Hope in the Lord Psalm 43 (May 29 2016)

All right, well, you can uh open up your Bibles to uh Psalm 43.

Psalm 43 uh is where we're gonna be today as we continue along in our series through uh the Psalms.

Uh not all 150, of course, but uh a few of them anyways.

And uh so get your Bibles uh turned there.

I'm excited to get into this.

Hey, have you ever uh have you ever experienced uh one of those moments in life where um you know everything seemed to be going along just fine, everything's clipping along um at a solid pace and all of that, but then all of a sudden, bam, right?

Something something happens, and uh as a result of that, your life is completely flipped uh upside down.

Right?

You ever gone through something like that?

Maybe for you it's kind of that dreaded phone call, you know, with some bad news on the other end, or for you it's been some kind of uh uh financial crisis or a family emergency, or maybe just for you, some other kind of personal tragedy that all of a sudden kind of sprung on you.

Now, hey, in those moments, um, in those moments, what do you put your your hope in?

What do you put your hope in?

Uh what does your, what do your your heart, your mind, your emotions run to uh for hope, for hope?

Now, a couple of things they might run to.

Do you turn to, is your natural inclination to kind of turn to uh your own abilities, right?

Your own your own kind of strength and your own ability to kind of figure it out and fix the problem?

Or do you tend to turn to money, right?

Just kind of throw money at it and hope that money kind of solves everything.

Um maybe for you it's a it's a substance that you turn to.

I just want to I wanna numb the pain, I wanna numb the chaos here.

Or maybe uh for you, and this is true for a lot of people, there's nothing that brings you hope uh in the middle of tragedy and and loss.

And all you're left with is is this sense of fear and and and panic and despair.

Now, I think you probably know uh where I'm going with all of this here, but but but Christ's followers are those who learn to put their hope in the Lord.

That is what Christ's followers uh learn to do.

Now, whether it's a big problem, like maybe one of the ones that I just outlined here, or maybe it's something a little bit less severe, um, do we hope in?

Do we uh fall back on?

Do we rest in the fact that our God is a strong tower?

Do you guys hope in that?

As as as Psalm 46 puts it, that he is our refuge and our strength and a very present help in trouble.

Is that what you is that what you go to?

Well, this morning we're gonna look at how we can put our hope in God when all seems lost.

Okay, when all seems lost, when when hope is scarce, uh when it seems like good things in our life uh are far from us, um, we will hope in God.

So I'm gonna read this now.

If you would stand with me, uh Psalm 43, hopefully you're there, uh starting in verse one.

It says, Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man.

Deliver me, for you are the God in whom I take refuge.

Why have you rejected me?

Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of my enemy?

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 lyre, O God, my God.

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.

Lord, we come before you this morning as we uh get set to tackle a passage here that every single person at some point comes head on with, and that is whether or not we're gonna put our hope in you when life gets difficult.

And Lord, I know for sure there are people here right now who would say their life is challenging, it's hard, they're in the middle of a trial, it might be extremely severe, it might be some other degree of severity, but Lord, I pray that we would learn to put our hope in you, not to run to other things, to worthless things, not to lean into our into our own strength, which will dry up and fail, Lord.

I pray that we would not despair.

Lord, I pray that we would hope in you.

I pray that you would shine through in your light.

I pray that you would you would work through the fog of unclear thinking that we might have, Lord.

I pray that you would break through uh the emotionalism that we can get caught up in in those moments, Lord.

I pray that you would have your way in our hearts, Lord.

I pray that you would bring hope, even though we don't have all of the answers, even though we don't know exactly how this is all gonna play out, Lord, would you strengthen us?

Would you encourage your church here today, Lord?

We are so desperate for this.

We're so desperate for encouragement each and every week.

So, Lord, would you do this, Lord?

We come to you as a God who loves us, as a God who leads us and guides us.

We love you, Lord, we trust you.

Our hope is in you.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

You can take your seat.

All right, well, first off here, um, and pretty important question to ask.

Um, what do we mean when we use the word hope?

Right?

What do we mean by that?

It's a word that we hear talked about quite a bit.

We hear it in everyday language uh all the time.

Right?

We hear things like, you know, I hope it won't rain today.

I hope it won't rain today, or, you know, I hope my kids turn out alright.

Right?

We hear we hear the word in those kinds of phrases all the time.

Now, the dictionary definition of the word hope is this it's to feel that something desired may happen.

Yeah, let me say that again.

To feel that something desired may happen.

Now, to be honest with you, that definition doesn't fill me with a whole lot of hope.

Okay, it really doesn't.

Um, it's not the greatest, but um those words feel and may, they're pretty vague, aren't they?

They're pretty indefinite.

What does it even mean here?

There's nothing nothing concrete about that.

But this is generally, okay, this is generally how the word hope is used in people's everyday language.

This is how the world understands the concept of hope.

It's really to wish that something will happen, but with no guarantee that it will.

No guarantee that it will.

No confidence, no, no assurance that anything will actually work out.

That is how people approach hope.

But listen, listen, biblical hope is so much different than that.

It's so much better.

Okay, in the Old Testament, the word hope there can essentially be translated as trust.

Okay, trust or expectation.

That's another good word.

As in the uh the Lord can be trusted.

The Lord can be trusted.

I can expect that he will keep his promises.

Okay, in the New Testament, the word is an absolute.

It's an absolute, it's it's a guarantee without a doubt.

Okay, it literally means in the New Testament to expect or anticipate with pleasure.

With pleasure.

Now, when you when you think about hope, do you have any pleasure in that?

In other words, a Christian acting on biblical hope in the Lord is the one who says, God, I trust you.

God, I trust you.

I know that you are sovereign over this situation.

Right?

I know that you love me.

And I expect that you will come through for me.

You will answer the prayer, you will meet me in my need as you see fit.

Okay, does this, does that describe the kind of hope that you would have on a day-to-day basis?

The kind of hope that you have in the Lord when life goes sideways.

It's it's rock solid, right?

It's it's confident, it's it's unshakable.

Or do you maybe approach the Lord with more of a worldly uh concept of hope?

Just kind of like grasping at straws, and you know, maybe this thing will work out, but who knows?

Okay, which one are you?

Okay, well, here we go.

Here it's up on the screen for you.

First thing.

When all seems lost, I will hope in God.

You might be like, well, how?

How do I do that?

How do I get my heart to that place?

I want to get there.

Well, this is what we're gonna unpack here.

The first thing by letting him fight my battles.

By letting him fight my battles.

Take a look at verse one, then, as we kind of work our way through this.

Only five verses today, but just so much, so much in there.

This is what uh the psalmist says.

He says, Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people from the deceitful and unjust man.

Deliver me, deliver me.

Now, now, obviously, uh the psalmist here, he's pouring his heart out to the Lord, isn't he?

He's just like, Lord, Lord, help me out, and it's it's in the middle of some kind of trial.

And obviously, it had something to do with a severe level of persecution that he's going through.

Right?

Severe level of persecution.

There's an enemy that's oppressing him, and and they're treating him, the words are deceitfully and unjustly, he uses there.

Now, many people would say that that Psalm 43 is actually a continuation or part two of Psalm 42, and you can read that on your own time, Psalm 42, and a lot of the same things are kind of communicated and and repeated in there, or we see them repeated in Psalm 43, and uh this enemy is coming after him and he keeps coming to the Lord.

Okay, but notice how he responds to the problem.

It's by leaning into God.

He leans into his God.

What could he have done?

What were his options?

Well, he could have taken the issue into his own hands, right?

He could have done that.

He could have uh he could have launched a counterattack on his enemies.

Right?

He could have done that.

He could have issued a press release or something and and defended himself and been like, no, this isn't the case, and my enemies are the ones that are wrong, and they're the ones dragging my name through the mud.

Maybe he could have gone to uh social media or something, right?

I think like Twitter existed back then.

Right?

He could have gone to that and and and trashed his enemy uh like we tend to do on Facebook and all that kind of thing.

Gone on the offensive.

He he could have he could have sent some goons, right, to go and and intimidate them and to send them a message and to silence them.

He could have done anything, any of these things.

He could have fought dirty.

But as far as we can tell from all this, he doesn't do any of that, does he?

He doesn't.

He lets the Lord fight his battles.

He lets the Lord fight for him.

He brings the he brings the issue directly to the God that he hopes in.

That's what he does.

He says, right, Vindicate me, O God.

Verse 1.

Defend my cause.

Lord, you defend me.

Lord, you take care of it.

I'm I'm pushing this ball into your court.

Lord, you do it.

All of that is to say, when he says vindicate and defend, he's saying, Clear my name.

You clear my name, exonerate me in the face of these lies.

Support me, God, in this disarray.

Then he asks the Lord to deliver him out of all of the chaos that this is causing him and probably his family and people around him.

I think what all of this reveals as you kind of dig beneath the surface of all of that is that the psalmist believes that God can do it.

Right, right?

He actually trusts that God is able, that God is strong enough and can actually do these things.

Now, hey, when all seems lost for you, who do you trust to fight your battles?

Who do you run to?

Do you again, do you tend to lean into your own abilities, into your own wisdom, into your own strength to get you out of the jam or to restore order?

You know, are you the kind of person that goes into control freak mode?

Like, I've got to take care of this.

You know, I've got to fix the situation, I've I've got to be the pillar of strength for my family.

They're all looking to me.

I've got to be the hero here.

Listen, if that's you, uh perhaps the Lord's trying to show you that that fighting your own battle, it's a weak plan.

It really is.

It's a weak plan.

Why?

Because you're weak.

Right?

So am I.

We're all weak.

We we don't have the infinite wisdom that God has.

So why would we lean into our own?

Right?

We can't see what He sees.

Our vision, our ability to see the situation properly is limited.

God is limitless.

We have, I mean, we don't know what's best, right?

We we have unlimited strength.

It dries up.

God has unlimited strength.

Listen, we have a great greater likeliness of uh of making things worse than we do of making things better.

We really do.

And hey, maybe God's trying to humble you in the middle of your trial.

Maybe he's trying to bring you to your knees.

And you saying, no, I've got this, right?

Is is pride and it's arrogance.

And it's and it's you stiffening your neck, as the scriptures talk about.

And the Lord's trying to take your knees out.

He's trying to get you down on the floor, on your face before him, crying out to him.

He's trying to teach you that he is where your hope is best placed.

It's not in you.

Here for you.

Maybe when when all seems lost, your go-to move is just to give up.

Right?

Is that you?

Do you throw in the towel real easy?

And you're like, man, I got nothing.

No one's got anything.

I guess my life is just gonna spiral into a huge mess here, and there's no hope at all.

Okay, there's no fight.

There's, you know, you just let your fear uh turn into panic, which which goes from panic ultimately, eventually, uh, into despair.

Now that is a dark place, isn't it?

Some of you have been there before, or maybe you're there this morning.

It's dark.

And I think what it reveals here, and I want to say this sensitively, not in any kind of harsh way, not swinging a sledgehammer at you here, but I think one of the things it reveals is that we just don't know God very well.

Right?

If we've got no hope, our God is a pillar of strength.

Our God is our hope.

We do have hope.

We have more than we even realize.

Just our per our perspective is off.

So maybe we just don't know God very well, or maybe we we don't really know him in an experiential way.

Maybe it's because you're new in the faith.

And you've never, you don't have the experience of seeing him come through for you time and time again as you as you give more of your life over to him, as he strengthens you.

Or perhaps in our spiritual immaturity, the belief that God is strong, it just hasn't really sunk in yet.

You've heard it over and over again, but you've never really absorbed it.

You've never really claimed it for yourself, and you've never really owned that.

You've never really chosen to believe it.

Or maybe for you, it's, you know, no matter how many times God comes through and he's come through for you in the past, you seem to always forget it.

And every time it's the same old thing.

You panic and stress and worry and despair and all of it, and you forget that, hey, how many times has God done the incredible?

How many times has God answers prayer, I answered prayers that I haven't even prayed?

Because he is faithful, because he is good, because he fills me with hope.

If that's you, what we really need to work on is trusting in the character of God.

Do you know who he is?

Do you know his character?

Have you ever studied his attributes?

The things about him that are true.

It's awesome.

It will fill you with strength.

It'll fill you with belief and trust in him in hope.

Or maybe for you, your response when all seems lost is kind of a combination of everything I've been talking about here.

Maybe you trust yourself far too much.

Maybe you uh have a bit of despair mixed in with all of that and fear, and really only as a last result do you ever cry out to the Lord.

Well, I've tried everything else, so therefore, God, maybe you can do something about this.

Right?

Is that you?

It's the last result prayer, it's a last ditch effort.

I think what this reveals about our hearts is that we don't have that biblical hope in God, that confidence, that trust.

Okay, I think what we have is more of that worldly understanding of hope, that grasping at straws kind of hope.

Well, maybe this will work out, I don't know.

We kind of wish that God would help us, but no real conviction that he actually will.

Okay, a biblical hope in God comes as a result of knowing and believing our Bibles and the God of the Bible.

That's where it comes from.

Okay, he is strong enough, he is infinitely strong enough to fight your battles.

We need to let him.

We need to let him do it.

Second thing.

When all seems lost, I will hope in God while working through the emotional ups and downs.

Working through the emotional ups and downs.

Now, this is one of the reasons why uh the Psalms are just so good.

Right?

They're so good because they never paint this picture of a simplistic or easy walk with the Lord.

Right?

You ever get that sense that it's easy?

Because walking or working out our our growth in Christ, learning to trust him, battling sin, wrestling with our unbelief and our flesh and all of that, dealing with life and everything that comes at us, it's a greasy process.

It really is.

It's not pretty at times.

And we lose sight of the Lord and we we struggle and we grind our way through it.

Lord, forgive us as the church if we ever give the impression that growth in the Lord, sanctification is this smooth, simple, la ti-da little uh process in our life.

Because it's not.

Right?

Sometimes I think maybe we can, and maybe I'm guilty of it, casting this picture that like the Lord is gonna come in and chant, transform your life, and it's gonna be amazing.

And I think all of that is true, but we go through the meat grinder sometimes to get there, don't we?

Right?

We do.

It's not a tight, a neat and tidy process, not all the time, anyways.

And Psalm 43 shows us that.

I mean, the Lord will assault your pride.

Do you realize that?

He will go after the thing that you are holding on to.

I do not want to let this go, Lord.

The idols that you worship, the Lord won't stand for that.

He will take those things out, and it will be a very difficult process for your heart.

It will be a very difficult process for your mind, your thinking, your emotions, for your will.

It's tough.

And sometimes he'll let us get to the brink of madness as we go through all of that, and we feel like our emotions are just like splattering all over the place.

Right?

You ever feel like that?

Just take a look at verse 2 here.

Look what kind of happens here.

It's almost funny if it weren't true.

Okay, he says, here, for you are the God in whom I take refuge.

All right, so he's like right on.

There he is.

He's got that strong statement there, and he's in a pretty good place, right?

He's trusting God.

He's finding his refuge in the Lord.

I love that.

But then look what he says.

Why have you rejected me?

Right?

Immediately after this strong and amazing statement.

Like, why have you rejected me?

Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of my enemy?

I I don't think he's bipolar or anything like that.

I think this is just the way it goes.

Right?

It's, you know, one moment he's he's firing on all cylinders, and the next moment he's like upside down in the ditch on fire.

Right?

It sounds about right.

I think that's probably us too.

It's totally us.

Okay, the emotional ups and downs that we experience as we struggle to grab hold of, to latch on to this hope.

It's intense.

It's intense.

He goes from, I will take refuge in you, Lord, to, you know, why have you bailed?

Why have you rejected me?

Now, important question.

Do you think that the Lord has actually rejected him, rejected him?

I don't know.

What do you think?

Do you think that he has rejected him?

I don't know where your theology is at with all of this.

Um, but here's Romans 8, 38-39.

And this is one of those verses we need to remember when we sense the rejection, when we sense that, you know, any of that.

I'm just gonna read it.

It says, For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Okay, that is a power verse for any believer.

Okay, once truly saved, once you have put your faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, once he is yours and you are.

His, once saved, we are kept by God.

Okay, we are kept by Him.

He doesn't reject us because our salvation doesn't depend on us, praise God.

Right?

It depends on Him.

It depends on what He has done.

Okay, put it this way: if you could lose your salvation, you would.

You would.

You would lose it every time.

Because we all fail and screw up.

Right?

We do it.

We've all done it this weekend.

We've all probably done it today.

We've sinned in some way.

We have messed up.

But God's love towards us never fails.

Nothing separates us from the love of God.

Nothing.

Not one or two things do.

Nothing does.

Okay, God doesn't reject us, but here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

Sometimes it can feel like he has.

Sometimes it can feel like he has.

Now we talked about this a little bit last week, but but sometimes when we pray to the Lord, he is silent, right?

We talked about that last Sunday.

You know, we we cry out to him and we don't hear anything, and that silence can feel like rejection.

But hey, it's not.

It's not rejection.

We have to remind ourselves of that.

So crucial.

We'll get to more of that later.

But we need to remind ourselves of that because the emotional turbulence that we go through when we go through a trial, when we go through something difficult, it's so up and down, it's so all over the place.

We feel like we're in a blender constantly.

When all seems lost, all of those things can just be such a wild ride.

Now, before we move on here, and I think this is important too, we all need to get to the place, I believe, where we simply accept that working through trials and difficulties are gonna be an emotional experience.

Have you accepted that?

Have you accepted that at all?

Because I think sometimes what happens is we we don't expect that.

We don't realize that we're gonna have good days and bad days.

Sometimes we're gonna have multiple good uh good moments and bad moments within a day when we're going through the thick of it.

It's what's gonna happen.

Emotions are just a part of it.

Okay, we need to realize that, but we need to understand that emotions have their place.

Emotions have their place.

And one of the things you may have heard me say before, we say it around Harvest quite a bit, it's that truth leads, emotions follow.

Okay, write that down.

Truth leads, emotions follow.

This is so crucial.

And what this means is that truth means that we should never trust our emotions.

It means that we should never trust our emotions because they're never grounded in reality.

Okay, if we allow how we feel to dictate the decisions that we make, uh we're headed for trouble.

Okay, we're headed for trouble.

Let me just give you a little example here.

Um when I was in my, I don't know, early 20s or so, and I was kind of grappling with and wrestling through um what it meant to know the Lord, I had this kind of picture um of God in my mind that was uh pretty unbiblical.

And I used to feel that, I used to feel that God was always disappointed in me.

You ever feel that?

You ever think that?

I I when I whenever I pictured the Lord, I pictured him kind of up in heaven, you know, up on his throne, whatever it might be, just kind of shaking his head, kind of in like, man, again you fail.

Like I'm trying to help you out here, man, but you're blowing it.

Right?

This this disappointment.

And and and that's what that's what I felt here.

And what I needed to realize here is that those those beliefs were leading me to have an unbiblical belief in who God was.

Okay, I believed that he was uh a cold and distant and difficult to please taskmaster.

That's what I believed about the Lord.

And I allowed those emotions that I had that I was experiencing, those beliefs, to lead me towards greater legalism.

Okay, trying to earn God's favor through my performance.

And that's where I was at.

And I I would, I remember I would wake up in the mornings and I would think that, hey, you know what, I gotta pray and I gotta get, you know, I gotta get down on my knees and I gotta read scripture because if I don't, the Lord's gonna be disappointed and he's gonna be upset with me.

And if I ever slept in and I was like scrambling to get out the door, to go to school or to get to work or whatever it might be, I again I felt like the Lord was just like, man, you're blowing it.

And so I tried harder and I read more, and I went to church more days of the week, and I got involved with more things, and it all became more and more uh legalistic, and all of it, all of it, was because I had an unbu uh unbiblical belief in the Lord.

Okay, I needed to understand that that truth is what leads me closer to God.

And that's really the third point here.

Truth leads me to Him.

And so what happened to me?

What happened to me is I started to pray it through.

And I started to submit myself to some good teaching, and I started to pray more, and I started to read the scriptures, and what did the Lord start to do?

He started to give me a better understanding of who he actually was, and he started to reinforce truth in my mind and in my heart, and I started to realize that God actually loves me, that he cares about me as his own son.

I was learning what he actually thought, and eventually what started to happen was that my emotions started to come in line behind all of that truth.

And I started to actually feel, started to actually feel that the Lord loved me.

And started to line up with truth.

Now take a look at verse 3 here for a sec.

I'm gonna read this.

It says, He says, Send out your light and your truth.

Let them lead me.

Okay, look what happens when when truth leads.

He says, 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 lyre, O God, my God.

Okay, as truth leads the psalmist, he's led towards God.

You notice that?

Truth leads him towards God, towards a closer, more intimate walk with him and the hope that God provides.

Okay, emotions leading will eventually lead you away from God.

Okay, that's what happens every single time.

Further away from what's true, further away from the hope that you desire.

Okay, so learn.

Okay, learn to develop a love for the Lord, a love for truth.

Okay, for you, if if you're struggling with reading scripture and you know, I'm I'm just not into this, and I'm not able to make it a priority, and the bottom line is I don't really care, and I don't really desire that.

Would you admit that to the Lord?

Would you say, hey, God, I don't care about this, and I don't have a desire to study truth, and maybe I don't have a desire to submit myself to truthful teaching.

Just admit it to him.

He can handle it, he's big.

Right?

And ask him to give you that desire.

Ask him that his truth would lead you.

It would lead you through the trial, it would lead you through the difficulty, when all seems lost, it would give you greater delight in God and in God himself.

It would lead you towards him.

Okay, last thing.

When all seems lost, I will hope in God, coaching myself through any further turmoil.

Coaching myself through any further turmoil.

Take a look at verse five now.

Verse five says, Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?

Okay, hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

You may be thinking, well, hold on a sec, Mike.

I thought we were done talking about the emotionalism of it.

I thought we were done talking about the ups and downs.

You mean there's there's more turmoil ahead?

Sometimes.

Okay, sometimes uh there is.

Okay, sometimes we think the the emotions are done with, and we we think that you know, maybe because we had hope for just a moment that we should never waver from that again, and I should be this pillar of strength, and we get rattled and we get thrown for a loop when when all of a sudden we have uh more turmoil come, and there are there are even there are even more uh ups and downs.

Okay, it's just not the way it goes, right?

We are we're we're broken people.

We are we are we're fallen, we're we're grappling with our flesh that's wrestling with the spirit within us and and and the emotional ups and downs, the turmoil that we're gonna go through.

That's something that we need to all work through and know that it's gonna come in waves from time to time.

And so again, I think we just need to adjust our expectation with all of that.

The emotional ups and downs, the turmoil.

It's all part of it.

Okay, don't be surprised.

Don't be surprised when those things happen.

Okay, expect it.

And expect that the Lord will lead you through all of it.

And again, I love how this psalm, it just doesn't pull any punches, you know, as we scratch and claw our way to uh towards hope.

Um, but here's the thing that I really want to focus on here in this, in these uh in this last verse here.

Hey, notice this, notice how he talks to himself.

Notice how he talks to himself.

How great is this.

I remember I used to, I'm the kind of guy, and you know, full disclosure here, I uh I talk to myself a lot.

And my family, um, they do not let me off the hook about it.

My like five-year-old daughter just roasts me constantly.

And I remember working in an office with Amy up and Barry and a few others, and we were sharing kind of an office space, and I'd be like smiling about something off to myself, and they're like, All right, all right, buddy.

Okay, but there's a time and a place where it's appropriate, okay?

And here it is, right here.

Okay, look at it.

Get off my back, church.

Okay, look at this.

He talks sense to himself.

He says, he says, Why are you cast down, oh my soul?

Okay, why are you cast down?

And and and why are you in turmoil within me?

Okay, so he acknowledges the chaos within, okay, which is which is great, but then he takes it a step further.

He says, he says, hope in God.

He's telling himself this.

He says, For I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

Man, I love that.

I love it.

He's he's he's giving himself a pep talk here.

You ever do that?

You ever do that?

He's he's coaching himself through the turmoil.

He's refusing to allow his his uh his emotions to get the better of him, to let his soul wallow.

He won't give in to this woe is me attitude that I think we can often give into.

He's reinforcing his heart with the fact that God is worthy of being trusted, that he is good, and it is right for him to hope in the Lord.

Because God is his salvation.

It's his salvation.

And hey, do you coach yourself through those moments?

I love it.

Paul Tripp talks about this a we need to go from listening to ourselves to talking to ourselves.

We need to do that a lot.

No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to yourself more than you do.

That's a Paul Tripp line.

And it's so true.

You need to coach yourself through the challenges of fighting for hope in God.

And I love that the psalmist here reminds himself of his salvation.

You'll notice that all through the scriptures, that always comes back to the gospel, doesn't it?

That's always the rock, that's always the foundation.

It's what Christ uh has done for us.

It's a reminder that through the gospel, the psalmist already has everything that he really needs.

He's got it all.

And so do you.

Right?

You've got the forgiveness of sins.

You've got your eternal life already taken care of.

You already know the flight plan.

You know where you're going.

You know what God has in store for you.

You've got the promise of a transformed life, which of course you're working out.

You've got God Himself, which is the greatest thing in thing, if I can say that, in all of the universe.

You've got him.

You've got it.

That's if you're a Christ follower.

If you know Jesus.

Now, if you're not a Christian, if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, let me ask you this.

What is your hope in?

At the end of the day, rock bottom, strip it all away.

What do you have your hope in?

Is it is it money?

Is it, you know, if I just have enough money, uh a lot of the stress that I'm dealing with right now will go away?

I'll be able to take care of some of those things that I can't take care of right now?

Is money your hope?

And I'm gonna go after that?

Is it?

Is it the the vacation?

Is it having the stuff in your life?

Is it that that relationship that I need?

I need the girlfriend, I need the butt, I need the spouse.

I have to have it.

That's what my hope is in.

That's what my heart yearns for, longs for.

Listen, none of those things are guarantees.

None of them.

They're not guarantees that you're gonna have them.

They're not guarantees that if you do have them, you're always gonna have them.

Right?

Those things can be taken away in an instant.

They can.

And I mean, all you need to look at are the lives of people who do have all of those things.

You know, it's easy to pick on celebrities and athletes and the ones that have all of the money and they've got all the things, but you hear so many stories uh from them and from others who we don't know their names, who, you know, they've got it all, and you can tell there's just this gap, there's this hole, something missing.

Because all of those things weren't designed to fulfill us, they weren't designed to give us hope.

Listen, if you don't know Jesus Christ as Savior, you need to understand this, you need to hear this.

God created you to have Him be the thing that gives you hope.

He's the thing that satisfies deep down.

Whether you have the money or you don't, whether you've got the cottage or you don't, whether you have the spouse or you don't.

None of having those things isn't wrong.

Hoping in them is your hope in Jesus.

Those things don't satisfy you.

God created you because he loves you.

God created you to find your hope in him.

He alone is real hope.

And let me tell you, if you don't know Jesus Christ, the good news is that you can know him right now.

You can know him.

Here's what you need to understand.

You need to understand that the thing that's keeping you from God is your own sin, it's your own pride.

All of this, all of your sin, all of the wrong things that you have ever done, ultimately, whether you realize it or not, it's against the God who created you.

And because God is holy and pure and he wanted to be in a relationship with us, but because our sin drove a wedge between us and him.

And again, because he is good, he has to deal with all of it.

He has to deal with the sin.

He can't pretend it didn't happen.

It's because he is holy.

Here's the thing, you need to know today.

God loves you passionately more than you know.

I've been following the Lord hard for, I don't know, like 15 years maybe.

I still feel like I don't have the first clue as to how deep the Lord's love goes for me.

He loves you that much and more.

And instead of punishing you, which is what you deserve and what I deserve, we all do.

He's like, you know what?

I'm gonna send my sinless son, Jesus, to the cross.

I'm gonna pour my wrath out on him.

I'm gonna punish him, even though he is so undeserving, once and for all, so that my people, my creation, the pinnacle of everything that I have made, can receive forgiveness and be in a relationship with me.

That's what God has done for you.

So for you, realize that you've got sin in your life, but that Jesus died for you so that you can be forgiven of all of it.

And so that He can transform your life.

And yes, it will be amazing.

It's gonna have some gritty parts in there for sure.

But it's gonna be amazing.

He's gonna tra He's gonna give you new desires, he's gonna transform your heart and your mind.

Certain things in your life are gonna change.

Some of it's gonna be hard, some of it's gonna be nothing but incredible, more than your wildest imaginations.

And to cap it all off, cherry on top, he's got he's got heaven, he's got glory waiting for you.

Not hell, that's not your destination anymore.

It's glory.

There's gonna be no more sin, no more death, no more tears, no more pain, no more sin, no more temptation, no more evil, no more injustice, no more any of that.

So would you trust him today?

Would you allow him to be the thing that your hope rests in?

Would you do that today?

Just ask him to be your savior.

Confess your sin.

Ask him to be your God.

Boom, you're saved.

That's what it is.

When all seems lost, hope in the Lord.

Hope in the Lord.

I guarantee there are a bunch of people here this morning today wrestling with this.

Wrestling with it.

Maybe you're on the end of, I'm at the end of my rope.

I'm giving up.

Are your eyes on Christ?

Is your hope in him?

Don't give up.

Keep your eyes on him.

Trust that he is working out what he needs to work out in your heart.

Keep crying out.

Keep pleading.

He is faithful.

He will do it.

He's our hope.

Let's pray.

God, we we love you, Lord.

And God, I pray that you would continue to turn our hard hearts, Lord, our weary hearts, our uninformed hearts, Lord, to greater trust in you.

Lord, I pray that the hope that you are good, that you are there, that you love us, that you are working these things out for our good.

Lord, I pray that those things would flood our hearts, flood our minds with hope, Lord, with joy everlasting, with peace, Lord, that surpasses understanding.

It doesn't even make sense because the situation in our life is so dark and so difficult.

But Lord, that goes to show how great you are.

So Lord, continue to do this.

Have mercy on us, Lord.

We admit our weakness, we admit our frailty.

And Lord, we admit that we lack faith, Lord.

We admit that we lack hope.

So strengthen us here today.

Lord, I pray that as we sing, Lord, that these uh that this song would not be just words coming off our lips, Lord, but they would be passion and hope and joy coming from our souls.

Lord, we pray that you would get glory through all of this, through everything that you're doing, Lord.

For those of us who are in a good place, Lord, we know that the difficulty is around the corner somewhere.

We know that it's gonna come.

I pray that that would not fill us with dread.

But Lord, that we would be strengthened and ready for it, and that you would get even more glory for us, Lord, as you prune us and as you make us more like your son Jesus.

It's in his name that we pray these things.

Amen.