Psalm 42
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
For the choir director. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so I long for you, God.
I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while all day long people say to me,
“Where is your God?”
I remember this as I pour out my heart:
how I walked with many,
leading the festive procession to the house of God,
with joyful and thankful shouts.
Why, my soul, are you so dejected?
Why are you in such turmoil?
Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him,
my Savior and my God.
I am deeply depressed;
therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan
and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your billows have swept over me.
The Lord will send his faithful love by day;
his song will be with me in the night—
a prayer to the God of my life.
I will say to God, my rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about in sorrow
because of the enemy’s oppression?”
My adversaries taunt me,
as if crushing my bones,
while all day long they say to me,
“Where is your God?”
Why, my soul, are you so dejected?
Why are you in such turmoil?
Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Introduction: Expository Hospitality
Psalm 42 is the beginning of the 2ndBook of the Psalms. The entire book was put into 5 smaller books to resemble the Books of Moses, if you haven’t been in church long Jews have a thing for Moses.
SO this starts book 2. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. The sons of Korah were a special set of Levites who sang in the Temple.
The Psalms were worship but they are so much more. The word Maskil in the title means that this is not only a song but a song of instruction.
Spring time is fair season and with all the bacon wrapped grilled cheese sandwiches on a stick we can think of this psalm this maskil as portable theology for the people of God its Theology on a Stick. Psalms are instruction. Instruction on who God is, who we are, what obedience produces, what sin produces, what to feel and hope for and how to hurt.
I am blown away by the love of God in giving us poetry that is instruction. It’s as if he is saying there are going to be highs too high for you to describe and lows too low for you to cry out to me in so I am going to give you words to do it”. We are so helpless we need him to tell us how to question him!!!
This is true especially as we enter this psalm. A cry out to God, personally or as a community, that is a passionate expression of sorrow.
Christopher Wright says this about Laments “Lament is not only allowed in the bible it is modeled in abundance. God seems to want to give us as many words as possible with which to fill out our complaint forms as to write our thank-you notes”
The main idea of this lament for us is there are legitimate reasons for feeling pain and suffering in this life. But in Christ we have deeper and stronger reasons for encouragement in any kind of suffering.
We are going to look at 4 aspects of this Psalm: The Psalmists Pain, The Psalmists Path, The Psalmists Prescription to us, and the Psalmists Picture of The Savior in a quasi systematic way
The Psalm says this:
First we see the psalmist’s pain:
a. Homesick- Exile
i. Spiritual Home (v1, 6)
ii. Physical Home (v4)
b. Distanced from Community (v4)
i. Purpose is lost (v4)
c. Surrounded by a Hostile Culture (v3, 9, 10)
i. Shame
ii. Unmet expectation- like watching your dad lose a fight
d. Alone is injustice (v9, 10)
e. The Sovereignty of God (v7,8,9)
i. YOUR Waves, YOUR Covenant Name and Love
What we don’t have are specifics. This could be for any number of reasons. I believe the Holy Spirit kept it general so that any one in any hardship could come to this psalm for help and instruction. it could be sickness, singleness, loneliness, unmet expectation, sin, no matter what the issue we can all come here for help.
We can identify no matter what we are experiencing with the pain of the psalmist and get help from the path he takes in it. We see 4 things
1. Authenticity: people in the south are always “fine, blessed”- there are things that really aren’t fine. It’s ok to say you aren’t ok at times.
2. Remembrance
ii. Remembering the right things – story about the wedding night
iii. The Covenant God- While the Sovereignty of God is a source of perplexing to the psalmist and can be to us it is also a source of comfort. There is unshakable hope in a right view of God Tim Keller says “The image of our glorious God delighting over us with all His being (Isa 62:4, Zeph 3:14, Dt: 23:5, 30:9) if this is only a mere concept to us then our needs, suffering, will overwhelm us and drive our behavior. Without the power of the Spirit, our hearts don’t really believe in Gods delight or grace, so they operate in their default mode. But the truths of the gospel, brought home by the Spirit, slowly but surely help us grasp in a new way how safe and secure how loved and accepted we are in Christ”
3. Preaching to himself. This is the pattern of the psalm. V5 and V11 he is preaching to himself.
4. Prayer and disciplines- self-indulgence especially in times of suffering is a constant lure. But we see in the psalmist that he remains disciplined. This is a prayer. He stays disciplined. He doesn’t get up and walk out of the movie half way through because the hero looks to be losing. I think of Peter in John 6 saying “where else will we go” we are all in with you we know you are it and this doesn’t make sense right now but we are in this with you.
So we see things that are also bigger picture prescriptions for us.
1. The Psalmists Prescription for us (V5-6)
a. As a community we can learn how to listen better because of the example God sets for us in this text. God is not interrupting him to show how theologically his complaint doesn’t line up with Calvin’s institutes. Nobody cares when they are hurting. Show up and shut up. Like a kid who scrapes his knee.
b. Pre-emptive strike on the battle for our mind- Martin Lloyd Jones says this: “
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? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”
Don’t fill up on junk food we weren’t made for indifference. The prescription is to cultivate a hunger and a thirst for God that is immediately missed when it is absent. Listen to this description of this type of believer from Cornelius Plantinga He calls them a person who spiritually flourishes
“What are some features of this flourishing? As Christians see her, a spiritually whole person longs in certain classic ways. She longs for God for the beauty of God for Christ and Christlikeness for the dynamite of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself- and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces. As we may expect her longings dim from season to season. When they do she longs to long again”
The psalmist is remarkably spiritually healthy in this psalm. A perfect picture of faithful suffering. Because in this psalm we see an incredible picture of the Savior and the Reason we can hope in our pain.
The Psalmists Picture of the Savior
a. We have hope in trial because of the one who experienced ultimate exile, was forsaken, cursed, shamed, and endured the ultimate injustice on our behalf.
b. This is a picture of the Gospel and what Jesus perfectly endured to rescue us.
c. The thirsting savior nailed to a tree, prophesied in Psalm 69:21, fulfilled in John 19:28
d. He became an exile stepping down out of heaven as Paul says in Phil 2:6, without even a place to lay his head in Matthew 8:20
e. Suffered injustice and shame and rejection as the Suffering Servant of Psalm 53
f. But purchased for us a “firm foundation” in our salvation, and a future hope so that we can be like him in our afflictions set our face like flint, and for the joy set before us endure to the end. Because Revelation 21:1-4 is coming.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place[a] of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,[b] and God himself will be with them as their God.[c] 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away”
Because of the Savior we can sing songs like “Jesus I My Cross Have Taken”
Go, then, earthly fame and treasure, Come disaster, scorn and pain
In Thy service, pain is pleasure, With Thy favor, loss is gain
I have called Thee Abba Father, I have stayed my heart on Thee
Storms may howl, and clouds may gather;
All must work for good to me.
Soul, then know thy full salvation
Rise over sin and fear and care Joy to find in every station,
Something still to do or bear. Think what Spirit dwells within thee,
Think what Fathers smiles are thine, Think that Jesus died to win thee,
Child of heaven, canst thou repine.