SUMMER IN THE PSALMS: Psalm 22

Chris McCurley: So good to see you this morning. We completed another successful week of Shine Camp. Want to thank Rachel, Chris Hedge for all that they do in that and everyone else that helped out. We had 17 young men and 14 young ladies. Is that right? I think 15 young ladies. So ⁓ great week. It's always good for me to get to kind of develop those relationships a little better and and get to hang out with them. And we had a great time. ⁓ also what you'd be praying for our youth group is they'll be leaving this week for Miami, Florida. You're gonna go down and visit Riley Hendricks. of the missionaries that we support here and I think they're going to do some preaching and teaching and just hanging out and having a good time but also you know working so keep them in your prayers Austin ⁓ Chris and all those that are going ⁓ appreciate their efforts and ⁓ we want to keep them in our prayers. We are in the book of Psalms this summer right now Psalm 22 if you want to turn there I want you to think about a few scenarios with me. Consider a a young couple that has prayed and prayed for a child, but they have been unable to get pregnant. Finally, eventually, God answers their prayer. And that young child that they prayed and prayed for is five years old and diagnosed with leukemia and given six months to live. And now this couple is turning to God again, praying and praying that He would heal their child. But sadly the child passes away. Or the young man or the young woman that prays and prays for a spouse. God, give me a spouse, give me someone to marry so I can build a family. And they pray and pray, and yet God doesn't seem to come through. And they feel like they're destined to live their life alone. Or you think about the couple that the husband develops Alzheimer's, and the wife is. Devastated with grief, and she prays and prays that God would heal her husband, but she soon realizes that he's not getting better. In fact, he's getting worse. And so she prays that that he passed quickly, that he doesn't linger, that he doesn't have to suffer. Yet for seven long years she goes and takes care of him and feeds him and serves his every need. Where is God in those situations? You ever ask that? Why God? Where are you, God? Why why have you abandoned me in this moment? If you've ever asked questions like that, then you know exactly what is going on in Psalm 22. You've put yourself in David's sandals, whether you realize it or not. Psalm 22 is about praying through pain. This Psalm teaches us how to talk to God when times are tough. David is praying and he is holding on to that conviction that God is good and that God has a redemptive purpose. For everything, that God can step in and He can do something. But David's in the middle of a mess. And the language of this psalm is that of lament and protest. And we see that often in the Psalms. We see lament and protest. When you hear protest, don't think of protest in our terms. It's not like an angry mob burning down buildings or anything like that. David is protesting what is going on around him. He's protesting the ills of this world and his circumstances. He's lamenting. And that's very different than how we pray. We typically put on a good face, pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, and keep on going. We act better than we feel. We put on a smile. We're falling apart inside, but we act like everything is okay. How are you? God is good. But David shows us something different. David shows us not to pretend, not to act like everything's okay. In fact, just pour it all out before God. Lay it all out on the table. Let him know. He knows anyway, so let him know what's going on. The Psalms teach us that lamenting and protesting to God when times are tough are crucial habits. Psalms do not suppress one's emotions. David was not into suppressing his emotions. He let them all out. He threw them out there before God. It's an intentional effort to pour out one's mess in God's presence. You lament the bad and you acknowledge the good. Now, Psalm 22, as well as many of the Psalms that we'll cover in this series, present what is known as the great contradiction. Maybe you've heard of that phrase. What is the great contradiction? It is this God is good, God is love, and so if He is those things, then why does so much bad happen? If God is good, then why is there so much evil in the world? It's the atheist number one argument. That is the great contradiction. If God is good, then why am I dealing with all this mess? And if God is good and God is love, then why doesn't He love me enough to step in and do something about what I'm dealing with? Psalms don't give us an answer to this theological dilemma. Unfortunately. Because that's our big question: is why? Anytime something bad happens, we want to know why. Why God? Why is this happening? But David asks a different question. David's not concerned with why. David's concerned with how. How do I get through it? How do I manage it? How do I pray through this? Instead of the why, the psalmist looks at the how. How do I pray through the pain? Approximately 50 of the 150 Psalms deal with praying through the pain. And the mode is lament and protest. And I keep bringing this up because remember these prayers are our prayers. We can pray these as well. And we can find ourselves in these prayers. And so maybe your prayer life needs to be kind of recalibrated to include lament and protest. And again, when I say protest, I'm not talking about the negative connotation that we often assign to the word. We're talking about protesting what's going on in our lives, praising God, that He is God and that He can step in and do something. It's not blaming God. It's crying out to God in the midst of pain and suffering. You pray through the pain. What does that look like? Well, it starts by considering our default mode. What is our default mode when it comes to prayer? Well, for most of us, it's request. Most of us default to request mode when it comes to our prayer life. We assume that God already knows what's going on, and so we just go to request. Whatever the request may be. And that's not bad. That's not wrong. Please hear me on this. It's okay to request from God. But David shows us a little bit different take on prayer. He doesn't default to request mode. No, he he defaults to pouring it out before God, giving him every detail of what's going on in his life. You might remember what I said ⁓ earlier about Anne Lamotte, her famous quote: Most of our prayers involve three things. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Help me, help me, help me. I mean, that is the reader's digest condensed version of our prayer life. We typically default to request, and our requests often include, help me. Help me, help me, help me, God. We want a solution. Fix this mess. Make it go away. You think about your own prayer life, how much of it revolves around request. And it's okay, again, to request things from God. But we often operate under an assumption. And that assumption is that when tragedy strikes, God already knows what's going on. I just need to tell him what to do about it. But in Psalm 22, we see that David is waiting for something. The majority of this prayer in Psalm 22 is about what is happening and how David feels about it. And this is the nature of biblical prayer in the Psalms, especially, is lament and protest. We get into request mode. We assume that God knows what's going on and he just needs to be told what to do about it. But the psalmist feels something here. And he wants God to know how he feels about it. And you see this play out in Psalm 22. 18 verses are spent detailing what's going on and how David feels about it. There are only three short verses of request. And that's very different than how most of us pray. Because if we're being honest, most of us, if not all of us, struggle with prayer in times of suffering and hardship. We could probably use some lessons on lament and protest, and we're in luck because the Psalms have a lot to teach us about that. They teach us how to pray in the middle of a mess. You ever ⁓ seen the letter written to Continental Airlines? From the passenger in seat 29E. You ever seen that? It it went viral a few years back. I want to share a portion of it with you. This is an actual passenger sitting in seat 29E on a flight from Sweden to Houston, Continental Airlines. Dear Continental Airlines, I am disgusted as I write this note to you about the miserable experience I am having sitting in seat 29E on one of your aircraft. As you may know, this seat is situated directly across from the laboratory or the bathroom, so close that I can reach out my left arm and touch the door. All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It's difficult to say what the worst part about sitting in 29E really is. Is it the stench of the sanitation fluid that's blown all over my body every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the whoosh of the constant flushing? I constructed a stink shield by shoving one end of a blanket into the overhead compartment. I am picturing a boardroom full of executives giving props to the young promising engineer that figured out how to squeeze an additional row of seats onto this plane by putting them next to the laboratory. I would like to flush his head in the toilet that I am close enough to touch, taste from my seat. Worse yet. is I've paid four hundred dollars for the honor of sitting in this seat. Does your company give refunds? I'd like to go back to where I came from and start over. C29E could only be worse if it was located inside the bathroom. I wonder if my clothing will retain the sanitizing odor. What about my hair? I feel like I'm bathing in a toilet bowl of blue liquid and there is no man in a little boat to save me. I'm filled with a deep hatred for your plane designer and a general disease that may last for hours. We are finally descending, and soon I will be able to tear down the stink shield, but the scars will remain. I suggest that you initiate immediate removal of this seat from all your aircrafts, just remove it, and leave the smoldering hole empty, a good place for sturdy, non-absorbing luggage, maybe, but not human cargo. Now there's more to it. But that went viral many years ago. That was a letter from C 29E to Continental Airlines. And it's pretty funny. But while funny, it's also akin to what's going on in Psalm 22. David is laying it all out there. He is letting God know what he is dealing with as if God didn't know already. The passenger in C 29E goes into excruciating detail about his experience and how he feels about it. And that's what David does in Psalm 22. But his complaint highlights the fact that we don't really know how to lament, right? The complaint from the passenger in 29E. It highlights the fact that we just don't really know how to lament. We don't really know what to do in times of tragedy and turmoil. It's like we're we're just grasping at straws. The passenger handles it through the use of humor, and maybe some of us do as well, but when it comes to more severe situations, we're just we're kind of at a loss. We just assume that God doesn't want to hear from us, and so we just jump in to what we want out of the deal. That's our default request mode. But apparently, as we'll see in this Psalm and others, God is interested in how I feel. And let's look at this Psalm in detail. First I want you to notice the superscript. That's above your Psalm. It says to the choir master, according to the doe of the dawn. Anyone know the words to the song Do Dough of the Dawn? I I don't either. I I don't know that any of us do, but the superscript before the Psalms doesn't always tell us a whole lot, but this one does tell us that this was a prayer sung in temple worship. That means that though it was a prayer of David, it became a prayer for all of Israel. So anyone facing hardship could tap into this prayer. Now keep that in mind as we go forward. Verses 1 and 2. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? ⁓ my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. David begins with how he feels. You notice this is a form of protest. I've been crying out day and night. Where are you, God? He says. Now, this is not an angry protest, keep in mind. This is David protesting his situation. What is going on around him? My God, he says. He refers to God as his God. My God. David is crying out to God. He's telling him how he feels. He assumes God wants to know and that God cares, which makes this all the more painful. Because if God already knows and God cares, then what's he going to do about it? Why has he not stepped in? Why has he not helped him already? Verse 3: Yet you are holy. enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted. They trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame. David appeals to the history of his people. And often the people would do this and the thing that they appealed to the most was the Exodus story. And so David seems to be hearkening back to the time when God's people were enslaved in Egypt and God heard their cries, he led them out of slavery and towards the promised land. And so David is playing off of that and saying, Look, I know you've done it before, God. You can do it again. So why don't you step in and do something? Verse 6. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who seek me mock me. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, for he delights in him. In our prayers, we often assume that God already knows. So why tell him? And David seems to take the approach of, no, no, no. Tell him. You need to let it all out. Tell God. He wants to hear from you. If you have a relationship with him, then bear your chest. So David pours out his feelings. He says, I feel isolated. I'm mocked. I'm ridiculed. I'm despised. And then notice verses 9 through 11. Yet you are he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help. So God is depicted as a midwife. David credits God for creating him. He says, You know everything about me, sort of hearkening back to Jeremiah before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. So where is he? Where's God? If you know everything about me, you created me for your purpose, you stamped me with your image. Where are you, God? I'm in trouble. I'm dealing with a mess. I need you. And it's it's almost a little uncomfortable for us, isn't it? We we may think, well, you can't talk to God that way. David, settle down, dude. You can't say those kind of things to God. But yet the Psalms teach us over and over again, yes. Pour it all out before God. All of your emotions. Lay them out before God. David feels a close enough connection to God. He has this intimate relationship with him. He feels like he can bear his soul. He feels like he can tell him anything. Many bulls encompass me. Strong bulls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water. And I am and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a potshard, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. It was very common in this day and age to refer to your enemies like an animal, a vicious animal that is seeking to attack. And really all you need to know about this is David's falling apart. He's coming apart at the seams. He's beyond desperate. He's hanging by a thread, and it he's like a cigarette butt that's been thrown on the ground and and ground into the dirt. That's how he feels. And the people around him are like buzzards circling, waiting for him to die so they can, you know, devour his carcass. Verses 19. Through 21. But you, O Lord, do not be far off. O you my help. Come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion. You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen. So you notice what David did? He shifted to request mode, didn't he? He went to our default mode. And what is his request? Come quickly, deliver me, save me. But in David's mind, the most important thing in this prayer is to articulate to God how he feels about his grief and his pain and how that has overcome him and overwhelmed him. And this is so helpful for us in our prayer life because by and large, we don't do this very well. Again, we might even scandalize how David is talking to God. You can't talk to God that way. David says, No, I love God. I have such a close, intimate relationship with him that I can bear it all. And this is critical. It's critical in the process of dealing with the pain and the emotions of it. This is the amazing thing about the Psalms that David's like you and me. He is a human just like you and me. And this human's words come through God to us as an example of how we can speak to God. We are invited to name the wrong. Protest it, name the wrong, talk about it, get it off your chest, be honest as you pour out your heart to God, the one who cares, and the only one who can truly fix it. Verses twenty-two through twenty-six. I will tell you, I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you. You who fear the Lord praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him. All you offspring of Israel, for he has not despied or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted. And he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried to him. From you comes my praise in the great congregation. My vows I will perform before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever. So we have a shift. We've gone from protest to praise, which is very common in these types of prayers. You start with the lament or the protest, and then you switch to praise. David has experienced deliverance, it seems. At some point, God seems to have answered his prayer, and he was rescued from the pain and suffering that he experienced. So what do you do when you experience rescuing? When God answers your prayer, what do you do? You praise him. Even when God doesn't answer our prayer in the way that we think you should, we still praise him. But naturally, reflexively, if God answers your prayer, if he saves you, if he rescues you, then you're going to praise him. And not only are you not going to pray, not only are you going to praise him, you're going to tell others about it. And that's what David does. How many of you have a God story? And what I mean by that, how many of you have a story of a time? When you prayed and prayed for something and God stepped in and delivered. You were dealing with a mess. You were dealing with a mess and you just needed God to deliver you and He did. My guess is many of you have a story like that. Where you prayed and prayed for deliverance and God answered your prayer. Maybe he didn't answer it immediately. Maybe it maybe it's been ten years ago, and you can look back and go, ⁓ yeah, that that's how he answered it. That's what he did. We call that providence, and providence is one of those things that you usually can't see it until you after you've walked through the door and looked back. But probably most, if not all of us, have a God's story. And you share that story, don't you? When you've been delivered from a mess, you share that story with others. Which is what David did. Which is what we do as the church, isn't it? As the church, we share our story. We weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice. When we have an experience where God has delivered us, where he has has done something great in our lives, we step up and tell it, right? We we show that to others because we're a community and we're a family. Notice how this Psalm ends. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship. Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. Posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it. Now this is really cool because David considers his story And his own lament and how he received deliverance from God. And he shares his stories with others. Then he sees his story, he reflects on his story, and he sees it as a sample size of the bigger narrative. And what's the bigger narrative? The fact that a Messiah, a better human, is going to come and gonna rescue all of us from the mess that we're in, right? A Messiah is going to come and rescue us from our mess, and that mess of course specifically being sin. It's interesting as as David plays this out. I mean, he essentially points forward to when our Heavenly Father meets us in our suffering, rescues, and redeems all those who are enslaved by sin. He even ends by stating that the healing he faced on the other side, God's people will experience on the other side the healing. of this existence. Eventually we will be delivered from the life of pain and suffering. For many of us. The second part of this psalm, the praise part, doesn't resonate with us as much as the first part. I mean, if we're being honest, the second part probably doesn't resonate with us as much as the first part, the protest. I I mean, what do you do if God doesn't show up? I mean, David prayed and prayed, and it happened for him. He lamented, he protests, and then he prays because his prayers were answered. But what if? What if you lament? What if you protest and God doesn't seem to show up? He doesn't seem to answer your prayer. Then what? Well turn with me to Matthew twenty seven, forty five and forty six. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, Lama Sabakhtani. That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? From the cross, in his dying breaths, Jesus quotes Psalm 22. There are over 20 instances of In scripture, in the Gospels, where the authors draw attention to or use the language of Psalm 22, and they make the connection between Jesus' suffering and David's prayer. You see, Psalm 22 isn't really prophetic, it wasn't meant to predict anything. I think we think that sometimes David was looking ahead to Jesus on the cross, and he was prophesying that. No. Jesus was just praying this prayer. The same prayer that all of us can pray because the Psalms provide a model for prayer. Jesus was praying this prayer, and it's a prayer of lament. It was David's prayer and the prayer of countless others that became Jesus' prayer. Jesus is taking up the suffering of David and all the others who have prayed this prayer. Does that not make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Check your pulse if it doesn't. He is self identifying with our suffering. Jesus is saying, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And by saying this, he is giving an answer to what if? He's giving that answer to what if? What if you don't answer my prayer? What if God doesn't come through? What if he doesn't answer my prayer in the way that I wanted to? What if God doesn't deliver me? What if I lament and he doesn't show up? Jesus is taking this prayer on his lips to give me an anchor of something to hold on to. God became God forsaken. He didn't just sympathize with my need, my pain, and my suffering. He self identified with it by entering into it. And by doing so, he created a space for all. Christians to pray the first part of Psalm 22, knowing that we may never experience the second part. Psalm 22. I may never experience the second part of Psalm 22. Jesus did. And because he did, I will. Someday. Maybe not today. Something. Dear Heavenly Father. We are so thankful for your goodness. We are thankful that you allow us to protest and lament, but also that you are a God that we can certainly praise for all you've done and all you will do for us. We are grateful that there is an answer to all the pain and suffering and that this isn't as good as it gets. God, may we may we live at the center of your will. That's the best place to be. May we seek to. to spread your good news to those around us. Because there's so much pain and suffering in the world. We love you, God, and we thank you, God. And it's in your Son's precious name we pray. Amen. Maybe you're experiencing some pain and suffering this morning, you'd like To be prayed for, certainly. We'd like to do that. I mean, this is a church family, this is a community, and we want to we want to lament if you're lamenting with you, and of course rejoice with you as well. And maybe maybe you're lamenting. Maybe you're lamenting a a crisis of of sin in your life and you're ready to do something about that. Maybe you'd like to learn more about discipleship and following Jesus. Or maybe you're ready to put an end to all the suffering you've been experiencing and put on Christ in baptism and begin a daily walk with Him. I know this. This church loves you. More importantly, God loves you, and we're here to help you any way we can. So the invitation is open for all. Why don't you come as we stand and as we sit?