Hope in God

Distress

Two weeks ago, news emerged of a little four year old girl had gone missing from a remote camping ground in Western Australia. Since this time, the name Cleo Smith has become a household name in Australia.

As the days went on, for most of us in the general public, hope began to fade.

It was a case that gripped our nation. We prayed for a miracle.

Given how much us, the public cared, imagine the utter distress the parents must have been feeling that whole time.

Now, I have no idea what her parents believe in terms of the spiritual, however I could well imagine, even without much belief, they would have been calling out to the Almighty.

Whatever the parents views, I was reading in Eternity News that the local Church of Christ in Carnarvon was bringing people together in prayer.

While Cleo was missing, it held at least two prayer vigils and the pastor reported that many that came were actually non-Christians.

The pastor wanted to give people in distress hope - and he did so with readings of scripture.

The distress they were feeling was real.

We too feel distress. Our distress might be caused by any number of things. Health concerns. Financial problems. Relationship breakdowns. Big decisions. Or even just the general mess of life like I’ve been talking about the last few weeks. Can I add to this list, the distress caused by the spiritual battle that rages about us.

Our natural instinct as believers should be to call out to the Lord during these times.

If it isn’t, then hopefully this message today will be the reminder you need to shift your focus.

My main aim for this morning, is to think about what happens in our distress as we call out to God.

Because sometimes, in the moment, it can feel like not much. By the very fact that we feel distress, things are not going well, and I’m sure we can all attest to the fact that sometimes after we pray, things remain chaotic.

So what’s going on?

David’s song

Well, we’re drawing near to the end of the series on David that I’ve been doing over the last few months.

David is certainly no stranger to stressful situations.

Today, rather than looking at another specific situation, we’re going to look at a song that he has written. Actually, most of David’s songs, which we generally call Psalms, are recorded for us in the book known as Psalms, but the author of 2 Samuel has chosen to include one for us here at the end of 2 Samuel.

I suspect the author has chosen this one because it gives us a little insight into what is going on.

Now, as a song, it is poetry, and to be honest, for much of my life, I’ve had little appreciation for poetry. That’s actually changing in more recent years as I’ve realised that poetry can express things that a narrative or a letter just can’t do very well.

This morning I’m going to look at this quite expressive language, and I hope that as we do, you can start to understand the process that happens when we cry out to God in our distress.

Context

Now the context for this song is given in verse 1. And as you’ll see, it is very broad. It says that David sang this song to the Lord when the LORD had delivered him from all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. In other words, pretty much everything I’ve been talking about throughout this series.

Starting with his great victory over Goliath. Then that long running battle with King Saul which seemed to drag on forever. We almost forget the many battles he had with the surrounding nations (they almost seem to fade into the background). And more recently, we’ve looked at the long lasting saga with some of his sons.

David has a long history of situations that would have caused a large amount of distress. Each have their own context, and we’ve explored many of them along the way.

Regardless of the specifics, there was something that remained secure.

The Rock

And so we come to the opening stanza of the song, and it starts with a bang.

“The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge”

Sometimes we can use phrases like this, a bit like a footballer who pulls out all of the cliche’s in the post match interview. You know what I mean… “full credit to the boys… we dug in deep… we gave 100%...” It can somehow lose a bit of the meaning when we just regurgitate the same lines.

But this is not what David is doing here. We know he’s not because we’ve just seen him live it out.

When everything is going topsy turvy, one thing remains steady - God.

When it looked for all money that David had lost his kingdom to his son - it must have felt like it was game over. I dare say that David’s mental state of mind would have been all over the place.

But this is where the image of a rock becomes so important. The rock doesn’t shift. It is the stronghold.

As a rock, David was able to be grounded in something that doesn’t move during these times. It’s not a grounding that says that there won’t be any pain or trouble. Rather it’s a grounding that says that while the world around you changes, one thing does not.

When things shift

Now it’s worth pausing here a moment, because sometimes this might not feel true. Sometimes we feel God shifting us in one direction, only to be shunted back in the opposite direction. And we might ask - what is God doing to me? Is God really the Rock?

In these moments, we do need to recognise that our perspective is very limited. We often don’t see the full picture at the time. Actually, to be honest, sometimes we might never fully see what’s going on.

But I want to suggest that when we look back on a situation in hindsight, we can usually see that it wasn’t God that was being shifty. We were the ones shifting from one thing to the next. God was actually the one staying still.

Seeing God as the Rock

And so this is actually the first main point I want to make today. When we are in those stressful situations, fix your eyes on God.

I’m not saying things will suddenly stop being turbulent, but you’ll have something secure to cling to.

There is actually great comfort in this.

You are never alone in your distress. There is always hope, because you have a fortress. A deliverer. A stronghold. A Refuge.

Calling on God

Well, with this strong opening, David then takes us to those moments when he cries out.

In that poetic language, he describes his situation - it’s like waves of death swirling about him. The cords of the grave have coiled around him.

It’s worth remembering that these are real life and death situations he was feeling. David actually lived this. The words of this song are no mere theory.

And so in this distress he calls out.

God hears

But what I love about this song is that from the second half of verse 7, we then get a glimpse of God’s response. Actually, making full use of the poetry, we get a very graphic picture of what is happening with God.

It starts with God hearing from the temple. The temple represents the dwelling place of God.

The last line of verse 7 has the words we all want to hear: “my cry came to his ears”.

This is the most amazing thing - God listens to us!

God’s reaction

But it is God’s reaction that might come as a surprise.

The earth trembles.

Smoke rises from his nostrils, fire from his mouth - the image of a dragon comes to mind.

The heavens are parted, dark clouds under his feet.

You can almost imagine a cartoon depiction of this.

With the clouds parted, he mounts a cherubim. There’s thunder. There’s lightning.

He shoots arrows. Everything is exposed, even the valleys of the sea.

It’s quite an image really.

But what’s going on? What’s all this graphic imagery about?

Well, I’m going to suggest that it shows a God that cares about injustice.

It’s a correction we really need.

Too often we can picture God sitting somewhere up in the clouds who remains distant and only sometimes interested in what’s happening.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. When an injustice occurs - God cares. When his people are hurting - God cares. The messed up world that we live in is not the way it should be. Sometimes people will accuse God of making a world so messed up.

Again, nothing could be further from the truth. God did not make the world messed up. We did. God is actually is pulling us through the messed up world into something better.

The imagery is not meant to be taken literally, rather it is to provoke this image of a God that is ready to take action.

If you don’t see God making a difference, it’s not because God isn’t acting, it’s because your not seeing the difference that God is making right now.

The rescue

From verse 17, David describes the rescue in those poetic terms.

He reaches down and draws him out of the deep water.

But not only does he rescue him, in verse 20 he brings him to a spacious place.

This is the hope that we cling to in our distress.

I know at the time it can feel a long way away, but God is ready to take us out and place us in a much better place.

Righteousness

From verse 21, however, we get to a rather confusing part of this whole song.

You see, the song to this point has all been about the work of God. This idea will continue as we finish the song as well.

However, right here in the middle we have this whole section where David seems to be making the point that the reason God is doing this for David is because David is righteous and blameless.

Now we’re going to find both a general problem with this and a specific one.

The general problem is that we know that no one is righteous, not even one. So if God is acting according to righteousness, then surely no one is going to receive God’s help.

The specific problem is that it wasn’t that many chapters before this one that the idea of David being blameless is demonstrably wrong.

How can the man that slept with another man’s wife and then had her husband deliberately killed, that is to say, murdered… how can this man suggest that his hands are clean, that he is blameless before God, that he has kept himself from sin.

Do we just put this down to David being a politician who like the rest of them will always claim to be of the highest integrity while clearly they’re doing a lot of dodgy stuff?

Well, no, actually.

In fact, I’m going to suggest that what is happening in this middle part of the song is actually the key to understand the whole process of God working in our distress.

So let’s think about this now.

God’s righteousness

You see, the first thing we need to understand is that when David is talking about righteousness, he is not talking about his own.

He is well aware that he is a sinner. This comes out in quite a number of the Psalms that we have recorded from him.

His righteousness is actually the righteousness that God has bestowed upon him.

David has understood the way God works - it’s something that in the Old Testament is not always super clear, but when we get to the New Testament it is made very clear.

But David, who was about 1,000 years before Jesus, he recognised that God offers a forgiveness that can blot out all our transgressions. David just needed to accept that forgiveness.

For us, living after Christ, we have this tied to the work of Jesus Christ. He died and rose again. An act which means that you are clean.

You can say with David, I am blameless, my hands are clean.

This doesn’t minimise our sin. Our sin is still real. But God has transformed us into something we could never become in our own ability.

The key

But what does this have to do with understanding how God responds to us in our distress?

Well let me read from verses 26 to 28.

2 Samuel 22:26–28 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

‘To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the devious you show yourself shrewd. You save the humble, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low.

Faithfulness

You see, while God loves everyone, there’s a special kind of a rescue to the faithful. This doesn’t mean that as a believer you’ll necessarily enjoy more success than the unbeliever, at least not in the way that world measures success.

But for the faithful, we can see the rock. For the believer, we get that supernatural peace that can come in the midst of utter chaos.

But even more than that, as Christians, we have the surety that no matter what happens, we will always be with God. And this includes death. We don’t fear death, because to die is gain.

Blameless and pure

So we can see how important faithfulness to God is to the process. But he also talks about being blameless and pure

Now, in one regard, as I’ve described with David, we can talk about us being blameless and pure in terms of Christ righteousness on us. But we need to be careful not to dismiss our own role in this.

You see, I want to be clear. While we are not sinless - character still matters. God’s declaration of righteousness on our lives is not a license to live however we want.

It’s so important to keep the right balance here.

We can’t do it on our own, but in Christ’s strength, we can live lives that honour God, and when we do, God will honour us.

Now, I also don’t want this to sound that we just act well in order to gain God’s favour.

There is actually a better way to view this. That is, living God honouring lives is not a means to an end… Living God honouring lives is actually the end itself.

What do I mean by that? Well, think about it… what is the meaning of life? Surely from a Christian perspective, the chief purpose in life in to glorify God.

I think this can often get forgotten.

Let’s say for example that the cause of your distress is someone is harassing you.

This is indeed something that happened to King David on more than one occasion.

It’s easy to think - right, well let’s take them out (and that can take lots of different forms), and then we can glorify God.

God actually says, no, I want you to glorify me in being blameless towards that person. Love that person who is harassing you.

We cannot justify those sinful actions just because we think we are going to achieve some higher result.

Humility

So we need to be faithful. We need to be blameless and pure. And in verse 28 we need humility. We need humility because whatever happens has nothing to do with our any greatness that we inherently have.

Anything we have, is something that has been given us by God. And the only way we can recognise this is through humility.

God strengthens

In fact, this is essentially the theme of the remainder of the song.

It talks of a God who strengthens us. Again, with great poetic imagery, we get this picture of amazing abilities that God gives us.

We have him scaling a wall. Feet like a deer. Standing on the heights. Bending a bow of bronze.

It all belongs to God.

There is hope for you to come out of the distress that you will feel. You might look back and think how clever you were. But it is so important that you recognise that it was God that has given you that ability.

Conclusion

Well let’s bring this all back together now.

The idea I’ve been exploring is what happens when we cry out in distress to God.

The level of our distress is going to vary from time to time, but it is something that we’ll constantly be going through. Life’s full of downs, and when we’re in those valleys, we’re naturally going to be crying out to God.

So what happens?

Well, the first thing we looked at was God as our rock. We need this stability during turbulent times.

This rock then cares for justice. We can take comfort in the fact that God cares about our situation, and he has the power to act on it.

But in this process we find a partnership that God wants to have with us. He will honour our faithfulness. He will help us to remain blameless and pure in the face of our distress. This means acting with integrity at all times.

But to allow the process to work, we need humility. We need humility because we can’t do it in our own strength.

When I say this process is a partnership, it’s actually not a very even partnership. In fact God is doing all of the work. All God wants on our part of the partnership, is to accept that we need his help and call to him.

It’s a beautiful thing.

We will face distressing times. And it won’t be nice.

David faced these distressing times. But he had a rock.

He could say the words: “Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be my God, the Rock, my Saviour!”

There is hope because you too, have a rock.

Let me pray…