June 11 Sermon: Send Out Your Light

Some questions to ponder as you consider Psalm 43:

1. How does the Psalmist express their deep emotional turmoil and feelings of abandonment in Psalm 42 and 43?

2. What are the questions and doubts that arise in the Psalmist's mind as they face adversity and suffering? How do these questions resolve as the Psalm progresses?

3. How does the Psalmist ultimately find hope and confidence in God's deliverance, and what does this teach us about trusting God in our own difficult circumstances?

Transcript:

There are many different types of prayers that we find in the book of Psalms. As I mentioned last week, we see everything from prayers of praise to prayers calling for harsh judgment on the enemies of God. This week we are looking at Psalm 43 and it is a prayer crying out for deliverance. No matter how well off your life has been, my guess is that at some point you have prayed to God for deliverance from a situation. It could be something as simple as praying that God help you through a stressful situation or it could have been a prayer asking to be delivered from the most intense circumstances of your life. Regardless, deliverance is something I think that we have all prayed for at some point in our life. And in those type of situations, we have all probably been to a point where we have felt like we just wanted to give up.

‌Things felt as though you would just be better off by throwing in the towel. I’m guessing many of you have experienced this feeling and as I was studying this week, I discovered that there is actually a clinical term for when someone gives up on life and allows themselves to die. Now, that is obviously more extreme than anything you and I have been to the point of, but I know many of us have stories about people we’ve known who experienced a great tragedy and they just gave up on life. Nothing major happened to change their health other than the tragedy and they just gave up on life and died. Anyway, I found out that the clinical term for this is known as psychogenic death. I was fascinated by the fact that there was an official term for this because people talk about this all the time. In our family, we talk about this with my grandfather. He had dementia and was past the point of knowing or remembering very much. My grandmother died and we brought him from the nursing home when the family gathered at the funeral home. He did know who she was when he saw her in the casket. A few hours later while we were at the visitation, my mother sent my cousin Prentice and I to check on him at the nursing home and he looked completely different than earlier that day. His eyes were glazed over and he had completely checked out. He died just a few days later. They said he died of pneumonia but if you would have seen what Prentice and I saw that evening you would know that it was that he had given up.

‌I tell that story and speak of psychogenic death because we know that there are difficult circumstances in life that can affect us deep down at the core of us and even take away our will to live. This affects us deep down at the very core of us and is an emotion that we can relate to.

‌As we land in Psalm 43 today we find the Psalmist in a desperate state of affairs and he is crying out for deliverance and while we are looking at and have read Psalm 43 today, we can’t really understand this Psalm without connecting it to Psalm 42 because it tells us how much turmoil the Psalmist is and they are connected together by the similar language that they use. While Psalm 43 gives us a good understanding of how terrible things are for the Psalmist, we really get the idea of how bad things are with some of the intense language that is used in Psalm 42. Let’s take a look at a few of these phrases and some of them are probably familiar to you from your reading and singing from the Psalms.

‌The Psalmist feels abandoned and we will see even further down in Psalm 42 that he feels forsaken. The language here that resonates with me so deeply is tears have been my food day and night. I don’t know about you but I can feel that grief the Psalmist is expressing here. That feeling just overcomes you. And notice that in the midst of this grief the enemies of the Psalmist are saying that God has abandoned him. You believe and trust in God, then why are you in such terrible grief that you can’t stop crying.

‌We see continued expressive language that expresses what the Psalmist is experiencing with verse 7 of Psalm 42.

‌The imagery here is that they feel completely overwhelmed. Waves going over you is strong imagery of chaos and despair. Think of how the descent of Jonah is described as he is overcome by the water before he is swallowed. We are feeling the grief and the overwhelming despair of the Psalmist with this language here.

‌And this leads to the Psalmist feeling as though he has been forgotten by God.

‌‌This immediately draws me to the statement of Jesus on the cross about being forsaken by God and it also draws my mind to people that I know who have experienced the deepest levels of grief. We all know those who have experienced deep tragedy and we wonder how they are able to keep the faith, right?

‌While we might not ask the question that the adversaries of the Psalmist say here in taunting, we’ve probably all thought where is God in the midst of the grief and tragedy that we’re witnessing or experiencing. We would never use it against someone but our minds have gone to the question that is being asked here. Why are they are experiencing this? Why isn’t God intervening for them?

‌These statements here help us to set the stage for the crying out for deliverance we have read today in Psalm 43. This pleading to be delivered isn’t something insignificant. It is a crying out in the midst of tears for food and feeling forsaken by God and we find that in all that has happened the Psalmist does not waver in his devotion to God but instead calls out to him and pleads for his deliverance.

‌I don’t know about you but when I see people who are experiencing suffering leaning on God through it I am inspired by their faith. Instead of turning away from God in hardship, they instead turn toward him. This is what we see in this Psalm.

We see that this Psalm 43 starts off with a word we probably are familiar with but don’t really use in our every day language. This is legal language. To be vindicated means to be cleared from blame and to demonstrate innocence. The writer of this Psalm wants God to show that he is not guilty of what is being accused and that he is not facing this situation because of something that he has done.

‌And notice who is slinging accusations in his directions. He needs to be defended against an ungodly people. This isn’t just the Psalmist saying that they are acting in a more moral way than those who are accusing him here. The ungodly are the people who do not know the covenantal steadfast love of God. This is people outside of the people of God who are making these accusations. They do not know the covenant faithfulness of God and they do not honor or keep the law of God. This is who the Psalmist is pleading to be shown righteous against. An ungodly people. A deceitful and unjust man.

‌The idea here is that he these are not just the enemies of the one who is writing this Psalm but they are enemies of God as well.

‌And verse two makes this clear but it also lets us know that the situation they are experiencing is a dire one.

‌‌Unlike the ungodly, they are taking refuge in God. They have experienced his covenant faithfulness and are resting in it.

‌But at the same time, they have questions about what is going on. If I take refuge in you, God, and those oppressing me are ungodly, deceitful, and unjust, then why are you rejecting me? Why is all of this happening to me? Why are these hardships causing me to be in mourning? I’m in grief because of those who hate you and yet, nothing seems to be happening to remedy this situation.

‌This is a common question. When you are experiencing hardships you might not say it out loud but we have all thought this. Why? I’m a child of God. How come this is happening to me? Why isn’t God doing something about this? Why is someone who openly rejects God able to oppress me? Why are good things happening for those who are openly rebellious against God experiencing the good life while I’m suffering?

‌I don’t know about you but I am glad these questions are here in this text. The Psalms are such a blessing because they show us the range of human emotion and they don’t hide what the authors are thinking and feeling, they just lay the emotions out there.

‌It would have been easy to leave out these two questions here and give the appearance that there was no doubt or questioning of the faithfulness of God and remember, this is divinely inspired. This is the word of God and it is in a book full of prayers that the people of God have prayed across the ages. When you feel this way, you can come to this prayer and know that you are not alone. The people of God have struggled in suffering and prayed these words right along with you.

‌And there is great power in this because it shows us that as we feel these things and we cry out to God in this way we have an answer to what our next prayer is and it shows a continued trust in the faithfulness of God.

‌​‌Send out your light and your truth. In the face of the deceit of the ungodly this Psalm cries out for light and truth to come from God and that they would be led by it. Instead of saying fine, I’ll go about trying to remedy this on my own, I’m desire for your truth to go before. They want to be led by God and not by their own actions.

‌Remember in our quick survey of Psalm 42 I mentioned the chaos that the Psalmist was experiencing and that it was expressed with the vivid imagery of water. Notice now, where the Psalmist desire to go. He wants to be lead to the holy hill and the dwelling of God. The waters of chaos are unstable and you can easily sink down but the path the psalmist desires is to be lead to the high ground of God’s temple. In all the chaos that is taking place there is a desire to remain faithful and allow God to be the one who rescues.

‌And this action the Psalmist is crying out to God for will lead them to praise.

‌‌I am taken by the language use here. After being led to the holy hill the psalmist goes to the altar of God and then he talks about who God is to him. He is his exceeding joy.

‌Wait a second. It wasn’t too long ago that we read about questions regarding God’s rejection of the psalmist and now we see him using this language of God being his joy. There was morning but the light and truth of God and the confidence in his salvation leads to praise. The idea of praising God for his saving work is a reoccurring theme. And, as I mentioned last week, the salvation that God brings to his people is the primary reason we praise him because surely a powerful God would be worthy of praise but that praise would have an expiration date when we breathe our last. But because we trust in the salvation that God brings us we know that we will praise him forever and this is the root of the exceeding joy that we have in him. He is a God who rescues his people and that is why we can pray this prayer of deliverance here in Psalm 43.‌

And as we close up with final verse of this Psalm today we see something that is repeated through

Psalm 42 and 43.

‌‌If you think about this like a song, it acts like a chorus and we obviously don’t know the music to it but the words draw you in like a catchy chorus and they show a range of emotion in them.

‌From the pit of being catch down and in turmoil we are lifted up to praise God because of the salvation that we are confident that he will give. Once again, we do not see the psalmist giving up on God but instead crying out and hoping for deliverance in the worst of situations. He knows that victory will not be won on his own, he needs a rescuer and he trusts that the salvation will come and that it will be a cause to praise him. We see this in how God is described here. He is my salvation and my God. He is the one who rescues and he is the one who is faithful to his people.

‌This question and this answer is an application for the people of God then and now.

‌When we are in experiencing difficult times, tragedy, and suffering it is natural to ask the questions that we have seen asked in this Psalm. Not only is it natural but we have seen that it is an example for us from God’s inspired word to do so. But the answer to our being downcast and in turmoil is to hope in God. That can be impossibly hard to do but we know that God works all things together for good for those who love him. Not just the good stuff or even the ordinary things of life. We trust that God can take even the darkest times of our lives and work them for our good and his glory.

‌In the midst of adversity and trying moments of our lives we can pray this prayer of deliverance and ask the questions that are plaguing our minds but it will also turn us to God because we will again praise him because he is faithful to work all things for good for his covenant people.

‌And as we are spending time in the Psalms this summer I’ve said that we will be considering how Christ unlocks the Psalter for us. We can come to this Psalm and pray it boldly because we know that Christ is not only the fulfillment of what we see in the Psalms but in what we see in all of scripture.

‌When we face adversity we can go to God boldly praying for deliverance because we know that Christ is our deliverance. When we cry out send out your light, we know that Christ is the light of the world. When we plead with the Psalmist for God to send out the truth we know that Jesus is the truth and he has won ultimate and eternal victory for his people.

‌This is a psalm that we can pray with absolute confidence because we know of Christ’s work in defeating sin, death, and hell.

‌We have been vindicated against the enemy because we have the perfect righteousness of Jesus as a gift. He has defended our cause, even though we were the deceitful and unjust one, he delivered us. He has caused us to take refuge in him and he has given us the gift of faith. He has not rejected us. The light and the truth of who he is has come to us through the work of the Holy Spirit in us. He has brought us out of the waters of chaos to his holy hill.

‌And so, we cry out with this prayer of deliverance knowing that we have been delivered. No matter what we face in this life, we have the assurance of salvation because we have been given faith in Christ. So, may you and I praise his name for the deliverance that we have been blessed with in Christ.