“'I Shall Again Praise Him': Hope in God's Faithfulness (Psalm 42-43)” | 9/27/2020
Psalm 42 - 43| 9/27/20 | Will Duval
We’re back in our “Psalms of Hope” series and this morning, we’re really going straight to the heart of the matter, with Psalms 42 and 43. I’ve titled this message - “I Shall Again Praise Him: Hope in God’s Faithfulness” - and the central question before you and me today is: How do we RESPOND when life feels totally HOPELESS? Have you been there? Have you ever felt ABSOLUTELY, utterly hopeless? Where you struggled, as the metaphor goes, to see ANY light whatsoever at the end of the seemingly endless, HOPELESSLY long and dark tunnel?
I’m sure some of you might be there this morning. Maybe the pandemic has you down; that was of course the driving reason behind this whole series. I saw a meme last week that said, “Happy 6 month anniversary of the 2 week quarantine”. Remember that? Back in the spring when we thought, “Hey, maybe if we all just stay home for a couple weeks…” and now, 6 months later, we’ve got some West Hillians who STILL haven’t left their homes, your retirement home, for literally half the year. And what’s worse: there’s still really no end in sight, is there? No vaccine yet; the death count is expected to nearly double by January.
Maybe for some of you it’s even more personal than that: your marriage feels hopeless. I suspect that MOST of us here who are married, at SOME point in the last… 6 months? 6 weeks? 6 DAYS? - have experienced the hopelessness that comes from realizing you’ve been having the SAME exact fight with your spouse for the last… 5 years now? 15 years? 50 years? Like, “God - is this issue in our marriage EVER gonna get FIXED? It’s getting harder and harder to see the light at the end of this tunnel.”
Maybe it’s your own personal life- you’ve been fighting and LOSING the same battle against your flesh, your sin nature, you’ve struggled with the same addiction, the same temptation to sin, for YEARS now. “God - will I EVER be DELIVERED from this sin struggle?” Where’s the light at the end of this tunnel?
Maybe for some of you, if you’re REALLY honest this morning, even your relationship with the LORD has begun to feel pretty hopeless. “God - are you even LISTENING to me anymore? Do you even CARE about me still? Are you even THERE? God - if you’re REAL, why are you so SILENT so much of the time? Especially when I need you the most!?”
Friends, if that’s you today, take heart: Psalms 42 and 43 are for YOU. They are the psalms for the otherwise HOPELESS. And my prayer for you this morning is that you would hear God speak clearly and compellingly to you through His word - because here’s what I think he wants to say to you:
When your life feels HOPELESS, you can trust in my FAITHFULNESS. [repeat]
Psalms 42 and 43 are the LAMENT of a psalmist who is struggling to see any light at the end of the tunnel. And yet, who in the midst of that darkness, makes a conscious CHOICE to continue trusting in the unfailing faithfulness of his God. And in his introspection, the psalmist here expresses 3 different forms of hopelessness, each of which he’s going to confront with a different expression of God’s faithfulness. I shared that great Martin Luther quote with you back when we examined Psalm 13: that “Although hope despairs, yet despair hopes.” THAT is the yo-yo effect, if you will, that we’re gonna see once again and again in verse after verse of Psalms 42-43: Hope despairs, but then despair hopes. Honesty about the reality of the psalmist’s dire current circumstances, that he then confronts with the truth of the HOPE that he knows he can still CLING to in God’s past proven, as well as God’s future promised faithfulness.
So would you stand with me…Psalm 42 & 43: (if you don’t have a Bible...)
As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?[b]
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation[c] 6 and my God.
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
8 By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
43:1 Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
against an ungodly people,
from the deceitful and unjust man
deliver me!
2 For you are the God in whom I take refuge;
why have you rejected me?
Why do I go about mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?
3 Send out your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
This is the word of the Lord... (LET’S PRAY…)
-
Let’s begin with some Context: We’re gonna treat Psalms 42-43 as one connected unit, for 3 reasons:
1) The repetition of certain phrases in both chapters. ESPECIALLY The crucial refrain - “Why are you cast down, O my soul… Hope in God...” - that appears verbatim in both.
2) “All of the psalms from ch42 - ch49 are titled “Of the sons of Korah” except for psalm 43, which suggests it belongs under the heading of ch42” (Ash, 76).
And lastly, #3) “Many of the ancient Hebrew manuscripts have them together as just one combined psalm” (Walvoord, 825).
-Psalms 42-43 begin what we call “Book II” of the Psalms; the Psalms are traditionally broken down into 5 “books”, or groupings.
-As for authorship: as I mentioned, the superscription reads “OF the sons of Korah”, which could mean these psalms are “FROM them” (written BY them), but it’s more likely it means “FOR them” - many scholars think they were written by King David, to be sung BY the sons of Korah. We know from 2 Chr 20:19 that they were a sub-group of priests who essentially served as Israel’s worship leaders. And these psalms were written as their HYMN book; it’s called a “maskil” - the Hebrew word derives from the verb meaning “to instruct” → so this is a song of instruction. Specifically, a reminder of what to do when you feel hopeless.
And as I said, these psalms express 3 TYPES of hopelessness, that elicit 3 responses of trust in God’s faithfulness. My outline, by the way, was inspired by Christopher Ash’s helpful commentary. The 2 chapters divide up into 3 sections, vv1-5, vv6-11, and then all of ch43; each of which ENDS with that refrain: “Why are you cast down, O my soul… Hope in God… my salvation”. And there’s a lot of overlap between the 3, but if we look closely, we can identify 3 distinct experiences of hopelessness, and 3 specific solutions, suggested here by the psalmist. So here they are:
We can find HOPE in God’s faithfulness when…
#1) We (You) feel LONELY. (42:1-5) WHY?
Because: When you feel lonely, you can REMEMBER God’s past faithfulness (v4). What do you do, as a believer, when feelings of loneliness, and abandonment start to creep in? You remember God’s faithfulness in the past.
Here’s how I put it back when we studied Ps13: “Despite our present suffering, we have a future hope, that is rooted in God’s past faithfulness.” I hope you’re writing that down in your bulletins to meditate on later, cuz that’s really Psalms 42 and 43 in a nutshell: “Despite our present circumstances, we have a future hope, that is ROOTED in God’s past faithfulness.”
The psalmist starts by being HONEST about his present suffering in vv1-3. He writes, he SINGS:
“As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.”
How many of y’all grew up singing the Maranatha version of this psalm in the early 90’s in church? [sing...] That used to be my JAM. That song still has a special place in my heart. It’s a beautiful, gentle tune, isn’t it… it brings to mind a peaceful scene from like Bambi BEFORE his mom gets killed; I imagine a baby deer peacefully drinking from a quiet stream in the woods... But that is NOT the image the psalmist is trying to evoke here in Psalm 42! Ash notes that “the verb for ‘pants’ is used elsewhere in the OT only in the book of Joel, in a terrible scene of dried up streams [in the desert].” (77) The psalmist is envisioning DYING of thirst. Remember, he’s writing in the Middle East; the scene isn’t a luscious forest; imagine instead baby Simba right before Pumba and Timon find him. Half-DEAD from dehydration; the vultures swarming… the psalmist feels like he is DYING in a spiritual DESERT; he hasn’t experienced v2, God’s life-giving presence in FAR too long, so he cries out: “God - my soul THIRSTS for you!”
V2: “When shall I come and appear before God?”, or literally, see God’s FACE again? Elsewhere the Psalms ask, “God - why have you hidden your FACE from me”; same idea here.
He feels absolutely ALONE. Abandoned by God. So he weeps in v3: “My tears have been my food
day and night” - What a word picture!
Have you ever been so sad you couldn’t even EAT? Maybe you went a whole day, two days… before you wondered “Why does my stomach hurt so much? Oh, because I haven’t EATEN anything but my own tears and SNOT - snot on an empty stomach, THAT’LL make you feel sick, doesn’t it? Can we get GROSSLY honest this morning? I think that’s where the psalmist is at.
And to top it all off, in the midst of his sorrow, v3: there’s apparently some unnamed group of taunters jeering at him all day long: ““Where is your God?””. Your “omnipresent” God; I thought he was EVERYWHERE? Where is he NOW? And the psalmist himself is wondering the exact. Same. Thing.
Friends: what do we do when we feel that LONELY, that ISOLATED from God, that DESERTED by Him? The answer in v4 is: you remember God’s past faithfulness: “These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.”
And if we’re honest, there’s even a certain sadness that comes from the reminiscing, isn’t there? Like, when you’re in the MIDDLE of the valley, and you NEED to be reminded that there’s still a reason to hope, so you pause to remember what it was like back in the green pasture…
-You think back on those happy memories with that lost loved one you are grieving
-You think back on those fun, early years of your marriage…
-You think back before COVID shut the world down...
Those memories are now colored with a tinge of sadness, aren’t they?
I remember the summer after we left Culver, the boarding school I came here from; I was a WRECK, because I left mostly kicking and screaming; I loved that job, I loved the people, the students... I would have stayed there forever, if God hadn’t had other, better plans. But I remember being on our annual family trip to Michigan, feeling particularly sad one day, and taking a kayak out on the lake and just sort of WALLOWING in my sadness for a while, as I thought back over ALL the beautiful, happy memories we had created those past 5 years, and of course, it just makes you SADDER, realizing you’re NEVER gonna get to relive them again. That chapter of your life is DONE; CLOSED forever.
But in the midst of my sadness, sitting in that kayak, God spoke a word into my hurt, into my heart, that gave me hope to keep putting one foot in front of the other and trudging forward through that dark tunnel - He said: “Remember when you felt like this after your father left? In middle school? When you felt like you’d never be able to be happy ever again…
“Remember when you felt like this after high school, as an angsty teenager, when your girlfriend broke up with you? And you felt like you’d never find love again…
“Remember when you felt like this after divinity school? When you had NO job offers, NO direction in life, NO light at the end of the tunnel…”
And what did I do EVERY. SINGLE. TIME, Will?
Have I failed you yet? No, then let me ask you: Why would I start now?
And friends, maybe some of you are there this morning, and the enemy’s voice has gotten louder and louder in your ear here lately - “Where is your God?” - and frankly, you FEEL like you’re starting to run out of answers, because you FEEL abandoned by God. By the way, you’ve noticed by now how much I’ve been emphasizing that word: FEEL. The repetition in your outline: when you FEEL. when you FEEL. I said it last week but it bears repeating again this morning: our feelings are FICKLE, aren’t they? Feelings come and go with the wind. With the seasons of life. That doesn’t make them unimportant; but it DOES make them untrustworthy. It DOES make them a really bad choice of foundation for… just about ANYTHING in life. If your feelings were the basis for your relationship with your spouse, you are UTTERLY doomed! Those butterflies in your stomach, that lovey dovey, “I just wanna spend every waking moment with you” - be honest: is there ANYONE here who’s been married more than… 3 years, who still feels that? If your FEELINGS are the basis for your commitment to your job - please don’t ever apply for employment here at West Hills! I love my job as much as ANYONE; I’ve got the greatest job in the world, but I guarantee you there are mornings when I am NOT excited driving into the office. If you only went to work when you FELT like it, how long would you stay employed?
So friends: why in the WORLD would we think that our FEELINGS are an accurate gauge of God’s FAITHFULNESS in our relationship with HIM? Some of us this morning have really downcast souls, they’re in TURMOIL within us, because frankly, we give more credibility to our wishy-washy, come-and-go, untrustworthy FEELINGS, than we do the steadfast, unchanging, unbreakable promises of God. To quote Ben Shapiro: “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” So when your FEELINGS tell you “God has LEFT you. You’re all ALONE. He doesn’t CARE, He’s stopped LISTENING...” What do you do? In ADDITION to remembering His past faithfulness in your life, here’s a good segue way,
#2 - You preach God’s TRUTH to your soul. When? When you feel OVERWHELMED. (42:6-11) When you feel overwhelmed, you preach God’s truth to your soul. (v8)
What does the psalmist do with his feelings? In v5? He TALKS to them. He says:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation[c] 6 and my God.”
Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote this, SO profound: “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
Friends: we gotta TALK to ourselves more often. And the great part about it is, you can DO it nowadays, even out loud, and you don’t even look CRAZY anymore… cuz everybody’s got their airbuds in anyways. We gotta PREACH to ourselves. Confront your fickle feelings with the trustworthy TRUTH of God’s word: “Soul - why are you so depressed? Why are you so ANXIOUS? Don’t you know “If God is for you, who can be against you?” Don’t you remember that “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for you, how will he not also with him graciously give you ALL things?” Who can bring any charge against God's elect? God has justified you. Who can condemn? Christ Jesus died and was raised—he’s at the right hand of God, interceding for you; Who shall separate you from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8:31-35) We gotta preach Romans 8 to our souls; this is why you memorize Scripture, by the way.
And it’s especially important to preach to your soul when you FEEL overwhelmed. That’s the emotion here in vv6-11. Listen to his words:
He STARTS in v6 with, “My soul is cast down within me”; immediately after he’s preached to himself in v5: “WHY are you cast down, O my soul”; DON’T be in turmoil, soul; hope in GOD instead. I SHALL again praise him,” he turns around in v6 and admits: “But my soul IS still cast down within me”. And that’s really important for us to recognize: that remembering God’s past faithfulness, and preaching truth to your soul, confronting your feelings with FACTS, that doesn’t always immediately CHANGE your feelings! In fact, in my experience, is USUALLY doesn’t. Guess what I felt in that kayak, immediately after God confronted my feelings with the FACT of his faithfulness? Yes, I felt a little more encouraged, Yes, I felt a little reassured. But honestly, in the moment, I still felt pretty SAD about leaving Culver. HOPE doesn’t necessarily change your present feelings; what it changes is your future OUTLOOK. Listen, if it changed the present, it wouldn’t be HOPE! Speaking of Romans 8, it says: “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”” (vv24-25) Hope by definition NOT a present-tense reality, but a future-tense confidence. The “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen” (Heb 11:1); it’s closely related to faith.
And the psalmist still feels OVERWHELMED here; he sings:
“My soul is cast down…
In the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Geographically, that’s about as far away as you can possibly GET from “the house of God”, v4, the Temple, in Jerusalem, and still be in the Promised Land. If this IS King David, he’s probably writing from EXILE, during Absalom’s rebellion… but in ANY case, the point is he feels DISTANT from God’s presence. So he sings in v7:
“Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls”
Michael Houdmann explains “The Hebrew word… refers to the deepest depths of the sea… The prophet Jonah used similar language to describe his predicament: “You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me” (Jonah 2:3). But there’s also another interpretation of the word deep; his soul was in deep need of God.” (gotquestions.org)
And his need is deep indeed. He cries out, v7: “all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.”
God - I’m overwhelmed! By YOUR breakers and YOUR waves; that’s the hardest part about my current situation - God, knowing that at ANY moment, you could choose to relent. That you alone have the authority and power over the winds and the waves, over every circumstance of my life. “Our God is in the heavens, he does ALL that he pleases” (Ps 115:3); God - with a WORD, LESS than a word, you could save me from my despair. Friends - do you believe God could eradicate COVID-19 this morning, in an instant, if He wanted to? If it pleased Him to do so? Do you know He could perfectly and permanently heal your marriage today, cure you of that addiction, that sin struggle, instantaneously, if He wanted to? So why DOESN’T he?
Because God’s aim isn’t your happiness, but HIS glory. And SOMETIMES God gets more glory from proving that His strength is sufficient to SUSTAIN you in your weakness. And in the process, YOU get strengthened too; your faith, your trust in Him, your humble reliance on Him… gets strengthened.
It takes genuine, tested-and-proven faith, to be able to affirm, even in the very depths of your despair, that v8: “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.”
Reminds me of that beautiful line in the hymn: “Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me… Let me be singing when the evening comes”. Friends: ANYONE can praise God on the good days; but what about the really TOUGH days? Will you STILL praise Him? Still trust him? THAT’S the kind of faith I want to have. But you don’t GET it from playing in the shallows. Where do you find the sturdiest trees in the WORLD? Look for the places with the harshest weather, where they HAVE to be sturdy, they HAVE to have a root system underground as expansive as their branches above ground, or else they won’t survive long.
And one of the truths that you and I need to preach to ourselves as believers when we find ourselves in the middle of the storms of life, is the plain truth that Jesus promised us that “in this life, you WILL have troubles” - John 16:33. “BUT,” he continued, “take heart; I have overcome the world.” So the question for us this morning is NOT “will life get tough” - God promised it would; NOT “will you at times feel hopeless” - you undoubtedly will; no, the QUESTION is: WHEN you feel hopeless and overwhelmed, WHEN the storms of life inevitably come, will you ENTRUST your life to the one who really does have the power to calm storms and EVEN IF HE CHOOSES NOT TO, will you trust Him to calm YOU through the storm?
Will you still be singing when the evening comes? Singing, v8, of his steadfast love. Even when it FEELS like, v9: “He’s FORGOTTEN you”, will you still declare with the psalmist: “God, you are my ROCK!” And even if I do “go on mourning”, v9, even if the world CONTINUES to “oppress me”, like “deadly wounds in my bones”, v10, I’m gonna KEEP preaching your truth to my soul, v11: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.”
Lastly, #3 - You can hope in God’s faithfulness when… You feel REJECTED. (43:1-5)
Because: When you feel rejected, you can POUR YOUR HEART OUT to God in prayer (43:1-3).
Most of ch42 was internal monologue. The psalmist talking, preaching, to himself. But now he turns his focus in ch43, specifically to the LORD, in prayer:
“Vindicate me, O God… defend my cause… DELIVER me.”
He turns to God EVEN THOUGH, God is the very one who he FEELS so rejected by: v2 - it’s the yo-yo again; the juxtaposition of hope despairing, and yet, despair hoping: “God - you are the God in whom I take refuge;
so why have you rejected me?”
God, it FEELS like you’re rejecting me; and YET, I’m still gonna hope in YOU. I’m still gonna take refuge in YOU. I’m still gonna TRUST in you. Because you’re all I’ve GOT. I’ve TRIED building on every other foundation in this world - my abilities, my relationships, my pursuit of happiness, the world’s version of the American dream - and I’ve found them ALL to be nothing but sinking sand. So I’m gonna build on the only solid foundation I know - God’s unchanging character. And even when I FEEL abandoned, I’m gonna remind myself of His past faithfulness. Even when I FEEL overwhelmed, I’m gonna preach his truth to my soul - that He’s promised never to leave me or forsake me; that He’s promised to work ALL things together for my good. And even when I FEEL rejected, I’m gonna pour my HEART out to Him in FAITH - “God, send out your light and your truth”, v3, cuz I FEEL like I’m stuck in the darkness with the lies of the Enemy swirling…
“God - bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!”, because I FEEL alone, isolated from you right now…
“God - BE my exceeding joy”, v4,
Cuz right now, I FEEL rejected, but I WANT to feel exceedingly JOYFUL, and I’m gonna trust that if I will choose to find my joy in YOU, in YOUR unchanging character, in YOUR steadfast love, then I know I can proclaim regardless of the shifting circumstances of my life, that “I shall again praise him” and be joyful, v5, because MY hope is in GOD.
The apostle Paul wrote: “If [as Christians] we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor 15:19) Paul watched his friends get drug off to the Roman Coliseum to be eaten by lions for their faith in Christ. If your hope’s in THIS life only, as a believer especially, you are to be PITIED. No WONDER you’re sad. You’re Downcast.
But… BUT if you know Eph 1:18 - “the hope to which he has called you... the riches of his glorious inheritance”
If you’ve become, Titus 3:7 - “an heir according to the hope of eternal life”,
Then you can DECLARE with Paul: “We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient - they’re FLEETING; they’re here today and gone tomorrow; like our FEELINGS - but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor 4:16-18) MY hope doesn’t have to waver with the ups and downs of life, because MY hope isn’t IN this life; it’s in “things unseen”, “things eternal”... my hope is seated at the right hand of God the Father, because my hope is JESUS. Christ crucified and resurrected! Peter says, “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3)
So let me end this morning by simply asking you: have you placed your hope in HIM? If your soul is thirsty this morning, have you tried the One who offers you living water that wells up to eternal life; you’ll NEVER be thirsty again.
You may still FEEL alone, at times. FEEL overwhelmed. FEEL rejected.
But even when you struggle to find the HOPE to remember God’s past faithfulness, even when you struggle to find the FAITH to preach God’s truth to your downcast soul, even when you struggle to find the COURAGE to pour out your heart to God, you can trust that God has not forgotten about you, because you’ve got a Mediator who “ever lives and pleads for you”. And when your strength fails, and your grip on Him slips, and you FEEL like you can no longer hold on, you can trust in His promise to never let go of YOU. He says, “Behold, I am WITH you always. Even to the end of the age.”
Amen. Let’s pray...