How Long O Lord (The Cry Of God's People)

Questions This Sermon Answers:

1. What does Psalm 13 mean?

Psalm 13 is a lament of David that moves from frustration to faith in only six verses. In verses 1-2 he asks "How long?" four times — feeling forgotten, hidden from, sorrowful, and overwhelmed by his enemy. By verses 5-6 he answers his own questions: "But I have trusted in Your mercy; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation." The psalm teaches that hard seasons are when faith grows as we wait upon the Lord, who in His time rights every wrong and wipes away every tear.

2. Is it okay to ask God "how long"?

Yes. David pours out his heart before God and is nowhere rebuked for it; he was frustrated, but he was also faithful. Dr. Holt stresses that frustration is not incompatible with faith. Lament directed to God is itself an act of trust, for it brings the complaint to the only One who can answer it. The Westminster Confession (15.5) and the pattern of the Psalms commend honest, prayerful sorrow rather than a forced cheerfulness that hides the heart.

3. Who wrote Psalm 13, and what suffering did he know?

Psalm 13 was written by David, a man who knew a thing or two about suffering. In 1 and 2 Samuel virtually every page has someone who wants to kill him — Goliath, King Saul, the Philistines, the Moabites, even his own son Absalom. Out of a life of constant threat David learned to bring his anguish honestly to God. His experience makes the psalm a tested guide for every believer who feels hunted, forgotten, or worn down.

4. Why is the duration of a trial harder than its severity?

Dr. Holt argues that our problem is often not the severity of hardship but its duration. He pictures dreading open-heart surgery all week, yet finding relief once it is finally over — but imagine facing it again the next day, and every day of your life. The hardest thing is not the intensity but the endlessness, the same hole in the heart every morning. This is why a chronic illness or a grief that will not lift can feel heavier than a single sharp blow.

5. What does "enlighten my eyes" mean in Psalm 13:3?

It is not a request for spiritual insight but for renewed strength. In Scripture the eyes often stood for a man's vigor; of the aged Moses it was said "his eyes were not dim" (Deuteronomy 34:7). David, fatigued and hunted, asks God to sustain him "lest I sleep the sleep of death." He knew that if God stepped back even an inch, that would leave room for the enemy to swoop in. His plea is the cry of an exhausted believer leaning wholly on God's preserving power.

6. Why did David fear that his enemy would "prevail"?

David's chief concern in verse 4 was not his own ego but God's honor. As the anointed king, if his enemies prevailed against him it would appear they had prevailed against the God who was always with him. His first great enemy, Goliath, taunted, "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air" — yet the only one the birds feasted on that day was Goliath. God answered the prayer of Psalm 13; David died in his bed of old age, for in God's providence no man was ever permitted to take his life.

7. How did David find confidence to face the future?

Whenever David had a concern about the future, he looked to the past. Facing Goliath, he told Saul, "The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine" (1 Samuel 17:37). Remembering past rescues, he trusted God for the next one. Dr. Holt applies it directly: if you are breathing this morning, you have no idea how much God has already sustained you to get here — so look back at every preservation and trust Him still.

8. How does Psalm 13 give comfort about final salvation?

David rejoiced in God's salvation because he knew that even if he died in that moment, God would take him home. That hope puts every earthly trial in perspective: the worst week on earth is far better than the best week apart from God. As Dr. Holt frames it, if God has already saved us from the greatest cataclysm, can He not carry us through next Monday? The Westminster Confession (33.2) holds out this eternal hope as the anchor that reframes all present suffering.

9. How do I keep faith when suffering does not seem to end?

The heroes of Scripture coped by stopping their focus on the journey and fixing it on the destination. David wrote, "I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait on the LORD... wait, I say, on the LORD!" (Psalm 27:13-14). Dr. Holt likens it to watching a long, hard story whose ending is sure — the struggle is real, but victory is certain. Faith does not deny the hardship; it looks past it to the hope eternal.

10. How does Psalm 13 point to Christ?

The cry "how long" finds its final answer at the cross. Two thousand years ago a Man hung at Calvary — a Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, bruised for our iniquities, on whom the LORD laid the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53). He lives to make intercession for us (Romans 8:34), and just as He came to live and die among His people, He is coming back. The whole creation waits on pins and needles for that day (Romans 8). This life is hard, but God has an answer: there are better days, and we have not seen anything yet.