For Every Season

Introduction

Our themes for Sunday services for the first part of the fall are matched to the three priorities Faith Baptist Church established in the spring in our vision statement: connecting to God, each other, and our community. These are important themes, because in our chaotic modern world connection is getting harder to come by. Even if COVID hadn’t given so many people a heavy dose of isolation we were already moving in that direction. As we get more and more connected to information and entertainment and instant communication through the internet and our phones, many people are also feeling disconnected. Disconnected from other people, certainly, but maybe also disconnected from a sense of self, or a reason for being.

I don’t believe that we are here by accident. We are walking this earth not because of an astonishingly unlikely series of random events, but because our creator wanted us to be here. And I believe that this creator God desires good for us – He loves His people and desires that we would thrive in this world.

Jesus, when He walked among us, taught that being connected to God was essential for people to thrive. He said: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit.” Healthy branches stay connected to the vine.

The last two weeks I preached about the most essential ways that people seek to connect with God. We spent a week focused on prayer, and how prayer can be an ongoing awareness of God as you go about your day as well as a specific time of talking and listening to God. And last week we talked about the difference it makes to read or listen to your Bible regularly, especially when it comes to not being sucked in to the temptations of our world.

Today I’m going to focus on a powerful resource for connecting to God that Jesus used and Christian communities have used from the beginning. It can be used as Bible reading, for prayer, and for praising God with music. It’s the book of Psalms.

What Are The Psalms?

Jesus immersed Himself in scripture – Bible passages and references flowed out of Him. And about half of the time Jesus quoted or alluded to scripture He drew from the book of Psalms.

For anyone who likes a bit of Bible nerd knowledge, the book of Psalms has a lot to offer. It is a collection of poems, many of which were used as lyrics for choirs in Jewish worship. But there’s much more to it – the book of Psalms was designed to connect people to God when their old way of connecting was lost.

When Jerusalem was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonian Empire the Temple – their special place to seek connection with God - was destroyed along with it. The book of Psalms was put together after this, and it was designed very carefully to be what one Bible scholar calls “a virtual temple for all generations.”

Some, perhaps most, of these Psalms had been written before all this happened, but they were put together into this book at that time to help people grieve what was lost while having hope for their future. If you read the Psalms from start to finish they actually tell the Biblical story and highlights its main themes.

And the Psalms weren’t meant to be read once for information. They are designed for a lifetime of re-reading and reflection in order to be immersed in the Bible’s story and to seek connection with God.

Now, this is a bit different from what we usually do, but since we have this different layout today want to make use of that and make this a little more interactive. So I have one question I’m hoping you’ll be willing to answer and discuss right now. Is there a Psalm that is meaningful to you? Or have you been in a situation where a Psalm spoke to you in a memorable way? Let’s take a minute and see if anyone in your group has any connection to the Psalms they would share. Discussion break.

Psalms get used in most churches regularly. We sometimes read them as a call to worship, they inspire the lyrics of many of our worship songs still today, they get incorporated into prayers at times, and so on. But in corporate worship we focus on a minority of the Psalms because when we gather to praise together we usually want to be fairly upbeat – we’re celebrating being together thanks to our shared love for God who first loved us. The last third of the Psalms often work well for this – they focus on praise, joy and celebration. This is especially true of the last five Psalms. Here’s part of Psalm 145:

I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. 2 Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever.

3 Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. 4 One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts. 5 They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty— and I will meditate on your wonderful works.

8 The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.

9 The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. 10 All your works praise you, Lord; your faithful people extol you.

The other Psalms, the first two thirds or so, are less about praise and celebration and more about lament. They express pain and confusion and anger.

Here’s a bit from Psalm 6:

O Lord, don’t rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your rage. 2 Have compassion on me, Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. 3 I am sick at heart. How long, O Lord, until you restore me?

6 I am worn out from sobbing. All night I flood my bed with weeping, drenching it with my tears. 7 My vision is blurred by grief; my eyes are worn out because of all my enemies.

There’s a lot of very normal human fears and emotions in that. There’s concern that the author has angered God. Recognizing his weakness. Feeling heartsick. Feeling despair in the night.

It’s not that you can’t have lament in corporate worship, but these Psalms can be especially valuable when we engage with them personally. Sometimes they express things that we are going through, or feelings and doubts that we are having. They can put words to things we are feeling, and give us permission to speak to God the way the Psalmist does. Some people don’t know that you can dare to talk to God in some of these ways – with brutal honesty at times. But you can, and these Psalms can guide you.

The lament and praise in the Psalms connects to the time this book formed as we have it today. There’s lament because this book was put together to bless a people whose home had been destroyed, along with Temple where they sought God. And so there is a lot of grief and sadness and anger at what their enemies had done.

But the Psalms don’t wallow in that – they also point the way to hope for the future. And that hope is the Messiah. Different Psalms point to a future where God’s kingdom is restored thanks to this figure – God’s anointed – who will come. And it’s not simply a restoration of the previous kingdom – this is something more. Something eternal.

Here's the ending of Psalm 16:

No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. My body rests in safety. For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave. You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.

And Christians see a great deal of Jesus in some of these references, including Psalm 22, which Jesus quoted in part on the cross as He was dying:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far away when I groan for help? 2 Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night I lift my voice, but I find no relief.

Everyone who sees me mocks me. They sneer and shake their heads, saying, 8 “Is this the one who relies on the Lord? Then let the Lord save him! If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him!”

This back-and-forth between lament praise is something that we should embrace as people of faith. Being a Christian doesn’t mean downplaying the hard things. Our grief and pain and hardship are just as real as anyone’s, and we should not turn away from them. Instead, the Psalms show us that we can bring these things to God, who can be a refuge and source of strength.

But all the while we also keep in view our future hope. The Messiah is going to establish God’s kingdom in full. Jesus, the Christ, as already come. God’s Kingdom is on the move through the Church in this world. But one day heaven and earth will be reunited and we will know God’s kingdom as a place where there is only life to the full, because sin and sadness and pain and loss are no more. We’re called to live in the light of this future hope, which can help us through the hardest things we face and lend us some of the joy that is coming for today.

I wanted to invite you to come back together in your little groups for a couple more minutes before I wrap up today and see if you can answer this question: which do you find harder? Do you find lament harder – expressing those negative feelings to God or others? Or do you find hope harder – do you struggle to trust that everything will be made right by a God who loves us?

Using The Psalms

I want to end on a practical note and talk about how to make use of the Psalms in connecting to God. I’ve got four ways, though there are undoubtedly many more.

The first way is just reading them. You can chose one at random, but now that I’ve mentioned that there is a structure and intention in the book you might try reading them in order. Read one before bed most days and you’ll be done in 6 months or less. But read them slowly. Read them for the feelings they express and create, and for the hope they are trying to bring you.

A second way to make use of the Psalms is to memorize some. Many people can already say a lot of Psalm 23 off the top of their heads. What if you put a few more in there, so that they’re at your disposal any time? Read the same Psalm for a week or a month and let it establish itself in your memory.

A third way we can engage with the songs is through music. A lot of Christian music draws from the Psalms, but there are also artists out there putting the Psalms to music as they are written, or by changing them as little as possible in order to put them to a beat or melody modern people can follow.

I’ve shared some of the Psalm album by a Canadian artists named Mike Janzen, and there’s an American duo called Shane and Shane who do this well, and so many others. Listen and sing the Psalms.

And my fourth way is to pray the Psalms. This is a spiritual practice that goes back many centuries. You take a Psalm, or a part of a Psalm, and you use it as the basis for prayer. Work through it bit by bit, and turn what you find there back to God in prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to help guide you in this. Sometimes you might just repeat the words you find there. Other times you may end up going down long rabbit holes before you come back to the text. And that’s fine.

This isn’t easy to just explain, so I’m going to take Psalm 42 now and do three of the four things I just walked about – I’ll read it, then pray it, and then we’ll sing it.

Psalm 42

As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. 2 I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him? 3 Day and night I have only tears for food, while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, “Where is this God of yours?”

4 My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be: I walked among the crowds of worshipers, leading a great procession to the house of God, singing for joy and giving thanks amid the sound of a great celebration!

5 Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and 6 my God!

Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember you—even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar. 7 I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me. 8 But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life.

9 “O God my rock,” I cry, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies?” 10 Their taunts break my bones. They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”

11 Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!

Now, I’ll try to pray it. I haven’t prepared anything for that, I don’t want this to be more polished than it should. I’m just going go through it verse by verse in prayer and use it to see what I can express to God as I go.