Psalm 43 - The God of Hope (Round 2)
INTRODUCTION:
Interest:
There are times when things to do go as we want them to go. Actually, we can probably all say that right now with the pandemic upsetting numerous plans. I am sure that for all of us there are things that are not going as we want them to go. But it doesn’t take a pandemic to cause our plans to go awry. I remember the first time we took our kids to Disney world. As a family, we were all excited about this trip. It was going to be a great time. We were going to stay at one of the resorts, spend the days in the parks, and have a wonderful time. And then I woke up the morning we were going to leave with an eye that looked awfully red. I tried to pretend it would be ok as we left on the trip, but by the time we got to the resort in Florida there was no doubt that I had full-blown pinkeye…hopefully I didn’t infect too many people on the way…I had never heard of social distancing, but I was careful to not touch my eye and I washed my hands a lot. Anyway, we checked into our room and while the rest of the family went for their first excited introduction to one of the parks, I had to stay in the room, contact my doctor in MI, get a prescription sent to the hotel office, find a pharmacy, and deal with my pinkeye…far from the day I had planned.
Involvement:
As I said, we all have events that come into our lives that disrupt our plans and dreams. How should we respond when those disruptions take on a very serious tone…much more serious than pinkeye on vacation? Our psalm this morning can help us answer that question.
Context:
As you can see on the screen, we are going to look at Psalm 43 today. This is Palm Sunday and if you want a Palm Sunday message, connect back in tonight as I am going to postpone our restart of the Genesis series until after Easter and instead look at John’s account of Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem at the start of His final week.
Last week we looked at Psalm 42 as we began a series through the second book of the Psalter. You may recall, if you were with us, that I mentioned that Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 were apparently a single poem originally. Somewhere in their history they were divided into two separate psalms, but originally they were a single poem with three stanzas. That means that the main emphasis of the psalm this week is like last week’s, which is why I have titled this sermon “Round 2.” Of course, this is not an exactly a repeat, but I do believe that God has arranged for us to receive a double-dose of a needed reminder—a reminder where real hope comes from.
Illustration
As I mentioned last week, this is certainly a reminder we need right now. The rapid spread of the pandemic here in our area has cause much distress and concern. We need to be reminded where we can find real hope.
Preview:
Our psalm this morning is a very short psalm, containing only 5 verses. Yet in these five verses we find a very important message: We must keep our hope fixed on God.
Transition from introduction to body:
We must keep our hope fixed on God. Let’s go ahead and read our psalm…<read Ps 43:1-5>.
We must keep our hope fixed on God. As we think about the verses that we've just read, I want us to consider three different points. The first point is that…
BODY:
I. We should yearn for God to act
Yearning for God to act. Our desire should not be a casual desire; it should be a fervent one whenever we are waiting to see God move in a given situation. If you recall from last week it was evident that the psalmist who wrote these two psalms was isolated from Jerusalem, in exile somewhere in the Jordan area. He had a strong desire to return to Jerusalem, the center of worship. Instead, though, he was surrounded by ungodly people. This is still his situation and that leads to his yearning desire for God to act.
Transition:
In our verses, we can see two different specific actions that our writer wants God to undertake. Whenever we are undergoing any sort of oppression and waiting to see God act, we can anticipate having the same yearnings. First of all,…
A. We should yearn for God’s vindication (v. 1)
yearning for God’s vindication. We see this clearly in verse one. A writer calls out to God in the first verse. Remember, last week I mentioned that with the psalms we should not only understand what is being said, we should also seek to feel what is being expressed. As we read the first verse we should feel the anguish and ache that are being expressed as the psalmist appeals to God for vindication and deliverance. The words that are used by the psalmist, that we have translated as vindicate and deliver are actually legal terms. He is calling on God to be the righteous judge and to pass a righteous sentence on those who are oppressing him. He is yearning for God to publicly announce that he is the one who was in the right and that those who are expressing hatred toward him are wrong.
Application
I know that many of us can relate to this feeling. Being a Christian in our country is rapidly becoming a way to ensure mocking and ridicule. It is not unusual at all to hear stories in the news where Christians lose their job because of stands that they take for righteousness. We watch what is happening around us and begin to wonder where is God? Why is God allowing the unrighteous to take over our country? Why is God allowing his people to be marginalized? This has caused many believers to become increasingly aggressive with politics, sometimes even responding in improper fashion as believers. And while we must resist taking ungodly actions ourselves, we can certainly understand the sentiment that seeks to see God vindicate His people in our nation. We want to see God move. And that desire is not improper; we see in verse 1 that it is actually a desire of a godly man.
Transition:
We should yearn for God's vindication. That is the first specific act action that we see in this Psalm as it comes out of verse one. But what can we do to keep this yearning from going too far, going out-of-bounds, so-to-speak? In verse 3 we see a second yearning that should join our yearning for vindication and that will maintain our needed balance…
B. We should yearn for God’s guidance (v. 3)
Our psalmist calls out for God in verse 3, asking God to send him light and truth. This is wonderful poetic imagery. Our psalmist wants to return to Jerusalem so that he can meet with God at the temple there on God's holy hill. He expresses this desire by calling for God to give him light to guide him on his journey. He pictures the long, dangerous journey that he would physically take and uses images from that to represent the difficult spiritual journey which is also required because of his current circumstances. To travel to Jerusalem, he will need light. He calls for God to send Him light. Only God's illumination will show him how he can escape his current problems. Only God's illumination we'll show him how vindication can come. Only God's illumination will allow him to truly go free. But God’s light is connected to God's truth, which is a poetic way of expressing that God's illumination is tied to God's revelation. Light and truth must go together. Both must come from God.
Application
Of course, we do not worship in a single location at a temple in Jerusalem as the Israelites did in the Old Testament; but nonetheless, we certainly need God to guide us in our lives still. We need God to show us how we can approach Him. We need God to guide us as to how to resolve the issues we face in life. We need God's guidance. But do we yearn for it? After all, God has revealed everything that we need for life and godliness according to 2 Peter 1:3; we have it in our possession. We have it in print; we have it on our phones; we have it available through our computers. We have incredible access to God's revelation, but do we yearn for his guidance? If we yearn for it, we will seek every opportunity to learn what God has said. We will look for chances to study the Bible. We will eagerly gather for Sunday school. We will initiate study groups. We will listen to messages with active minds. We will dig into what God is said ourselves so that we can find out how we are to live our lives. That is what it means to yearn for God's guidance. We fully recognize that these efforts depend on the illumination of the Spirit of God, but the Spirit works by applying the Word of God to our lives. This is the way in which we can find how we are to live our lives and how we can approach God in worship.
Transition:
We should yearn for God to act. We should yearn for God's vindication and we should yearn for his guidance.
When we face incredibly hard times, We must keep our hope fixed on God. Frankly, when we face easy times, We must keep our hope fixed on God. At all times We must keep our hope fixed on God. Keeping our hope fixed on God begins with yearning for God to act.
Yet, not only must we yearn, our psalmist shows us that, secondly,…
II. We should urge God to act
Application
Do you ever feel like God has rejected you? Does it ever feel like God is oblivious to your suffering? Life can get really hard. Extended sickness or broken relationships or career disappointments or financial disasters. There are all kinds of things that can make life hard…and at times when these things go on it can feel like God isn’t paying any attention to your pain. We would never want to accuse God of being unkind, but it can feel as if He is too busy to deal with the problems of someone as inconsequential as us.
Well, our psalmist is clearly suffering, and he seems to also feel like he has been rejected by God as well. Yet, he takes those feelings and actually uses them to urge God to act.
Transition:
From his actions we can learn that we should urge God to act in a couple different ways. Looking at verse 2, we can observe that…
A. We should urge God with prayer (v. 2)
Look at the verse; the psalmist is talking directly to God, “For You are the God of my strength.” This is a prayer of faith. He is talking to his God. Our psalmist is essentially saying, “God, You are my God. I have no other god; I have only You. You have always been my strength, my fortress.”
But his prayer does not end with the expression of faith. He continues to poor out his emotion as he expresses his inner confusion. “God, where are You now? You have always been my strength in the past, but where are you now? I feel rejected, God, because it seems as if You are not answering my prayers. God, I have an impossible time reconciling what I know about You—You are my stronghold—I cannot reconcile that truth with the circumstances in which You are not coming to my aid. My enemies continue to oppress me and I am not receiving any help from You; there is no relief from You.”
Application
Does that emotion resonate with you? Do you ever feel like God must have walked away from you? Well, what we can learn from this psalm and many others that express similar sentiments is that we should take these feelings to God. We can express our deepest heartache and hurt to God…after all, the all-knowing God is not going to be surprised by our feelings. Yet, as we express our pain to God, we are actually urging God to act once more for us. We are expressing our faith while wrapping it around a plea to God to rise up and do something. This is a proper response of faith.
In fact, allow me to encourage you very directly in this area. Now is certainly the time that we should be turning to God, urging Him through our prayers to come to the aid of our country, our state, our city. We should be praying for our medical personal facing real risk themselves. We should be praying for friends affected by the virus. We should be on our knees urging God to act. This is what we should be doing…so why are we not? I really wonder where everyone is on Wednesday nights for our online prayer time. I wonder where the men are for our 7 am online prayer time. We don’t even need to leave the house to join each other in prayer. The stay-at-home quarantine mandate has placed a lot of limitations on us, but our ability to pray together is not one of them. Why are we not taking advantage of the opportunity to urge our God to act? Frankly, I don’t get it.
Transition:
We should urge God with prayer—honest prayer that pours out our pain and emotion, as well as our fears. Secondly,…
B. We should urge God with praise (v. 4)
We see this in verse 4. Our psalmist structures this psalm by bouncing back and forth between yearning for God to act and urging God to act. In verse 4, the way in which he urges God to act is through thinking about the future; what will happen when God allows him to return to the temple and worship. He states that when God leads him back to Jerusalem, he will go to the altar and praise God.
Application
Now, this is not an attempt to manipulate God, like what we often call a fox-hole prayer. If you are not familiar with that term, that is the idea that a soldier who has never prayed in his life and who has refused to acknowledge God will suddenly pray when he is in a foxhole under an incoming barrage of shells; he might pray something along the lines, “God, if you exist and if you get me out of this, then I will live a clean life from here on out.” It is unlikely that such a person will actually follow through on the promise if he does get out of that foxhole, but in the crisis, he is trying to negotiate or bribe God with a future promise.
That is not what our psalmist is doing…he is a man a faith. What is happening in verse 4 is that his faith is causing hope to break through as he imagines himself back in Jerusalem already praising God on the lyre once more, expressing his joy in His God…an increased expression because for this to happen it will mean that God has saved Him again. The psalmist is urging God to come to his aid with preemptive praise for a future opportunity to praise God more.
Illustration
This is a little bit like the kind of urging that you may have experienced at times with your family Imaging that you are driving home at the end of a long vacation. There are a few hours to go before you reach home. Your children, or maybe even your wife, says something along the lines, “I’m getting tired. I’m just going to go to sleep. I know that you will get us home safely; you are a careful driver.” Their words of praise work as a means to urge you to do what you are able to do—drive safely the rest of the way.
Application
It is proper to praise God for things that we anticipate that He will do because He is able to do them. It is also proper to express our faith in His capabilities by committing to future praise we anticipate giving after He acts. Vowing to praise God is a way of motivating God to answer prayer, giving a God a reason based upon His character. The difference between this and vain attempts to manipulate God is that it is expressed in faith.
Transition:
We should urge God to act. We can do that with prayer and with praise. Which brings us to the final verse of the psalm…
III. We should hope that God will act (v. 5)
Hope began to break through in verse 4 and it carries the day in this final verse. This verse may ring a few bells in your memory as it is the same refrain that we saw last week. As I reminded you at the beginning of the sermon, Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 started out as a single psalm, split sometime in Israel’s history. The original poem was like a hymn with three verses, each followed by a common chorus. This is the common chorus as the first four verses of our psalm comprise what would have been the 3rd stanza of the original poem.
So, while we have seen this verse before, the context here as a final refrain seems much less somber and more hopeful than the previous times. The psalmist yearned for God to act. He has urged God to act. So now he recognizes that there is no reason for him to be in despair. There is no reason for him to be disturbed by the present circumstances. The only thing that he really has a reason to do is to hope in God. God is the One he will see again. God is the One he will praise. God is the One who will cause his countenance to be lifted. Because God is his God.
Application
Whenever I read words of hope and confidence like this in the OT, I am totally amazed. In my mind, because I know so much more about God’s program than anyone in the OT could have known, I am blown away by their faith.
Illustration
Think about it; the choir number that was played right before the sermon was “My Hope is Jesus.” That is a song I really love. I have enjoyed how an arrangement of that song has been making its way around FaceBook quite a bit over the past couple of weeks as people have posted it to remind us that we do not need to be afraid about what this virus might bring because we have Jesus as our hope.
The words of that song say that “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” It says that Jesus is “the anchor of my soul, the ruler of this universe, the One Who’s in control. He saved me, and He will keep me to the end. … My hope is Jesus.”
Do you believe that? Not only can we have confidence that God is able to save; we know the way that God can saves; we live on the other side of the proof of His ability to save. This is Palm Sunday…the day that commemorates Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem to great acclaim. What makes that arrival extra stunning is the knowledge that by the end on Friday, Jesus was hung on the cross and died and the following Sunday…one week from the day He arrived to the welcoming Palm Sunday shouts—an event we will look at, as I said, tonight—He rose from the grave. In one sense, we know that Jesus did not have to die—He was the Son of God, with infinite power at His disposal. Furthermore, He had not sinned, so He did not deserve to die. Yet in a more profound sense, Jesus had to die…He had to die in order to provide salvation for all of us who were condemned before God because of our own sin. We could not rightly come into God’s presence. We could not stand before Him and praise Him, because we were sinners. When Jesus died on the cross He died in our place. God accepts our faith that Jesus’ death is sufficient to pay for our sin as the only payment of our own infinite sin debt. Jesus died for us; our hope is Jesus.
If you know Jesus as your Savior like I know Jesus as my Savior, you have every reason to have hope in God. God has already done the hard part—He has given His Son to purchase our salvation. Jesus has done the hard part—He died and rose from the dead. Now we can hope with a unshakeable hope that He will bring us through every circumstance that this life throws at us into His glorious presence when this life is finished. We will stand before Him and praise Him. We will have our countenance lifted. We have no reason at all to despair. We have no reason to be disturbed. What we have is every reason to echo the hope of our psalmist. We should indeed hope that God will act; hope that He will because He already has.
Transition from body to conclusion:
We should hope that God will act…because has already acted through Jesus. That is why We must keep our hope fixed on God.
CONCLUSION
We must keep our hope fixed on God.
Our lives will encounter disruptions; our plans will be thrown into confusion and our dreams will hit snags. There might be things far worse than the pinkeye I encountered on our family trip to Disney World. We might even face things as serious as our psalmist faced in his life…which is why we can learn from him this morning how to respond.
We must keep our hope fixed on God. During times of trials, we should yearn for God to act. During such times we should urge God to act. Then, as we yearn for God and urge God we should hope that God will act. Doing this will cause us to keep our hope fixed on God.
Fixing your hope on God begins with fixing your faith on Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You must place your faith in Him for salvation before your hope is truly fixed on God—Jesus is the only way that God has created for us to be able to hope. If you do not know Jesus, please contact me through the email address that you can find on our website. I would love to share how you can find hope in Jesus.
For all of you who have Jesus as your hope; don’t forget what God has already done for you. Keep your hope fixed on God as you face the trials of life. God will not disappoint. We must keep our hope fixed on God.