the matter, I find that
the psalmist is not asking for answers, he is not looking for information, he is asking for the real
presence of God. His questions are rhetorical questions, he really is not crying for answers like
“you are going to suffer two more years”, no! what he cries for is a restoration of fellowship with
God. It seems that God has hidden his face, not only passively forgetting the psalmist, but actively
hiding from him. And the psalmist shouts for help, for the presence of God. That is what we can
do in the midst of suffering, to approach the Lord with honesty and cry for his presence.
It is clear now that we can go to God sincerely in our pain and raise our questions and
complaints. But we should not stay on that phase, we must move forward. The psalmist goes from
lament to petition. “Look on me and answer, Lord my God.” It is interesting that in the middle of
great anguish and unspeakable pain the psalmist still calls the Lord “my God.” When the world is
falling apart, when our life does not make sense, and when it seems that he has forgotten us, even
then he is God, even then we can approach him in prayer.
The petition part of the psalm parallels the lament. In the petition the psalmist also started from
God and then went to the self, saying: “give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death.” His own
life is in danger. Again, we do not know the exact situation. And perhaps the Psalm was written
ambiguously to let the reader see her own situation. Suffering sometimes feels like our life is at
risk. And the prayer is “give light to my eyes.” If the complaint was “you have hidden your face
from my”, the petition is “turn your face to me.” God’s face is the source of light. And what the
psalmist is primarily asking is not a change of situation but the presence of God. What we
desperately need in the midst of suffering is not, in the first place, solution to our problems but the
presence of God. We need he who is the source of life and light.
In parallel fashion, the petition continues from God, to the self, to others, explaining the need
for deliverance now pointing to the enemies. The psalmist expresses that God is his only hope.
Sometimes suffering helps us realize that God is the only hope. Sometimes you do not know that
God is the only thing you need until God is the only thing you have.
One day an American preacher went to Mexico City for a conference. He took his family with
him. After one of the services, there was a Mexican meal for everyone. The nine-year-old kid of
this preacher saw a red Mexican fruit in the table that looked delicious and he wanted to taste it.
He asked his father “Daddy, can I have one of those fruits.” “No,” the father replied, “you do not
want one of those.” The kid, mad because he really wanted a fruit, waited until his father was
distracted and bit one of the red fruits. Suddenly, his white face turned to pink, to intense red, and
began to cry out loud. It was a very hot Mexican chili. The dad was right, his little kid did not want
one of those fruits. God knows better what we need. That is why our first prayer should be not
what we want but his presence in our life. To pray like Jesus “not what I will but what you will.”
The psalmist started in lament, then he moved to petition, and, in a sudden change, he ends
with trust. The are no hints in the text that the problem has been solved. The crisis is still there.
The situation did not change but he did. Now he trusts in the Lord, rejoices in his salvation, and
promises to praise him (v. 5-6). Or, perhaps, the lesson here is that lament and trust are not two
opposites that exclude each other. Perhaps lament and trust are two faces of the human experience
that can be expressed at the same time. In any way, what is clear here is that this prayer of lament
ends with a profound confession of trust.
If it was not a change in the situation, what could have changed the psalmist attitude? What
produced the move from lament to trust, joy, and praise? The answer is as simple as compelling:
God. His cry was not for answers, so he did not receive answers. His cry was for the restoration of
a broken relationship with God. And that is what he received, not answer to his questions, or
solution to his problems. What calmed him was the presence of God, the assurance that God is
listening his prayer.
This reminds me Job, the questioner of God. As the psalmist, Job was experiencing
unspeakable pain and he also questioned God. Also, as the psalmist Job ends trusting in the Lord.
But it was not the restoration of Job what calmed him, he was trusting even before he received his
restoration. It was not answer either, he never received an explanation of his experience. Then,
where did Job find peace in the midst of his great tragedy? In God. It was knowing God what gave
him peace. He said: “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.” The only way
to wipe away our anguish is experiencing who God is.
My Dad wrote a song for my mom. It is a romantic song called “I love you” The chorus of the
song says: “All the questions that a man could ask, I do not know whether they are answered or I
just forget them, when I can see my face in your eyes, and feel skin to skin the beat of your soul.”
That is what happens when we know the Lord, not because of a romantic experience but because
knowing him is to be sure that he is faithful.
The psalmist is trusting God on the grounds of who God is, who God has been, and who he
will be. He starts from the present (“I trust in your unfailing love”). The psalmist trusts that God’s
love is unfailing. He trusts in his steadfast love, his loyal love, his faithfulness, his fidelity, the
assurance that he will never fail. We may have no answers or explanations, but one thing remains,
he is faithful. Then the psalmist goes to the future, he trusts in God’s salvation (“my heart rejoices
in your salvation”). He does not know exactly how or when, but he trusts that God is going to
deliver him. That is the kind of trust that we can put on a faithful God. And finally, he trusts in
God for what he has done (“for he has been good to me”).
When I think in what God has done, it is impossible not to think in the greatest love, the love
of Jesus Christ giving his life for his friends, because there is no greater love than that. And if God
gave up his son for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? That
is the God in whom we trust. A God whose love is perfect and who demonstrated his loving in that
Jesus died for us.
Elie Wiesel tells a story about when he was in a concentration camp. The Nazis were hanging
two men and one boy while he and his fellow prisoners were working. After several hours the two
men were dead but the boy was still breathing, agonizing in pain. One prisoner asked “where is
God?” And other replied: “there he is, hanging from these gallows.”
When we ask “where is God in my pain?” When we feel that he has abandoned us and forgotten
us. We can answer: here he is with his arms wide open, suffering with the ones who suffer,
complaining with the ones who complain, crying with the ones who cry. When we ask as the
psalmist “how long oh Lord?”, or perhaps as I asked when I was a child: “are we there yet?”. We
can answer: no, we are not there yet, but God is here already. And we can trust in his unfailing
love because life is not perfect but God’s love is.

Introduction: Suffering is a reality in the fallen world where we live. How should we face
suffering? Psalms of lament provide an authorized way to approach God. We need them.
Text: Psalm 13.
o How long? – the intensity of the question.
o Are we there yet? – story of my childhood.
o We are impatient – that is why we need psalms of lament.
1. When we suffer, we may address God honestly.
a. We do not know why the psalmist is in despair but we can pray like him. (God).
i. When we feel forgotten and abandoned, we can approach God.
b. We may try to solve the situation by ourselves. (Self).
c. We can sense that the problems are over us. (Others).
d. We desperately need the presence of God, not answers.
2. When we suffer, we shall approach God in prayer.
a. Because he is still our God. (God).
b. Because he is the source of life. (Self).
c. Because he is the only hope. (Others).
i. The story of the American kid eating a Mexican “fruit.”
3. When we suffer, we can trust for he is still faithful.
a. God himself brought peace, not answer, not solutions.
i. The example of Job. We find peace in knowing God.
ii. The example of my Dad’s song.
b. The ground for trust is who God is, has been, and will be.
i. Jesus Christ is the greatest proof of God’s love.
c. The proper response to God’s love is worship.
Conclusion: where is God in our suffering? He is here. Are we there yet? Not yet, but God is here
already. We can trust his unfailing love because life is not perfect but God’s love is.