God Will Come Through
I. OPENING ILLUSTRATION:
We have a saying in English when we hear children speak with words of wisdom: "Out of the mouths of babes" (Psalm 8).
There was an atheist. In his drawing room he had written in big letters: “God is nowhere.”
His small son was playing one day while he was reading his newspaper. The small son was trying, was learning how to read, so he tried to read the sentence on the wall: “God is nowhere.” But nowhere was a big word, so he broke it into two. He read, “God is now here.”
The father was shocked. He had never read the sentence that way. The whole gestalt changed: “God is nowhere,” and the child was reading, “God is now here.” There is great difference between “nowhere” and “now here”! For the first time he read that sentence with the vision of a child, with the innocence of a child.
It is said that since that day he could not read the old sentence in the old way: “God is nowhere.” Whenever he would look he had to read, “God is now here.” It became something fixed – such was the impact of the child.
II. TEXT:
Psalm 42-43 are a meditation that begins with a plea by an individual (or group) who were longing for the Presence of God. Most people remember it from the classic KJV:
Psalm 42-43
To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah.
1 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.
8 Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.
2 For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
3 O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.
4 Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
The Psalmist starts out wondering where God is and ends believing that God will be there soon. It was a process to get to the hope that drug him out of despair, but ultimately he came to the place where he believed that "God will come through."
III. BACKGROUND OF TEXT:
The book of Psalms is a Spirit-inspired compilation of the songs of Israel from various periods of their history. The Psalter contains the expression of the entire range of human emotion. You should read it sometime.
"One reason for the Old Testament's importance today is that it starts from where men [and women] are. Our world has little awareness of God, while the church and the individual Christian, too, sometimes find themselves (perhaps because they have to live in this same world) in turn losing their awareness of God. God does not seem to make His Presence felt. He seems difficult to find." (John Goldingay, Songs from a Strange Land: Psalms 42-51, pg. 26).
Psalm 42 and 43 are laments. They are separated in the Psalter, but they seem to be one. They share a superscription.
They express the feeling of a person who feels that they cannot get to God. They tell the story of someone, or a group that is cut off from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the place where the temple was. It was the place where God had chosen to put His Name and manifest His Presence. It was the place where the people of God of the OT worshipped God individually and corporately. It was the center of their lives. These two Psalms are applicable for may situations and circumstances.
In our songs we are used to refrains. The Psalter contains the songs of the ancient Hebrews. Their style was different than ours. Most of the psalms do not have refrains, but these two do: 42:5, 11 and 43:5 begin with the words "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" (KJV). This indicates that they close three stanzas: 42:1-5, 42:6-11 and 43:1-5. This is the reason why scholars believe that they are one song. Also Psalm 43 doe not have a superscription. It shares the title of Psalm 42.
"Each of these stanzas has three elements. In each the psalmist begins by letting himself go: he gives expression to his feelings. I n each he goes on to make himself think: he turns his mind away from the present situation. In each, finally, in similar words he pulls himself together." (Goldingay, pg. 27)
IV. PREACHING POINTS:
1. Letting Yourself Go
The psalmist gives vent to his emotions. One of the beautifully messy things about the Psalter is that it does not hide the reality of human emotion in all of its extremes and everything in between. It places human emotions in the center of human spirituality. The spirituality of the Bible is not detached from real human life and experience. We all have real emotions, even the most stoic of us who hide them, or manage them well. This psalm is the psalm of a person who is having a hard time holding it together. He is at a place where enough is enough. He is overwhelmed.
All I have to eat is tears.
'I'm parched' (42:1-3)
Drought is a long suffering.
Prolonged drought causes an animal to desperately search for water.
God is as indispensable as food and water, more so. Living God, living waters parallel. Perennial watercourses, living waters that can be found all throughout the year. Like YHWH as the fountain of Living Waters that quenches the thirst of the soul! (Jer 17:13; 2:13; John 7:37)
'I'm overwhelmed' (42:6-7, 9-10)
Instead of gentle, nourishing, flowing constant streams there is an overwhelming torrent of chaos, a waterfall that overwhelms him.
'I'm misjudged' (43:1-2)
Persecution by one's enemies and disappointment with oneself.
I pour out my soul! I give expression to my pent up emotions.
Despair and a conversation with yourself. There is a place where the psalmist stops speaking to himself and starts speaking to God (Psalm 43). This is the way to mental and spiritual health.
2. Making Yourself Think
In psalms of disorientation we remember better times.
"I remember." This is not an accidental drifting of the psalmist's mind, but a deliberate attempt to recall the past. He thought about his own past worship experiences and how those commemorated the acts of salvation of God in history. His own story was a apart of a larger story. He couldn't physically get to the temple, but he could participate in his mind.
Passover, Booths, and Pentecost.
He tries to talk himself into a positive state of mind. He urges himself to hope in the future of his relationship with God.
Hermon is to the far north of Jerusalem. Mount Mizar is unknown, but could also be translated as "little mountain."
Corporate worship in the past (42:4)
Personal experience of God's Grace (42:8)
Renewed worship in the future (43:3-4)
3. Pulling Yourself Together
Why are you cast down? Why am I despairing!? He is rebuking himself!
Hope in God.
I must wait for God.
Praise God.
"Praise is indeed an act of basic trust--as elemental as the "basic trust" that Erik Erikson imputes to the smallest infants--in which we unreservedly hand our life and our world and out future over to God, without advice or imperative." (Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms & the Life of Faith, pg. 51).
Through praise we yield. We have recognized the reality of our human experience, but now we refocus on the Stronger Reality of God.
There is no definitive turn to confidence or joy or praise, but there is an anticipation that once God answers the prayer there will be!
The Beauty of the Gospel is that JESUS comes to us in our suffering as One of us.
Matthew 1:23 NIV
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)."
The prayers of the Psalms are the prayers of the Messiah. They give us insight into the emotional life of our Lord. He had complete solidarity with us. He experienced pain and grief and loss. Not only is He with us (now here), but He is also for us. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so Jesus came to be for us. His death on the cross was substitutionary (1 Cor 15:3-8; Titus 2:14).
Conclusion:
Periodic petitionary prayer is the thing that safeguards our hope.
