In a world that offers and shouts pleasures without number, the language of sorrow is often muffled or muted altogether. The deafening roars of entertainment and hedonism have a way of doing just that. Even in places where being broken and somber should be the norm, people are opting for other alternatives. Just research “funeral humor/antics.” The findings will make you squirm with awkwardness.[1] The rise in opioid use in the last half-century is certainly no secret. Our hyper-sexual culture was just made more so by the supreme court not two weeks ago with the reinterpretation of a single word.[2] Humor and pleasure are tools taken up by humanity to mute the sorrows that are inevitable in a fallen world. Being broken over anything is often a show of weakness, and a dominant pattern in our culture is to duck and dodge the harder realities in this world. The godless world system doesn’t fail altogether at lamentation, but even in the deepest grief there is often shallow introspection and certainly no correspondence to what God has declared to be true inside of grief. Yet, this should not be so with those who have cast their trust upon the Man of Sorrows. And though we’ll not foolheartedly invite troubles into the spaces carved out for us by God’s wisdom, we have the space afforded to us to linger in the minor key. This Psalm, along with others Psalms of lament, gives us a kind of permission to approach the Lord and allow Him hear from us about the deepest experiential dungeons that this fallen world possesses. And what we’ll inevitably find in turning to the scriptures is that those gloomy dungeons aren’t devoid of some surprising and kind pathways to the Son. The beams of Psalm 6 can illumine our journey, even when the darkness veils our life, or worse, veils the good that God is shaping through our pain.

A cursory reading of this Psalm easily shows us that things are not stable for Jesse’s son, who, in days past cut his teeth on peaceful, hillside blades of grass while shepherding flocks of sheep. The simpler life of sheering wool, composing music, and being playfully picked-on by his older brothers probably seemed so long ago. There was no more living on the legendary status of slaying beasts and men in the various fields of life.[3] A king-sized amount of trouble and stresses are now residing in the very life of our broken-hearted, praying poet, David.

I. A cry of sorrow

A. Spiritual alarm

[1] O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.

The words rebuke and discipline, as well as anger and wrath are synonymous here. David’s pleading against God’s displeasure, and he’s overloaded with the very thought. Whatever the load is, it’s unbearable for David. It was time to pray. It was time to pick up his stringed instrument and pour out his soul before the God of his life.[4] Was the central issue David’s sin or David’s circumstances? Were the events he’s bemoaning out of his control, or because he tried to seize control that belongs only to His Lord? It seems like there’s a mix of all of the above when considering the his life. In 2 Samuel 11 and onward, when considering David’s involvement with Bathsheba and his responsibility of the death of her husband Uriah, it’s clear that David was sinfully unwise. And that sin affected some other issues swirling in the kingdom. It was many of those other problems—the rape of his daughter by one of his sons, the murder of one of his sons done to him by a brother—these were some of the details that brought David to this moment of alarm before God in prayer. When things are amiss, when it seems that life is snow-balling, it’s not unwise to search our lives, to reflect on matters of the heart, motivations, inclinations, attitudes, consequences. A slice of David’s current angst was him looking at himself, thinking back, and drawing this normal conclusion for those that seek to live a life of trust in the LORD—”I am under God’s disciplining hand.” Have you e[...]