3.22.20 Psalm 42:1-5
As a doe pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and appear before God? My tears have been food for me day and night, while people are saying to me all day, “Where is your God?” I am overcome by my emotions whenever I remember these things: how I used to arrive with the crowd, as I led the procession to the house of God, with loud shouts of thanksgiving, with the crowd celebrating the festival. Why are you so depressed, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I will again praise him for salvation from his presence.
What Are You Thirsty For?
There were three major festivals in the Old Testament: the Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, and Pentecost. They were celebrated in Jerusalem at the heart and center of Israel. Israel was about 350 miles tall by 100 feet wide. In comparison, Israel was about half the width and ¾ the height of Michigan. People would walk and ride perhaps donkeys, along with their sacrificial animals up to Jerusalem. They would sing different Psalms on the way up. Once they got within eyesight of Jerusalem, they would sing and dance all the louder. Jerusalem would go from maybe five thousand people to hundreds of thousands of people for a week or so.
Imagine living in some of the small towns on the way to Jerusalem. You would regularly see people stream through your town on the way to Jerusalem. Imagine growing up in a family that made this tri-annual trip. You’d hear the same songs being sung. The sights and the sounds and the trip would be etched in your mind and an integral part of your life.
The festivals represented different things. The Passover stood for deliverance from slavery, as the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites that had the blood of a year old lamb smeared over it. It pointed back to God’s powerful deliverance through the plagues, and it also pointed forward to the Messiah who would deliver them from slavery to sin and death. The Feast of Tabernacles reminded the Israelites of the 40 years they spent in the desert in tents, and how God delivered them into the Promised Land. Finally, the festival of Pentecost was a harvest festival, celebrating the wheat harvest that God had given them. They would give God the firstfruits of their harvest. Levites would lead the temple in worship songs. Bible stories would be read. Sacrifices of animals would be made as well. Think of the sounds and the sights and the smells even of such festivals.
All of these festivals were meant to remind the Israelites of who God IS! He is alive! He is a giving God, who gives wheat! God is a protecting God, keeping alive in the harshest of conditions. He even made sure the Israelites’ shoes and clothing didn’t wear out for 40 years in the desert! He is a holy God who demands sacrifice for sins, but He is also a forgiving God through sacrifice. All of these stories reminded the Israelites of what a good and gracious God they had. The festivals and the background of them gave the Israelites HOPE! The festivals made the Israelites rejoice and be happy. This song, however, was not.
The sons of Korah wrote these Psalms. These were the chief musicians for the Israelites. They wrote the music and the words of these songs for the Israelites to sing. The ones who wrote Psalm 42-43 seemed to live up north, somewhere by Mt. Hermon, which was about 50 miles to the north of the Sea of Galilee. Mt. Hermon serves as the source of water for the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. It was a pretty far way away from Jerusalem, which was maybe about 100 miles from Jerusalem.
The Psalm doesn’t describe how this happened, but somehow the psalmists had been separated from worshiping at Jerusalem. When the kingdom split around 930 B.C., Jeroboam led the northern tribes of Israel into worshiping golden calves. Perhaps he also prevented the Levites from going to Jerusalem to worship. Or it could have been that the Arameans had taken the Israelites captive. Either way, he couldn’t get to Jerusalem. So he wrote a song about it.
When can I go and appear before God? My tears have been food for me day and night, while people are saying to me all day, “Where is your God?” I am overcome by my emotions whenever I remember these things: how I used to arrive with the crowd, as I led the procession to the house of God, with loud shouts of thanksgiving, with the crowd celebrating the festival.
Psalm 137 mentions something similar happening to the Israelites. It reads,
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?
“Where is your God?” The same question is asked today. It reminds me of what they said to Jesus while He was on the cross. “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ (Mt 27:43) It’s rational, to a point. If your parents love you, why would they let you suffer or starve, especially if they had the power to get you out of it?
But we have to remember the spiritual and hidden aspect of living in this world. If suffering can work to draw us closer to God, then God will allow us to suffer. He wants us to seek Him in times of trouble. That’s exactly how the Psalmist responded. As a doe pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. He recognized that being with God was as necessary as drinking water was for a doe. This is what God wants to bring about in us through our suffering as well, a deep desire to be with God. He wants us to thirst for Him in the midst of the storm, to see His loving care through it all.
Hear the words of Jesus from the cross. He sought God even as He was being crucified and mocked. Even when His own Father was damning Him, He still called out, “My God!” Jesus thirsted for God from the driest place of them all, in the depths of suffering hell. The ironic thing was that the only way that God could attach Himself to us was if He attached Himself to our sins and died in our sins. The cross is where it had to happen. He had to separate from Himself in order to connect Himself with us. So the Holy Spirit points us to Jesus on the cross and says, “Here is your God.” If you can’t find God in the suffering Jesus, then you don’t have the true God. We don’t ask, “Where is my God,” in the midst of suffering. We realize through the eyes of faith, “Here is my God” right here. Until we see God this way, we will always question the reality and the love of God, until we see His love IN the suffering itself, drawing us closer to Him.
Now, from another perspective, the Psalmist could still pray to God from Mt. Hermon. God would still hear him. There were also synagogues spread throughout the country where they could still hear the Word of God. Why wasn’t he content with that? God had set up His special way to approach Him at the temple through the priests and the sacrifices. The sacrifices were the physical way that they were to receive forgiveness for their sins. If a Jew was cut off from the temple, he would have been cut off from the other believers from all over the country who came to worship there at the festivals as well. He wouldn’t have had the assurance through the sacrifices that his sins were forgiven. He would have felt like he was cut off from God in some very important and real ways. The Psalmist genuinely missed that, and he was emotional about it.
Would that all of us had such a thirst! It seems that most people are going through withdrawal over being separated from their sports and their entertainment than anything else. Some of those haven’t been here in quite some time. They have been content to worship God in nature and to listen to a dull conscience whisper sweet nothings in their ears. They aren’t sad about missing the fellowship of the saints because they’ve withdrawn from them long ago. They’ve lost their thirst for what truly quenches the soul.
But what about you? Are you starting to see and feel what a benefit real and live worship is yet? As much as online services help to keep us connected to the Word of God, where we can type messages to each other online and give a wave emoji, this is still not the way God designed it. Throughout the history of the church, He designed worship to be done in a corporate setting, where we personally receive the body and blood of the Lord together, knee to knee, begging for the same forgiveness and receiving the same mercy at the same place and through the same means. God designed the pastor to know his flock and visit them in the hospitals and in their time of need. If you can’t make it to church, it should bother you, like it did the Psalmist. It should bother you when you can’t sing by the side of your fellow believers or hear the music live and in person. This is how God designed us to be with Him on this side of heaven. It is meant to be a great blessing for you to grow in your faith personally and together.
If this virus helps to bring about a deep desire to come back to worship and be with the flock of God’s people, than that can be a good purpose. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I hope there are many sad people online today: sad that they can’t be here worshiping in person.
What do you do with your sadness? Talk to yourself. Sometimes people think you’re crazy if you talk to yourself. The Psalmist asked himself, Why are you so depressed, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? In the midst of our loneliness and fear, what do we have to remember? God isn’t dead. God hasn’t lost control. God hasn’t changed. He is still forgiving. He is still kind. He is still merciful . He is still powerful. He still IS. Even if we die before we planned, we still get to go to heaven. Is that really so bad? When Luther was moping around and all depressed his wife went and put a funeral dress on. When he asked her, “Who died?”, she said, “God did.” Luther said, “God didn’t die!,” to which Katy said, “By the way you were acting I thought He did.” He got the point. Don’t act as if God is dead. He’s not.
Here’s the good news. You can still hear about Jesus online. Nothing can change the fact that your sins are paid for and Jesus has risen from the dead. After the service next week you will be able to drive up and receive the Lord’s Supper for the forgiveness of your sins. I never would have dreamed of doing something like that a month ago. But His word and sacrament still work the same either way! If you’re going to talk to yourself, talk to yourself about Jesus. Don’t forget who God is! When the Psalmist talked to himself with these positive types of words focusing on God and His mercy, it changed his attitude. He said, Hope in God, for I will again praise him for salvation from his presence.
Think also of the words of Lamentations, chapter 3:22 Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Israelites oftentimes were attacked and chased out of their homes when they had sinned. Their temple was destroyed. Their goods were stolen. They were enslaved. You don’t have to leave your homes. In fact, you are supposed to stay there. You still have food and drink. You still have a roof over your head. You still have forgiveness and you still have the promise of the resurrection. So don’t lose heart. Talk to yourself about Jesus.
I’m thirsty. When a person is stung by a viper, the poison makes him thirsty. When you run a race, your body craves water. When it’s hot out, you thirst. Life is getting hotter and drier. Entertainment has dried up. The virus is getting closer and more personal. We are still sinners deserving nothing but God’s wrath and death. But God is still God. Jesus is still Lord. Your sins are still paid for on the cross. You are still His baptized child. His promises and His mercy still work to quench your thirst. His mercies are new every morning, and for that we can be thankful. Amen.
