The 3 Seasons of Life | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

Amen.

Amen.

Okay, the next five weeks we're going to be in a series of teachings that we're going to be in the Psalms.

We're going to be in the Psalms.

It's actually going to lead us up through Easter.

And so what I want to do today is do a little bit of how to read the Psalms.

We're going to give you, I want to give you some handles so that when you're reading and studying the Psalms, you kind of understand the bigger picture.

The Psalms are 150 chapters, and they're the part of Scripture that a lot of people have read.

A lot of people, maybe some people read a Psalm of the Day or a Proverb of the Day.

But the Psalms, just so you know, they are not sort of a random collection of poems.

They are very intentionally gathered together and compiled and organized.

They're written over about a 500-year span.

But they were, they're not sort of meant to just put on shuffle like you would a playlist and whatever kind of pops up.

You'd kind of want to know, and if I do my job over the next few weeks, you'll really understand how it's compiled so that wherever you are in the Psalms, you kind of understand how it fits with the bigger message of the Psalms.

Let me show you something.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open to Psalm 1.

If you don't have your Bible, I'm going to be around a few different Psalms today, but don't worry about it.

It'll be up on the screen.

But if for those of you that do have your Bibles and you do have it open to Psalm 1, let's do a little interaction here.

Psalm 1, look above Psalm 1, and what does it say?

Book 1.

And then does it say anything else?

Book 1, does it give any numbers there?

1 through 41.

1 through 41.

Alright.

Now we're having some fun.

Which we're like, what is book 1?

Because Psalms is a book of the Bible, and then it's book 1, and then it says 1 through 41.

Okay, and spoiler alert, if you went to 42, it would say book two.

And then it would say 42 to 72.

And if you went to 73, it would say book three.

And what you find out pretty quickly is the book of Psalms is divided into five books.

Okay, and we're going to get more into that in the next couple weeks of the significance of the five books of the Psalms.

But what it's letting you know is this isn't just some random collection.

Now let me tell you a little bit more about that.

The Psalms are hard to pinpoint the exact month, day, moment that they were written, but we know they were written of a span of at least 500 years.

So the old some of the older Psalms are attributed to David, which that puts the dating around 1,000 BC.

And then there are other psalms that are attributed, there are lament psalms that are attributed to the season of coming back from exile.

So that would put it about 500 BC.

So you're talking about a 500-year span.

And then, of course, there are others that would have been right in the middle of that.

So there are some temple worship psalms that are in there that would have been while the temple still existed.

And the temple, again, they went through a process of in their exile, the Babylonians destroyed their temple.

And so you have a group of people who have now taken a compilation, a collection, and it was all pulled together, okay, around 503 to 500 BC.

So, again, what's happening contextually is they have been, they've switched to three different empires.

They've been taken over by the Assyrians, and then the Assyrians were taken over by the Babylonians, and so they just changed hands into Babylonian hands.

They were brutal, a brutal people.

They again destroyed, burnt down their temple.

They oppressed and mistreated the Israelites, and then eventually the Babylonians were taken over by the Persians, who were much more diplomatic.

This is where you get the story of Nehemiah, where he says, you can go back and rebuild the walls of your city.

So the Persians thought totally different about empirical dominance.

They thought instead of trying, you know, making everybody slaves, we'll make them vassal states.

Essentially, we you can't have a king, but you can you can carry on your culture.

You can do things to where you don't, you know, we're not forcing this on you as much.

And so all that to say, they're now going back to sort of re-establish and rebuild, and this is where they had come now compiled 150 Psalms into these five books.

We'll get more into that again down the road.

But think about what it would be like if in this moment in time you pulled together hundreds of years of stories, songs, poems, movies, things that all fit a theme and told a complete story.

That's what we have in the Psalms.

Um, Psalms 1 and 2 are extremely important because in some ways they're like a double door that opens to the other 150 chapters.

What they're doing is really giving you kind of a microcosm or a sample of what you're gonna get with the rest of the book.

So let me show you what I'm talking about.

Psalm 1, uh first three verses lay out a concept of the way of wisdom.

So it says, Blessed is the one who does not walk in the step of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners, uh stay in the way that the sinners take, or to sit in the company of mockers.

But those who delight in the law of the Lord and who meditate on his law day and night, that person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do prospers.

So it's introducing the concept of a wise life.

It's meditating on God's instruction, and that a righteous person is rooted like a tree next to a flow of water, and it says that the wicked is like the opposite, they're uprooted.

Okay, so what it's letting you know is you're gonna read a bunch of other chapters that are gonna give you some ethical foundation, right?

It's a spiritual and ethical formation text to help us understand as human beings how we should behave.

The second chapter introduces some complexity.

So it says in Psalm 2, 1 and 2, why do the nations conspire and people plot in vain?

Some of your Bibles, depending on the translation, said, Why do the nations rage?

If you're in uh the NIV next to conspire, it has a footnote, and if you go down, it'll say, or rage.

So it's saying essentially, this world is crazy.

Why is there so much conflict?

Why is there so much chaos?

So chapter one is talking about how to conduct ourselves by controlling the controllables and being as wise as we can and rooting ourselves, and chapter two talks about that world that we're gonna have to be wise in, and that world is often chaotic.

It says the kings of the earth rise up and rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed.

Alright, so you have a picture of nations raging, but that God is sovereign over history, and it starts to give an idea that will develop throughout the entire 150 chapters, which is the concept of the Lord's anointed.

Okay, so so what it gives us is it's framing Psalms as a book about God's rule in a rebellious world.

Now, what I want to do is I want to give you sort of three categories of developing wisdom that you're gonna see these three categories uh in the Psalms, and this is this helps us uh to navigate, to develop wisdom, and to be able to move through every season that we walk through as human beings.

I'm gonna draw a picture for you, and as I do, some of you are gonna remember this.

If you've been around the church for a few years, I'm bringing back uh something I've talked about in the past, but this works perfectly uh in helping us to understand and kind of simplify categories for the Psalms, okay?

Um, the first thing is uh one kind of way that life unfolds is you have things happening that we would just call normal, or what I'll call orientation.

In other words, life makes sense.

Okay?

I do good things, and I'm blessed.

Good things happen.

And I see the bad people, and they're getting what came to them.

And so life is ordered, uh, there's a sense of clear morality.

Um we operate in a sense of confidence, um, there is a sense of gratitude, and again, life's not not not all that complicated.

Things are going well.

Um, we see this in Psalm 1 that says, Blessed is the one who does not walk in the steps, in step with the wicked.

Alright, so there's moral clarity, and that God is rewarding uh righteous and that the world is ordered.

Um, you see this in look at this, Psalm 16, 7 through 11.

I will praise the Lord who counsels me.

Even at night, my heart instructs me.

Must be nice.

Alright, he's like, you know, even when I'm sleeping, I'm getting wiser.

You know, it's just awesome.

You know, I'm sleeping, man.

I wake up with new profound insights, you know.

It's just, it's great.

I keep my eyes always on the Lord.

With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices.

My body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me in the realm of the dead.

So I'm I'm feeling rested, I'm feeling confident.

I know that God will not abandon me, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

You make known to me the path of life, and you fill me with joy in your presence and eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Okay.

If you think of Psalms as presenting to you a wardrobe for every season of life, okay, the orientation, uh, normal season is like a windbreaker.

All right, it's not too hot out, it's not too cold, it's just right.

It's like 70 degrees with a little breeze.

And I don't need a coat coat, I just need something to kind of keep the breeze off of me.

Because I'm feeling good, and of course, if it warms up a little bit, I'll take this thing off.

And it's enough.

It's enough because life makes sense.

I just need a windbreaker.

It's not too cold.

Uh you see this in places like Psalm 23, 1.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

I don't need anything.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul, he leaves me, leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'm not going to be afraid.

I'll fear no evil, for you're with me.

Your rod, your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil, my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Normal orientation.

Okay, that's great.

When you find yourself in a place of orientation and things are going well, praise the Lord.

Thank you, Jesus.

Okay, that sun, 72 degrees.

God, thank you for all 72 of these degrees.

Thank you for this nice breeze on my face, Lord.

Thank you for a little bit of relief.

Okay, and so normal, and you're gonna see a lot of those.

And what what the normal season provokes a sense of praise and gratitude.

But there's other seasons, right?

You think about normal, and then when something happens that sends you from orientation to disorientation, so something's either added to you or subtracted from you.

Maybe something was handed to you you did not ask for, but now you're being asked to deal with, or something's been snatched out of your life and you're dealing with loss.

Bottom line is you're suffering.

And when you're in suffering, now it leads to a season of disorientation.

Life stops making sense.

Over here, okay, good people, righteous people get promoted, and wicked people get fired.

But some of you, and I won't ask what company you work for, but I'm just saying, some of you told the truth, you did the right thing, and you got fired, and the person who conspired and plotted and was deceitful, not only didn't get fired, they got promoted.

Um you prayed the prayer of faith, and the person still died.

Um I sowed faithfully and generously, and yet I ended up still bouncing the check.

What's going on?

My finances are out of order, even though I've been tithing, they're still uh the business still collapsed.

So you find yourself in a place of chaos, and this is what we would now call disorientation.

Disorientation.

And of course, the temptation and disorientation, because it's so unpleasant, is to try to go back here to when life was simpler.

But the problem is you've seen too much now, and you can't go do that without cognitive dissonance.

The only way you do that is you just stick your fingers in your ears and go la la la la la la la la la.

And you try to stick your head in the sand, okay, because this is so confusing.

You've been destabilized.

Okay, but we got to keep moving forward.

In the disorientation, we have what are called the Psalms of Lament.

Okay?

Life doesn't make sense, and I'm upset.

About a third of the Psalms are Psalms of Lament.

Now, this is about to get good because when we talk about studying the Bible, we talk about the Bible as literature and the Bible as history before we go to theology.

And if we do our work of studying the literary and historical elements, we end up getting these really great insights.

And I'm gonna give you one today.

Okay, this uh the Psalms were written in the ancient Near East, and one of the ways to find theological insight from the Bible is to compare similar works in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, right?

So this would be Ugaritic text, these this would be Egyptian text, this would be Mesopotamian text, Canaanite text.

Now, for most of us, psalms are very unique to us because it's probably the only ancient Near Eastern poetry you're reading.

Right?

Most likely you're not like, you know, I've I've really consumed a lot of Ugaritic uh poems, you know, I'm really I'm very versed in that.

If you were, right, if you studied that, you would find some interesting stuff.

One is the Psalms are actually not unique.

They're unique to us, but they weren't unique in terms of their structure.

So it'd be like if we were writing psalms in or songs in modern times, it would be like they borrowed the chord structures, they borrowed the melodies from other uh surrounding empires and nations in terms of their psalms or their holy songs.

So they had similar uh design, they also had sometimes similar imagery.

So you're gonna see in the Psalms a lot of imagery about storms and floods and all of that.

That was very common, especially in Canaanite writings.

But what you have is they co-opt the style, but they subvert the theology.

So if you busted out some other ancient Near Eastern lament poems, okay, this is what you would see in all of them.

You would see them starting with the assumption that life is chaotic and life doesn't make sense anymore.

And the reason it doesn't make sense is because somewhere in this pantheon of gods, they're ticked.

Okay, so either one of the gods is ticked, or maybe a bunch of the gods are ticked, depending on how bad this famine is, no matter how bad we're getting beaten this, or you know, depending on how bad we're getting beat in this war, uh, no matter how bad the geopolitical unrest, if it's intense, there's probably a whole, a bunch of really upset gods.

The problem is we don't even necessarily know why.

We don't know why they're upset.

So in the other ancient Near Eastern lament poems, they start off on eggshells trying to calm down the upset gods.

And they start with flattery.

You are the best, you're so great, you're so brilliant.

They they start with all this flattery, and then eventually, at the very end of the poems, they would express their own pain and suffering.

Okay?

It would almost be like if you had a boss that was a little unpredictable, power hungry, and easily offended, and you were struggling, and you worked up the courage to send an email, but you spent the first two paragraphs telling them what a great job they're doing and how amazing they are and how smart they are, and you're given your just all this flattery, and you're so worried that if I get a word wrong or something, they're gonna it's gonna be the end of me.

So you have a couple people, like proof, hey, what do you think here before I hit send because I can't hit unsend, they won't unsee it.

So you do all that and you send.

Okay, so you have the Israelite ancient Near Eastern writing, Psalms, where they take the same chord progression, but they flip the theology.

And what you see in the Lament poems is they come in in verse one, in verse two, shouting their pain into the heavens.

Not in a dishonoring way, not in a disrespectful way, in a way that truly and deeply trusts the love and covenant of God.

That we trust this relationship so much, we don't even feel like we need to walk on eggshells.

So instead of a capricious, unpredictable boss, it would be like if you had a really loving parent and you were really confused and you felt like you could come in and just let the tears fly.

You could just be sincere about your anguish.

Look at these uh verses.

Look at this.

Psalm 13, 1 and 2.

How long, Lord, how long will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

Now notice, this isn't verse 8.

This isn't verse 10, this is verse 1.

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Right out of the gate, cut right to the chase, and expressing, I have feelings of abandonment here.

It feels like I'm in turmoil here, it feels like I'm desperate here.

They come right in.

And this is profound theological understanding of the character of Yahweh.

That you can trust his covenant, you can trust his agape love, you can trust his commitment, his faithfulness, his goodness, you can trust that that you can come right out of the gate and just be honest about where you're at and what you're going through.

Look at Psalm 69, 1 through 3.

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.

Anybody in this room ever been into a place where the season of life it felt like I'm taking on, I got water up to my neck.

I'm just trying to keep my head afloat.

I remember being at a sermon one time.

I was listening to somebody else, and and I was going through a season, I was so overwhelmed, and the preacher got up and said, This morning I want to challenge you.

And I went, Oh no.

I'm all challenged out these days.

There will be a day I'm I'll be up for a challenge, but I'm so challenged right now.

I need a little support.

I need a little bit of help.

Okay, the psalmist in Psalm 69 says, Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in the miry depths where there is no foothold.

Now again, what verse is this?

One?

Verse two, right out of the gate, I've come into the he says, I've come into the deep waters and the flood engulfs me.

I'm worn out calling for help.

My throat is parched.

My eyes fail looking for my God.

If you read Psalm 88, it's one of the darker Psalms, it's one of the most desperate.

Um, it never resolves.

If you get to the end of Psalm 88, the last verse is verse 18, and the final sentence of Psalm 88 is You have taken from me friend and neighbor.

Darkness is my closest friend.

Okay?

So what the Psalms are showing here is that the Bible does not feel a need to sanitize suffering.

That they're in this season of disorientation.

Let's go back to the wardrobe.

For some, some of the psalms are like a winter coat where it's been a long winter.

There's not been fruit.

And it's been where you're shivering, right?

Some of you have had seasons of Loneliness, you've had seasons of barrenness, and and it's overwhelming.

And what the Psalms teach us is that you can go to God with that.

You can go to God with that.

We see the psalmist do that over and over again.

It's like uh it's like this this is a jacket.

If you see me in this jacket, it's either a wedding or a funeral.

It's either a real good day or a really, really bad day.

And frankly, I've been wearing this jacket at funerals more than I have at weddings recently.

Some of you understand lament and you understand the grief.

And so what we get from the Psalms, one of the things that we get is a wardrobe of our seasons that they're grieving and they're honest about their pain.

What do you do in disorientation, right?

Because we know there really is no off-ramp.

We can pretend to take one, but it's not, you really can't.

Well, we've talked about this before.

If you'll stay in there, what's the plan in disorientation?

Well, we see it in the Psalms.

It's to pray, to process, and to persevere.

Pray, process, and persevere.

You see the psalmist praying, you see them processing their pain and continuing to do it.

This is why we have to understand the totality of the psalms because if you were having a really dry, bad, painful, dark season, you wouldn't want to get stuck in Psalm 88.

You'd want to keep Psalm 88 in its context with the under other 149 Psalms.

You have to understand that lament is real.

And we're not trying to rush past it, but we don't get stuck in it.

And so if you'll stay in there and you pray and process and persevere, you'll move from disorientation.

And you'll have a lot of questions, and there'll be a lot of QA with you and God.

And in the QA, you start to deepen your perspective and your understanding.

And you'll go to a place now, moving from orientation to disorientation, to what we want to call reorientation.

Reorientation.

And this is what we would say we would call a new normal.

And this new normal isn't naive, it's not overly simple.

We've gone through the pain of understanding the complexity and the perplexity of life.

But in this process where we don't give up, we keep struggling and we keep working and we keep praying and processing and persevering, and we start to develop things like wisdom.

We start to develop things like resilience.

There's something that happens because when I'm back here and I think everything is just the good or promoted and the bad are uprooted, and then I understand that I told the truth and I got uprooted, and the person who lied got promoted, I start to get a little bit more grace.

Because back here life looks so simple, I really didn't feel sorry for people.

But when I start to actually have to wade into the simplicity and have some really long nights and some really tough questions, some questions that have never fully resolved, but I've come to peace with.

Here's one Psalm 30, verse 5.

Psalms 30:5

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Okay?

Earlier we read about, you know, I sleep and I just get smarter.

It's crazy.

I sleep and I just have the most profound dreams.

But but but then life stopped making sense, and when life stopped making sense, we had some weeping and nights, but I stuck with it long enough that I got to a place that I know that weeping may endure for a night, or for a few nights, or for a bunch of nights, but joy will eventually come.

You only know that here.

When you're in here, sometimes it feels like the weeping will never stop.

So we see the psalmist cries out the Lord heard him and the Lord restored him.

Psalm 40, verses 1 through 3.

Psalms 40:1–3

I waited patiently for the Lord.

He turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit.

Okay?

That's a reorienting passage.

You know why?

Because he was in a slimy pit.

He was in a slimy pit.

So I don't know what it's like for the Lord to bring me out of a slimy pit if I've never been disoriented.

So he says, I've uh he lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire.

He set my foot feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

Now look at this.

He put a new song in my mouth.

Alright?

I used to sing this really simple, overly simple song, and I used to love it until I went through disorientation.

And now I don't sing that song anymore because I don't believe it anymore.

It didn't make any sense anymore.

Okay?

That song was too shallow.

That song was too shallow that song was, it quit working for me here.

And over here, I I grieved the song I used to sing because I used to like that song, but now I don't believe that song anymore, and I've grieved that song.

But what reorientation teaches me is that if I'll stay in the disorientation and I'll pray and I'll process and I'll persevere and pray and process and persevere and I'll pray and process and persevere, I'll never get that song back, but God will give me a new song.

He'll give me a new song.

Just for clarity as you're reading, some of the psalms will take you through the framework, some all the way through, and some will take you from like disorientation to reorientation in one psalm.

And it's not given to us so that we um rush the process as much as it's showing a progression.

It's it's condensing, maybe what's years of moving from uh disorientation to reorientation, uh, but it's condensing it into a poem essentially.

So let me uh take you back.

In Psalm 69 that we read earlier, the first part of it says, Save me, O God, for the waters are up to my neck.

If you skip the verse 28, okay, he says a bunch of stuff.

He gets to verse 28, and he's really bitter at someone who hurt him, and you can tell he's still angry because he says in verse 28, may they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.

Pretty upset, right?

They're pretty upset.

Saying, God, you saw what they did.

Why don't you just cancel them too?

Okay, God, why don't you blot them out of the book of life, it says.

So, so, okay, they're still coming out of disorientation.

We're still healing, all right?

We're still working our way out of bitterness.

Okay, but look, but look what he what look what it says here.

It says, but as for me, afflicted and in pain, may your salvation, God, protect me.

I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.

So you see somebody who's still hurting, who's still healing, but who's coming out and is leading, they're moving through their disorientation with worship and glory and thanksgiving to God.

Well, let's go back to Psalm 13, which is just six verses, and it gives us moving from orientation to re-or, sorry, disorientation to reorientation.

It says, How long, Lord, will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord, Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, and I will sleep, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, I have overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But now, look, they're getting a vision for reorientation.

But but I trust in your unfailing love.

My heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the Lord's praise, for he has been good to me.

Uh I'll give you one more.

I really like this one.

This is Psalm 56.8.

I'm just gonna give you one verse.

This is a reorientation verse.

He says, Record my misery and list my tears on your scroll.

Are they not in your record?

If you have the NIV, it says, List my tears in your scroll, and as a footnote, and if you follow that footnote down, it says, Scroll, or the the word literally means wineskin.

And what David, this is a lament psalm of David, what David is giving us is the imagery.

For them, a wineskin was an expensive container to contain the most valuable liquid.

So we take expensive wine and they put it in a wineskin.

And so David, in his tears, is saying, Lord, what I believe about you is that you're taking the most expensive container and you're valuing every tear like it, like priceless wine.

And those tears aren't just falling to the ground and absorbing into the soil.

They're being caught in a wineskin and they're being collected.

And I believe, God, that you've heard my cry.

I believe that you've seen my tears.

I believe that you've collected them, and I believe that even that pain, that suffering that I've gone through, Lord, that you've not missed any of it.

And that, God, you are going to bless it and that you're gonna do something with it, that it's gonna shape me into something.

Because when we go back to our wardrobe, there are some seasons that are windbreaker seasons, there are some seasons that are winter coat seasons, there are some seasons that are funeral suit seasons, there are some seasons where God is creating a garment that you've never seen before.

There's something in there, you've not seen it before.

You don't even know what it looks like.

When you're in the disorientation, and you know what you've lost, and you know what's confusing you, and you're in chaos, friend.

Please understand that God is working on something, He's doing something, and there's a garment being produced that you've never seen before.

But if you'll trust Him and you'll keep walking it out and understand that every single season that you're in, God will meet you there.

He will meet you there, He will meet you there.

He's capturing your tears in a wineskin, and He's working it together.

So here's what I want to do.

I uh this is enough for today.

We'll get back next week, but I I want to take a moment right now that whatever uh whatever season you're in and whatever garment you need, that you would allow the Lord to meet you here, that you would trust him like the psalmist to go right into verse one and be honest.

To praise God and worship God and to also let him know and to trust him enough to know where you're suffering and where you're confused and where you're hurt, and allow him to meet you right here, right now.

Let's take a moment, Lord.

We come to you in Jesus' name.

God, I think of my brothers and sisters, uh, some Lord who are maybe in a season of relief.

Maybe they're in a windbreaker season where things are going smooth and they're coming together, Lord.

May we not miss the opportunity to say thank you when we've got a little bit of wind at our back and some sun on our face.

Thank you, Lord, for that.

Lord, I think today, especially for my brothers and sisters who are walking through disorientation, where life has stopped making sense, where they feel unstable and confused.

Lord, in their process of praying and working through processing and persevering, I pray, God, you would take them deeper in their understanding, deeper in their revelation of you.

Lord, that they would weather really difficult winter seasons.

That they would grieve in the proper way that humans are supposed to grieve.

To feel what we're supposed to feel, but to not get stuck in Psalm 88.

I pray, Lord, as a community that we would serve one another and support one another in every season to celebrate with those who celebrate and to mourn with those who mourn.

And we know that, Lord, in this process, you have a garment that we've never seen before.

That you have a song that's new that we've never heard before.

We put all of our faith in you, all of our trust in you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.