Hope in Times Like These

Let's dive into the text this morning.

So we're looking at uh times like these, and we've talked about faith in times like these, we've talked about faithfulness in times like these, and now we're talking about hope in times like these.

And I want to kind of pose a question to you this morning as we kind of kick off.

Um, do you is there a sense in where we have convinced ourselves or we believe that being honest, brutally raw with God about our emotions and our feelings is contrary to what we would call faith?

I don't know about you, but I was uh brought up Christian in a context uh where if you were honest about your feelings, if you were honest about any sense of sorrow or pain or agony, you were a person who was without faith.

Or it was contrary to this thing that we called faith, that you actually had to kind of fake it till you make it.

That was kind of the gospel reality that we functioned within.

And there was no real understanding of how we might, in healthy, biblical, God-glorifying ways, be honest about despair and turmoil we might feel in our soul.

Do you wrestle with the belief that if you were honest about how you felt, it would somehow negatively affect your relationship with God?

And maybe we're projecting that onto God, right?

Because we found ourselves in the midst of relationships between one another, that if we were ever actually really honest with an with the other person, we're terrified that on the other side of it, it would negatively affect the relationships that we hold, right?

Maybe they would be distant from us.

Maybe that in fear they would pull back.

Maybe it would sever completely this relationship I so dearly treasure.

And oftentimes that makes us not be honest.

And we project that onto God.

And I think that's a really unhealthy reality for us spiritually.

You see, this morning we're going to observe the too often dismissed spiritually healthy practice of lament.

Lament.

And we're invited into a person's internal struggle between their feelings surrounding their circumstances, their past experiences as one of God's children, and their confidence of a better outcome.

You see, they are very honest about the ways that they feel, and they communicate that through Psalm 42 and 43.

They're able to be brutally transparent about the difficult circumstances that they find themselves in because they are able to be honest and raw with God.

And I believe it's because they have a much bigger picture of God and his sovereignty and his character and his covenant with his people than often you and I do.

The Old Testament translator, uh, British Old Testament translator John Golden Gay says this about God.

God is big enough to take it and loving enough to absorb it.

God is big enough to take it and loving enough to absorb it.

Do you think God is at all concerned about us being honest with how we feel?

No.

We're the ones that are afraid.

We're the ones that have a misconception or false belief about our relationship with God that creates this fear within us.

Throughout the book of Psalms, we see various authors that actually comprise of more than a third of the Psalms being Psalms of Lament.

Psalms is really this kind of outcry of the soul.

There's not a single emotion that isn't hit with inside the Psalms, and to imagine that over a third of them are these songs of lament.

We also see Jesus himself practicing the spiritual discipline of lament.

Look at the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus was brutally raw and honest about the way he felt in the midst of such agony and terrifying circumstance.

He wasn't afraid of what it would do between him and his father.

There's a reality where Christ had confidence enough in who God was and his relationship with him that he was actually emboldened to be honest.

You see, lament is the soul's expression of sorrow.

But it's not just that.

Lament is the confidence to be honest about our pain because we so deeply trust in God.

You see, it's a prayerful invitation to pour out our fears, our frustrations, and our sorrows for the purpose of helping us to renew our confidence in God.

True lament turns us toward God while sorrow alone tempts us to run from Him.

Sorrow that is not honestly delivered to God through prayerful lament has the propensity to turn to despair.

And that's where we have to contend against, because despair is to be left utterly hopeless.

Despair is to be left utterly hopeless.

And I think that there's many of us who have gotten to that place, or we've known friends and family who have gotten to that place because they didn't in healthy, spiritually healthy, biblically faithful ways, allow their soul to just empty out in brutal honesty before God.

You see, lament is not despair, lament is the divine remedy to it.

And through this psalm, we discover how lament works to be a spiritual discipline that renews our hope in God in the midst of difficult circumstances.

So within Psalm 42 and 43, we see three paralleled stanzas.

And each of those stanzas have three very paralleled parts to them.

The first part we'll see in each stanza is kind of the way that I define them, is the first part we'll see an expression of sorrow.

The psalmist, the writer, is able to be honest about how they feel the agony and sorrow that they're experiencing because of their present circumstance, right?

They don't try to fake it till they make it.

They don't try to dismiss the reality of what they're going through.

They are honest with God about how they feel in the midst of trials and trouble.

The second thing we'll see is a joyful remembrance.

The psalmist always has this joyful remembrance of some past experience or promise with God.

And it starts to derive joy within his soul once again.

But one of the most prominent things that we'll see, in fact, the only thing that is the exact same in each stanza is the third part.

And we see a sermon for the soul.

The psalmist is able to preach to himself, which brings him ultimately out of the pits of despair and into a renewed confidence with God.

So let's dive into the first stanza, verses one through six.

We see, as a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God?

Can you imagine such pain and sorrow that your tears are your only form of sustenance?

I I've I haven't personally experienced this, but I I have family and friends who I've witnessed be in such depression, such sorrow that they can't even get up to feed themselves.

And you watch their physical bodies start to wither, where literally the only thing that's being sustained and nourished is their very sorrow as they continue to just weep and weep and weep.

I've seen that in other individuals.

This is what the psalmist is communicating.

That he's unable to nourish himself physically, but only his sorrow is actually nourished through his own tears.

His soul longs for God to feel his presence, to hear his voice, to be in communion with him.

I love that he says, My soul longs for you like a deer longs for flowing streams, like a deer pants for flowing streams.

He's talking about the relationship that he has with God.

It's not some type of uh a privilege or benefit.

He's not painting it in such a way.

He's saying it's a necessity.

If I don't have this, I will die.

But to the psalmist, God seems distant, unattainable.

He feels parched in soul, withering in his core, because his thirst for God remains unquenched.

But then he has this joyful remembrance.

These things I remember, he says.

Verse 4, as I pour out my soul, how I 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.

I love that his first remembrance of joy is him being with God's people, praising God's name and keeping God's word.

Right?

We see this reality in the way that he's remembering things.

That there was this joy that was given to him because he was found within God's people.

He was among them praising his glorious name.

In the midst of a community who treasured and kept God's holy word.

The joy of being counted among and discovered within God's people seems to give the psalmist some semblance of strength to keep going.

And then lastly, we see the sermons for the soul.

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.

My soul is cast down within me.

Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Nazar.

When he uses this language of cast down, think about his soul being bent over and doubled upon itself in such anguish that he's unable to even stand up straight.

He's unable to keep himself up because the sorrow is so burdensome and heavy upon him.

And then he asks this really peculiar question, right?

This question of why seems so unfit when we examine his already communicated sorrow and we take into account the sorrows that he will express through the remaining of Psalm 42 and 43.

He asks this unfit question of why.

You and I would present that he has plenty of reason to be filled with sorrow, to have his soul be in turmoil.

But he's asking this question of why?

It's a question that we will find repeated throughout this lament.

Because faithful lament turns us away from our circumstances and toward God who has and will deliver his people.

You see, the fruit of lament is renewed confidence in God as a good Savior King.

To hope in him that he will turn our sorrow into singing through salvation.

Amen.

I was on a roll, and then uh the devil.

Verse 7 through 11, we see the second stanza of Psalm 42.

And it says, Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

The psalmist is painting this very vivid portrait of the trials and difficulties that he's facing.

Um, you see, when I was a young kid, uh we would go to the beach a lot.

Not the real beach, the water park, because we were poor.

And so uh I was like six years old, and uh I thought the wave pool was really cool until the wave pool made waves because I wasn't very tall or a great swimmer.

And so I remember when that buzzer went off, I would try to get out of the wave pool as fast as I can.

And many times I'd get stuck, right?

And that wave would start to come.

And I remember as a six-year-old kid, it would just kind of crash over top of me.

And I come up and I try to gasp for air, and then all of a sudden, here comes another one over top of me.

And I'm sitting here dying, and this like 16-year-old lifeguard is just like, whatever, right?

And uh all of a sudden, maybe it would push me enough to where I could stand again and actually catch my breath, right?

But this is what he's kind of painting.

This portrait is the sorrows, the trials, the troubles that are crashing over him.

It's as if he's caught in the midst of the deep, and these waters are just crashing over his head.

And as he tries to come up for air, to gasp for his breath, his mouth is open to more water coming down and crashing over him again, and he chokes on his own attempt to breathe again.

This is the difficulty of which he's going through.

But look at the sobriety and look at the theological lens of which he understands such circumstances.

He says, your waterfalls, your breakers, your waves.

He's talking to the sovereignty of God and the purpose of his circumstances.

You see, there's a comfort that's being derived in the heart of the psalmist because he understands that he serves a sovereign God who has divine purpose and the trials and difficulties he faces.

And for him, that is immensely more comforting than a God whose purposes are continually frustrated and thwarted by evil.

You see, when we are going through trials, when we are experiencing suffering, there's a temptation for us to look at God as one whose arm is too short to reach us or too weak to do anything about the circumstance we find ourselves in.

And it appears as though evil is triumphing over us.

That's not the God of the scriptures.

We serve a God who is near to his people, whose arm extends to reach those of whom he loves, whose might and power overcomes.

We serve a God who in the midst of our sufferings has purpose because it's his waves, his breakers, his waterfalls that are spilling over us.

We might cry for mercy, but ultimately we're being comforted in the sovereignty of God.

You see, the psalmist has confidence to be honest about his feelings because he's able to be honest about God's purpose and his troubles.

He brings to remembrance this joy of God's person and character.

By day, the Lord commands his steadfast love.

You see, this is God's sovereignty again.

God's sovereign choice in loving you.

It's the intention of his will to place his affection upon you.

This is comforting to us.

God loves us because he chooses to love us.

There's nothing that we have done to merit God's love for us.

There's nothing in our own person that would work to achieve or accomplish his affection for us.

God loves us because he chooses to love us.

And not only does that make it comforting in the sense that we didn't earn that affection, but in the same way we didn't earn it, we cannot lose such affection from him either.

God steadfast love is a promise that resounds throughout the scriptures.

All throughout the Old Testament, you'll see them calling out to God's steadfast love that he has for his people.

Why?

Because they understood that when they served God, when they obeyed his commands, when they worshiped him in the temple, when they practiced the festivals, God loved them.

And they also understood that when they turned their back on him and they went after idols and they worshiped foreign gods and they disobeyed his law and they pushed it aside so that they might be like the culture around them.

God loved them.

Because that was his people, and there was nothing that was going to make him give up on his people.

Did he discipline them?

Yes, because he loved them.

Did he judge them?

Yes, because he loved them.

Did he graciously bring them back to himself?

Yes, because he loved them.

You see, he understands that his relationship with God is rooted in covenant, not circumstance.

And then again he preaches a sermon to his soul.

But this time we see the bands of anguish starting to tighten around him.

You see, in the first stanza, there were these intrusive thoughts.

God has forgotten me.

God has distanced himself from me.

But this time, there's others who are starting to believe the same thing.

Have you ever been such hardships and trials in your life that the very people around you start to question if God is even real?

This is the place that he finds himself in.

He's one who would confess faith in God, he would confess to be a part of God's people, and he's going through some things that's making him think maybe, you know, maybe something's going on, maybe God's forgotten me, maybe he's distanced himself from me, but now his circumstances in life are so bad that the very people around him are starting to say, Yeah, your God's forgotten you.

Like, can you imagine how hard it would be to hold on to faith in a situation like that?

He moves from, God, have you forgotten me?

to others saying, Where is your God?

His circumstances don't just feel contrary to his faith, they now even appear contrary to others.

But we see him preach to his soul once again, as if there's almost two men standing here, and he's trying to convince and persuade the one before him to contend against despair.

His faith reasons with his fears, and his hope in God argues with his sorrows.

Why are you cast down, O my soul?

Hope in God.

Lastly, Psalm 43, we see that his circumstances begin to confirm his mind's temptation to believe God has abandoned him.

It's come full circle.

There's the intrusive thoughts in the first stand of maybe God's forgotten me.

There's the accusations in the second stanza of those around him, your God has forgotten you.

Where is your God?

And now it's almost as if it's become belief.

It's right there on the edge of despair.

God, why have you redempted?

Rejected me.

He's at the end of his rope.

No longer can he cope with the troubles that he faces.

But once again, he encouraged himself with a joyful remembrance.

Send out your light and your truth.

Let them lead me.

Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the liar, O God, my God.

In the midst of his darkness, the psalmist reflects on the light of God.

In the midst of the enemy's lies, he recalls the truth of God.

And it is God's light and truth that the psalmist believes will be able to deliver him from this pit of despair and enable him to ascend to God's presence.

It's in his reconciliation with God that he will be filled with joy and find his reason to sing.

One final refrain, one last needed sermon for the soul.

Why are you cast down?

Hope in God.

You see, through our trials, pain, and suffering, we can have a divine confidence to be honest with God about how we feel and how we are being tempted to believe the lies of our own mind and those around us.

It's in the spiritual practice of lament that we actually confront our propensity to despair because it's as if lament clears out the soul that we might be filled with hope.

And what are we to hope in?

We are to simply hope in God.

Hope in God.

It seems really simple, doesn't it?

Hope in God?

Seems almost too simple.

But it's something that we are very, very uh often find challenging to do.

What is hope?

I think this is a good definition for us.

Hope is an envisioned expectancy of God's deliverance.

Hope is an envisioned expectancy of God's deliverance.

It's as if the psalmist has experienced God's deliverance before, and he expects God's deliverance once again.

He's seen what God can do, and that enables him to envision the power and might of God that he might hope in it coming again to him.

And we see these kind of joyful remembrance play out in these three key areas of the Psalm.

We see him remember God's praise for the works that he has done in his life.

We see him find joy in God's person and his nature, character, and covenant that he has with his people.

And we see it in God's promise as he reflects on what God has promised to his people.

You see, hope often wanes in the midst of difficult circumstances and in the presence of sorrow.

And so if we must learn anything from this, it's not to just leave it as this raw honesty, this pouring out of some type of uh anger or resentment.

No, that's not what lament is.

Lament is our ability to be honest because we have confidence and trust in God so that our hope might be renewed.

Ultimately, what we're being called to is to preach the gospel to ourselves.

We're being called to preach the very gospel to ourselves.

You see, many of us treat the gospel as something we kind of start this Christian life with and then we move beyond it.

And we kind of keep it in our back pocket, right?

If we meet somebody who doesn't believe in Jesus and we want to share the gospel with them, we'll kind of pull it out and we'll dust it off and we'll say, hey, here's this good news.

But we don't realize that the gospel is not just what saves us, the gospel is what is saving us, and the gospel is what will save us.

It is the fullness of the gospel that we need in our life that we might mature and conform to the image of Jesus.

You see, many of us we wonder why we experience so much sorrow in our life and so much pain and agony, and maybe it's because we have failed and forgotten to preach the gospel to ourselves.

We started this Christian life through the gospel of grace.

But why do we continue to function in the gospel of works as if it's up to you and what I do and how I behave and all these things I can accomplish that would somehow make God love me more?

Or if I fail to do those things, if I stumble and fall in the ways that once I was entrapped in my old life, God somehow now loves me less.

Do you see where we forget the gospel and we move from works or we move from grace into works, and we wonder why our souls are in turmoil and such agony?

Because the gospel doesn't just get us saved, the gospel is even saving us now.

And all the fullness of the promises of God are in him, Christ Jesus, whose glorious gospel it is.

2 Corinthians 1 20 says this for all the promises of God find their yes in him.

This is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory.

All of the promises of God find their yes in him.

You see, throughout the scriptures, what God had declared was that when he was making his covenant with his people, he searched all of creation for a name by which he might swear, by which he might make these promises upon, and he discovered none higher than his own.

And so what did he do?

Every promise that he uttered for his people and the covenant that he made with them, he established it upon his very name.

What does that imply for us?

What's the implications of that?

That if one part of his promises, if one aspect of his covenant is not fulfilled, then he no longer is God.

He put his very person on the line so that every promise might be fulfilled.

But then he demonstrates it and displays it for us in his son Jesus, that every promise has been fulfilled and it finds its yes in his perfect life, his substitutionary death, his burial and glorious resurrection.

We have true hope because we have true confidence because of Christ Jesus.

Amen.

You see, it's important to recognize that the psalmist preached to his soul because he needed to find his hope in where he could have his confidence, which was in God.

And we as a people, we must not seek to address our souls, address our depression, address our sorrow with wishful thinking and false hopes.

The psalmist doesn't say, don't worry, everything's going to be alright.

Or you can make it, just keep on going.

No, see, these are the ways the world seeks to overcome sorrow and agony and depression.

Really, it's just wishful thinking.

It's effort with a question mark on the other side of it.

But the Christian argues not on the basis of their own virtue or on the virtue of this world.

The Christian is able to get up and keep moving by preaching the truth about God to himself.

But many of us, we hope in hopeless things.

If we're really honest with ourselves, we have the propensity to hope in hopeless things.

Often our hope has no genuine guarantee of a better outcome.

It has no genuine guarantee of the deliverance that our soul is crying for.

You see, it's a false hope that lends itself to mere wishful thinking than it does any sense of sure confidence.

You see, we try to comfort our souls with these cultural proverbs of it's all gonna work out, it'll be okay in the end, you just have to weather this storm, buddy.

Whether we try to discover our hope in humanity or in our own human merit, we cannot have total confidence of its ability to come through on the promises that it makes.

And so hope ultimately becomes diminished to wishful thinking.

Maybe.

Maybe.

If we're honest with ourselves, we tend to treat the gospel the same way, though.

Many of us have put our eggs in the basket of the gospel because it at least is better than all the other options.

And maybe this is gonna work out.

Maybe Jesus actually did raise from the tomb.

Maybe he actually will come back for his church, maybe he will execute vengeance against those who harmed his people, maybe he will judge wickedness and evil by the standard of his righteousness, maybe he will bring justice, and in that the renewal and restoration of all things.

Maybe.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Wouldn't that be great if the gospel was true?

If we're honest with ourselves, we don't have biblical hope in the gospel, we have wishful thinking of it might be a better outcome than our other options.

And it's despairing at times.

It's despairing because you and I have to look death in the face, and death is most despairing.

You can see human beings trying to like wrap their brain around this.

You see, you see the contradiction of the soul at almost every funeral you go to.

I can almost guarantee you, every funeral that happened in the United States at least this week has some sense of someone who does not love Jesus, who does not serve him, who has not trusted in his gospel for the forgiveness of their sin.

Some kind of mantra came out of their mouth of, man, they were a good person.

He was a good man, she was a good woman.

I uh I believe they're smiling down on us right now.

That's wishful thinking.

That's no, that's not based in any biblical confidence.

We see set death as despairing.

And so we try to cope and we try to sedate our conscience through these cultural proverbs, but they don't truly help.

You see, you and I can be delivered from despair because death's despair is empty because Jesus' tomb is empty.

Death's despair is empty because Jesus' tomb is empty.

You see, biblical hope is rooted in confidence, not wishful thinking.

And we're gonna work to see how that confidence is actually seen and discovered through the gospel of Jesus.

You see, the gospel tells us that the Savior entered into our sorrows, took on our agony, was acquainted with our grief in order to deliver us from them.

But he didn't just die, he rose again.

Can you imagine a bone-filled tomb, an ossuary where you could go visit this crucified Savior's body that would only enable our souls to despair?

We would see no true hope, and that death was the final answer.

But the resurrection is hope itself.

It is an envisioned expectancy of God's ultimate deliverance.

Romans 6 5 says this to us that for if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Biblical hope is not wishful thinking, it is a confident expectation based on the promises of God and their fulfillment in Jesus.

How can we know that our hope is not just wishful thinking because we already have the guarantee and evidence to establish our confidence in the resurrection itself?

We have hope.

We have an envisioned expectancy of God's deliverance that our souls cry for because we have already been made witnesses to its guarantee through the empty tomb.

And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.

Do you see what the New Testament writers were trying to do?

They were pointing us back so that we might have hope in the future.

They were pointing us back to a reality of what has been accomplished, that we might have confidence and what shall be accomplished in the fulfillment of all of God's promises for his people.

We don't just have effort with a question mark on the end of it.

We have an empty tomb that guarantees a fulfilled future.

So my hope for us, sacred mission, is that we would be a people of true hope.

True hope.

You see, true hope is established upon a work already finished, not one that might be.

So we called it On Christ the Solid Rock We Stand.

But first, it was going to be titled The Immutable Basis for a Sinner's Hope.

That was much more powerful title, in my opinion.

And this is the stanza.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

You see, church, we can have true hope.

Because we're not just working and striving, scraping and clawing through this life with our own effort, with this question mark on the end of will it all work out?

Will it all actually accomplish what we hope that it will?

No, we look back to a crucified and resurrected Lord that our souls might be filled with hope that we will be raised with him also.

Amen.

Let's pray.