Faith In His Mercy: Words on Psalm 6
The sixth chapter of The Psalms is a short writing that displays a beautiful and inspiring faith that pales only in comparison to it’s beautiful and inspiring display of God’s faithfulness.
Psalm 6:1-3
In verses 1-3, we see a man in agony.
Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;
heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?
Transparently, I felt like that guy when I cracked open my Bible this morning.
Sometimes, life is just hard. We have ever-changing responsiblities, wacky hormones, these deep spiritual wells we call souls, and relationships that can be complicated beyond measure.
To add to the challenges of living in a world not yet restored, David—the author of this Psalm—spent years being literally pursued by enemies who sought to take his life. He knew what it was like to be in bleak-looking circumstances. A poetic soul by nature, he felt the weight of his own depravity deeply and poured many of those feelings onto the pages we now have scripted and bound into our Bibles today.
There is an implication in these verses that David felt the weight of his own sin. With humility and in a confessional nature, he turns to the only one who has the ability to meet him in his heartbreak and wipe his slate clean. He turns to the Lord—and may we all observe what happens next as we seek to lay our shortcomings before God.
Psalm 6:4-6
Verses 4-6 go like this:
Turn, Lord, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
Among the dead no one proclaims your name.
Who praises you from the grave?
David asks for the mercy of God (v. 2), for his healing (v. 2), and for his deliverance (v. 4). He proclaims the love of God as being the fuel for God’s care in this time of hardship.
“Save me because of your unfailing love.” He says. David then articulates the reality that the life of the Lord’s servant is marked by proclamations of praise. It’s almost as though he is stating the relationship between himself and the Almighty: God loves. God saves. God heals. We praise.
And this is where things start getting spicy. (Okay, spicy… strange word choice, perhaps, but I am a 21st century suburban girl commenting on this Scripture after all! Bringing my whole vocabulary to the mix.) When I say things are about to get spicy, I mean “buckle up and pay attention”. Because the end of this Psalm has the power to zap some life into your soul—however weary it may be feeling—with the intensity of a chile pepper.
Psalm 6:6-7
Before we get to the boom at the end, I want to share a few more words of David that you might find relatable. Maybe this isn’t how you are feeling today, but it might have been how you felt yesterday, or it could be how you feel tomorrow. He’s in a rough spot when he writes this Psalm and isn’t holding anything back. It’s what we love about the Psalms—their raw nature and the steadfastness of God put on display in the process. Here goes. Verses 6-7:
I am worn out from my groaning.
All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.
My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.
Poor David! And poor us when this is the state we find ourselves in! The frailty of our humanity is real and sometimes the pain of that reality pours out of our eyes until we feel we couldn’t possibly cry another tear.
I can’t resist a sidestep to Psalm 56:8 for the one who might be in this place right now. Do you know the Bible says God catches our tears in a bottle? Tap on the verse here if you need to hear that, and know: not one tear is lost by our Almighty, All-Loving, All-Attentive Heavenly Father.
Psalm 6:8-10
For the grand finale of all grand finales, let’s see how this psalm wraps up—in a bold but subtle exclamation of God’s lovingkindness. You ready for this? Psalm 6:8-10…
Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the Lord has heard my weeping.
The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish;
they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.
Not more than two seconds (or more accurately, four verses) passes between David’s plea to God, and his triumphal statement that God has in fact heard his plea.
He weeps before God and immediately says, “The Lord heard my weeping”.
He cries for God’s mercy and immediately says, “The Lord heard my cry for mercy”.
He prays to God and immediately says, “The Lord accepts my prayer”.
What would it look like for us to walk in a faith like that? How often do I pour my heart out to God and then follow it up with thoughts of half-doubt like “I sure hope God moves after that.”
Over-and-over in the Bible, God is described as a God of Mercy. Don’t take my word for it! Allow me to share just a few passages stretching from the Old to New Testament, proclaiming the reality of God’s mercy. (I’ll be bolding the word mercy for emphasis.)
Hebrews 4:16: Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Ephesians 2:4-5: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
1 Peter 1:3: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
Titus 3:5: …he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit…
Psalm 103:8: The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Isaiah 30:18: Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
And to top it all off:
Lamentations 3:22: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.
The Mercy of God
Now, don’t think we are going to brush over such an iconic description of God’s character without breaking it down… if we dig into that word, mercy, here’s a bit of it’s deeper meaning according to the original language the Biblical text was written in:
Mercy, in the Old Testament, is often translated from the Hebrew word, hesed, which means faithfulness, or abundant and plentiful kindness. (Okay, that’s sweet…)
The Heberew word raham (as in the Isaiah verse above) has also been translated to our English word of mercy. To dig deeper, this word denotes deep love, compassion, and tender care.
To know our all-powerful God is also deeply affectionate, compassionate, and caring is about enough to take one’s breath away. I’m able to grab hold more firmly of this reality when I picture a really incredible earthly Father. Picture one what is powerful and protective, strong and brave, but that also meets his children with incredible tenderness, sweetness, and affectionate love.
Wow, these are arms we can rest in and be held by, fully secure.
To add more cherries on top of an already decadent sundae, let’s see how this word mercy translates in the New Testament…
I’m very excited as I type this because I just peeked ahead and this was the definition of mercy that I remembered that I just can’t wait to share with you. (Okay, Annalisa, enough chitchat, get to the definition!)
Mercy is our English word, right? In Greek, the New Testament’s original language, the word used is eleos. And do you want to know how the original Greek-speakers understood that word?
Eleos is this: kindness or good will towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them. (1)
His mercy is a compassion that takes action.
God’s kindness and goodwill towards those in pain takes place in conjunction with his desire to help them. He doesn’t support us begrudgingly. His help is driven by his benevolence.
When we call, he answers, because he wants to answer.
He isn’t doing us any favors. Well, I mean, he kinds of is… He’s doing us huge favors all the time. But it’s because his character is one that gives favor to those who are undeserving.
His character is one of mercy, and that’s exactly what we see David taking hold of in the Psalm above. He comes to God in times of trouble, with an expectation that God hears his pleas and comes to save him.
Does God Ever Not Hear Our Prayers?
Now, we can end this article right here, right now, or you can come along with me on a small tangent that might seem like a bit of a buzz kill, but is entirely necessary to help a few of you out these to hold tightly to this truth and never let it go.
You might be thinking something like this: “But doesn’t God turn his face from people sometimes?” “Haven’t I read in the Bible that God won’t hear the prayers of sinners, or something like that?”
Briefly addressing this notion to bring comfort to any aching hearts… in this psalm, we see right out of the gate that David is in a position of repentance and humility. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble”. (James 4:6)
You can read more about this concept in an article at the bottom of this page. (2)
But know this: if you are approaching God from a position of humility—not wanting to hold onto sin or puff yourself with pride—but coming to him knowing that you’re in need of his mercy, we see God turn his ear to those prayers consistently throughout the Bible.
In Conclusion
May we approach God in humility, with hearts crying out for his kindness knowing that we are in desperate need of his mercy. And when we pray those prayers, may we trust the benevolence of his character and his kindness to hear us when we call out to him. To the glory of his beautfiful name!
Want Some Resources?
If you liked breaking down this Psalm verse-by-verse, you might like the Bible study below which walks through seven Psalms step-by-step and asks thoughtful questions along the way—keeping the Gospel in view all-the-while.
Additionally, there’s this cute bookmark in my shop which I was actually moving through when I came across this psalm. It helps you read a psalm per day (or week, or whatever) and mark them off as you go to help you keep covering fresh ground in God’s word. I am so blessed by this and how it pulls be graciously into a consistency that nourishes my soul. There are proverbs on the back too, so it’s a double whammy!
(1) All of these definitions were taken from a helpful resource called Blue Letter Bible. It’s a website that helps you dig deep and can be really fun to utilize. Just send me an email if you want some help navigating this resource! Would bring me loads of joy to walk you through it. (annalisavsawtell@gmail.com)
(2) Got Questions: Does God hear / answer the prayers of a sinner / unbeliever?
