Psalm 42 & 43 | Where Is Your God?

Jerell Carper continues our Psalms series by looking at the honest tension of prayers of lament. Those who address God, describe their pain, cry out for help, and express hope enter into prayers of disequilibrium as we pray through our pain. When God seems distant, how do we respond? 

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

Series: Psalms

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Psalm forty-two. As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him? Day and night I have only tears for food, while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, Where is this God of yours? My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be. I walked among the crowds of worshippers, leading a great procession to the house of God, singing for joy and giving thanks amid the sound of great celebration. Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I'll put my hope in God. I will praise him again, my Savior and my God. Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember you even from distant Mount Hermon at the south at the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar. I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me. 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. Oh God, my rock, I cry. Why have you forgotten me? Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies? Their taunts break my bones, they scoff, where is this God of yours? Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I'll put my hope in God, I'll praise him again, my Savior and my God. Declare me innocent, O God. Defend me against these ungodly people. Rescue me from these unjust liars, for you are God, my only safe haven. Why have you tossed me aside? Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies? Send out your light and your truth, and let them guide me. Let them lead me to your holy mountain, to the place where you live. There I will go to the altar of God, to God, the source of all my joy. I will praise you with my heart, O God and my God. 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.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

We're looking at Psalm 42 and 43 tonight, which most people believe were originally one psalm and one prayer, so we're gonna read them together. On a crisp night in the fall of 2010, I stood on the sand of Oak Street Beach in downtown Chicago and within one of the darkest moments of my life. Just two years prior, I had stood on the same beach at night after an intense game of ultimate frisbee with my dorm floor on my first night of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I remember looking up at the city skyline, like we were probably swimming in Lake Michigan and just having this reflection of how awesome these next years of Bible college were going to be for me. I was excited to study ministry, learn the Bible more, and grow in my relationship with God as the newly graduated youth group all-star of my church youth group. But two years later, it was my senior year, and I found myself very disappointed in this God standing on the same beach. God had become distant, and despite my prayers, he seemed wildly uninterested in showing up. I found myself longing for God, but I was also disappointed in God. And I was disappointed in myself. And as I called for help, what I found in me is I wasn't so sure that God would answer. I wasn't confident. So my question for us today and for you is: have you ever been to Oak Street Beach? Not necessarily the actual beach in Chicago, but have you been to that place? Have you been to that spiritual and emotional space where you've longed for a God who seems like He's not there? And have maybe have you been disappointed in your own lack of faith? So I want you to picture yourself. Where is that moment for you? Where were you? What was happening in your life where you seem to doubt God's presence, but long for it, and maybe even doubt your own faith. Where was that for you? So tonight we're gonna look at Psalm 42 and 43 and learn how to pray through those moments and pray through that pain. So one of my favorite Old Testament scholars is a guy named Walter Brugeman. He kind of looks like that guy that plays chess with himself at the beginning of the Pixar movie. You know what I'm talking about. He has a book called Praying the Psalms, and he suggests that we always find ourselves in three different states, three different orientations. The first is being securely oriented, the second is being painfully disoriented, and then the third is being surprisingly reoriented. So the first is when we're securely oriented, things are okay. And in the book of Psalms, we have these psalms of praise to pray. We're in a state of equilibrium. But then things aren't always okay, and we find ourselves not okay. We find ourselves in a state of disequilibrium, and for that we have the psalms of lament. And then finally, sometimes things are okay again. God brings us out of that desert, and we are healed and restored, and there for those we have psalms of thanksgiving. It's a little bit of an oversimplification of the book of Psalms, but we have these psalms that kind of address these three states that we're in. And tonight we're gonna look at what how do we pray when we're in that state of disequilibrium? How do we pray these psalms of lament? Where do we go when we're in these painful seasons of disorientation? What's fascinating is that of the 150 Psalms that we have, about one-third are Psalms of Lament, corporate or individual. About one-third of the prayer book of the Bible are sad songs. Um I just think that's that's fascinating that somehow this God gave us a prayer book and is like, here's songs for when life is really difficult and when I feel distant. Here's prayers that you can pray when you're in those moments. So in a world where when we feel pain, we're tempted to either ignore it, stuff it away, or maybe advertise it. Maybe we don't do those long Facebook posts anymore where we tell the world about how sad we are, but maybe we still do, I don't know. Not called to ignore it or to advertise it, we're called to lament it. So let's look at verse one of Psalm 42. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while all the people say to me, all day long, where is your God? I remember these things as I pour out my soul, how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the mighty one, with shouts of joy and praise among the thr the festive throng. So we begin this psalm with this picture that I think we know so well. It's maybe one of the most famous images in the Psalms, this deer panting for water. It's this deep search for something that can quench his thirst. And what this author's soul feels like is divine absence. It's like, where can I go to find you, God? What's interesting is the psalmist says, rather than finding thirst, rather than quenching his thirst with these living streams of water, what is he drinking? His tears. 24-7, day and night, what I am, all that I am drinking is my tears. Um, we can feel kind of the weight of this psalm. He can't find God, but who does he find? He turns around and he sees his those nearby taunting him. Hey, where is this God that you say you believe in? Where is this God that you say is near you that gave you promises? Where is he? I wonder if that's even the psalmist's question as well. What's interesting is he remembers a time that this wasn't the case. Have you ever felt distant from God, but then remembered the times where you weren't? Like what happened to those moments where God felt really close? I remember when I used to feel close to God. Look at verse 5 then. The author switches and he starts talking to himself. I don't know, like a crazy person. But this is an interesting way to pray. It's like, why, my soul, are you downcast? Why are you downcast? Why are you so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God. I will yet praise him. Again, my Savior and my God. First, he addresses God, but then he starts kind of almost preaching to himself or wrestling inside. Why? Like, why are you so downcast? Why are you so disturbed? Put your hope in God. It starts preaching to himself. And what we'll find in this Psalm 42 and 43 is that there's three times that the author preaches to himself that he should put his hope in God, kind of in the beginning, in the middle, and the end. And what's interesting is that many lament psalms conclude with this an actual praise of God, but I praise God after all this pain. Psalm 42 and 43 is interesting because it shows this almost hoping that one day I will. It's like I can't praise God right now, but one day, one day I will. It's almost like a level, a level deeper of desperation. So I wonder, have you, I mean, have you been there in your life? Verse 6. My soul is downcast within me, therefore I will I will remember you from the land of Jordan, from the heights of Hermon, from Mount Mitsar. These are locations that are geographically far away from the temple in Jerusalem, but symbolically far away from God's presence and for his life. And he continues water imagery, deep calls to deep, in the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me. Remember, we're back in our Genesis uh series, we were looking at the chaos waters as a sign of disorder and um something to really be worried about, a symbol of death. And not just, he's not just looking for streams of water as a deer or drinking his tears. Now the picture is like standing underneath a waterfall and just getting pummeled by chaos water. Um, has anyone ever been to Salt Creek Falls off 58? Yeah, it's I think it's the second tallest in Oregon, but I don't know. There's probably something else. Depends how wide. Is it the second? Okay. Uh one time uh in my single days, I went down there and with some friends, and we just kind of waded in the water closer to the falls, and you just, it's a 262-foot waterfall, 242-foot waterfall. And I just remember being very close, like not dangerously close, but very close where I could just feel and hear just this the pounding of the waves. Just and I just in this psalm I thought of that and just imagined what does it feel like emotionally and spiritually when you are just under the pounding water and you can't surface, there's no break. In verse 8, day by day the Lord directs his Hesed love, his steadfast love. At night, his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. So day and night he's both drinking his tears, but also somehow day and night, God's love is near. We find this tension in the psalm that there's this kind of going back and forth between trusting in God and not, between feeling him and not, from feeling distant, but then his love and my tears and his joy. And so I think the psalm invites us into the tension of lament psalms that there's not always easy answers or nice Christian cliches for how we're experiencing that somehow we can experience both at the same time. God may seem close in some ways, but also extremely distant. And even in this song, there's this oscillation between these two tensions. Um does anyone know the rapper named NF? Kind of like, yeah, kind of like Eminem. I don't know, maybe not nearly like Eminem, but I don't know. He's white, white rapper. Um I was like listening to an interview, he's got a song called Happy that was like on the radio, and he's not with a Christian publisher, and he was talking about how he just felt like a lot of if you go with not a publisher, Christian recording studio, uh, if you go with a Christian recording studio, there's almost this pressure for your songs to have like to end on a good note. And he's like, that just doesn't really resonate with how my life experience has been, and so he decided not to go with a Christian music label, which is probably totally fine, it's probably better. Okay. We don't have easy answers. Verse 9, I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go on mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Now it gets like really concrete, my bones are suffering mortal agony, my foes taunt me. Again, they're saying to me all day long, where is this God? Where is your God that you hope in? And he goes back to talking to himself, why, my soul, are you downcast? Why are you so disturbed within me? And then the second time, put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. This is the third time something is happening all day or always. Um all day he is drinking his tears, all day God's steadfast love is with him, and all day his neighbors taunt him, saying, Where is your God? We transition into Psalm 43, which I think is just the continuation. Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. You are God, my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go on mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Kind of repeating these themes. Even though God is his stronghold, he feels rejected. I remember in some of those moments of the dark, the dark night of the soul, or a season of depression and anxiety, or spiritual desert that I found myself in for a few years around undergrad and grad school. I remember kind of arguing with God and thinking to this end, like you are my stronghold. And my argument was I'm not I'm not actually going to anyone else. Like, I'm not medicating with something, I am not ditching you, I'm not leaving Bible college or quitting the ministry. I'm out here, I am searching for you. Like you are my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? I think sometimes we can just medicate our pain, we can find a way to numb out or escape, and then I would think in my head, God's like, well, you're not pursuing me, so therefore, if you did, I would be here. But I was in this moment where I thought, I am pursuing you. Like I haven't sold out, I haven't gone out to these other means to try to heal what I was experiencing. I'm still searching for you, and yet it still feels like you're rejecting me. Send me your light and your faithful care. Let them lead me, let them bring me back to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell, back like back to the temple. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the lyre, oh God, my God. He's like, I will get back in the worship band. Like I will go back to singing and dancing. Like, I am ready. Why are you not taking me back there? All you have to do is just show up. Take me back to your presence, to your joy and your delight. I'm ready for it. I'm thirsting for it. Where are you? Why are you not showing up? Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Why are you so disturbed within me? The third time. Put your hope in God. For I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. This is Psalm 42 and 43. It's an interesting read. It's an interesting thing to be in the prayer book of the Bible. It's an interesting thing to think about God's people singing and praying corporately and repeating and having memorized. So, what can we take away from this? How do we pray through our pain when you find yourself on Oak Street Beach, when you find yourself in the desert, when God seems distant? What can we learn from Psalm 42 and 43? I have four suggestions, four movements for you in your prayer. The first is to address God. The lament psalms address God. Whether it's Psalm 13, how long, O Lord, Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Psalm 77, I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me. Or today, my soul pants for you, O God. I think when we're in moments of a dark night of the soul, we are tempted to address a number of other people or a number of other things. Maybe we look to podcasts or to friends, which are all fine, but may we not forget to actually address God. In our prayers of lament, we be we begin by saying the words you and meaning God. So we first go to God. Second thing we do is then we describe our pain. I think sometimes we don't sit in our pain long enough to actually describe it and write it down. Think about this author and the vivid imagery that's used, the really creative use of words, that somehow he sat in that pain long enough to articulate it in a creative poem. It takes time. I think we lean into prayer and fasting and journaling to kind of do this. My hope is that we would actually sit in our pain long enough to be able to write a psalm or a poem like this. And we don't like that, especially I think as Christians, we feel the pressure to be happy all the time sometimes. But lament requires actually sitting in that pain, and I wonder if if those seasons, kind of like Katie was saying, um, might be the place where you can connect with God in a way that you otherwise would not have as you describe your pain. Third, you cry out for relief. What is it that you want God to do? How do you want God to show up? Lament Psalms, name the resolution they're looking for. I think Jesus did a good job of this in the Gospels when people would say, Save me, it's like, all right, what do you want? It's like obviously walking or no leprosy, but Jesus makes us name it, and I think there's something to praying through our pain where we say, Dear God, um, this is what's going on. I need you to do this. And there's a particular structure to the lament psalms. And then finally, we express hope. And somehow, I think what Psalm 42 and 43 teaches us in most of the Lament Psalms is that both despair and hope can coexist in the same prayer, somehow in the same person. And it's not an easy answer, either or I don't think we escape fast or we heal fast, but there is some deep hope. And it's a discipline of faith that even though God feels distant, I am preaching to myself to put my hope in God, who I know is my stronghold. And part of why this proves our faith is that we wouldn't lament to God if we didn't believe He could actually do. Something about it. It's in those deep moments of pain when we crying out to God that it actually shows our faith, not our lack of faith. So, citizens, if you're in the desert, if you're on Oak Street Beach, address God, describe your pain, cry out for relief, and express hope. And then finally, I think we need to learn to lament not just individually but corporately. I wonder how often in your, many of us grew up in the church, we sang songs. How many of them were lament songs? How many times did you go to your church gathering and you sang a really sad song? Most pastors don't want to do that because we want you to leave feeling good about your experience. I remember a kid's song I learned growing up, which I've we've heard different versions of this, but it goes like this I'm inright, outright, upright, downright, happy all the time. Since Jesus came to me, I'm happy as can be. I'm inright, upright, outright, downright, happy all the time. Emily has a little bit of a different version, but the idea is when I was five, this was Jesus is here, so I'm happy all the time. And there was this moment of my Christian walk, I realized this is bad theology. And I love my church and the people that taught me so many great things. I'm not bashing that. It's just this is kind of the pop culture that God works all things together for good. So even though it stinks, just try to try to stop being emo for, you know, don't do that for too long. But I think the lament psalms have this robust vocabulary and psychology of sitting in our pain and in that space crying out to God and waiting for him to show up. And so I wonder, as citizens, what does it look like for us to create space on a Sunday morning for lament? Um, and in the same way that some of us show up in joy and we sing songs of praise that we expect our sad neighbor to also sing. That we would flip that, and that sometimes we sing sad songs and we expect our neighbor who is experiencing joy to enter into that space with us. That we're not just showing up to our church gathering as a bunch of little individuals, but as a collective unit, that when one person suffers, we all suffer. When one person is joyful, we're all joyful. And even if no one here is suffering, like we're hunky-dory church, like someone down the street is, or someone around the world is, and so we are part of the global body of Christ that includes a tremendous amount of pain suffering, people who are crying out for God to show up in real ways and not finding Him. And so our prayers are corporate prayers. They're not just about how I feel on a Sunday morning. We are disciplining ourselves to lament even if we don't feel like it, and to praise even if we don't feel like it. And so back to me from my experience on Oak Street Beach, I'm not sure that I've fully resolved all the tension that is in my spiritual walk connected to Psalm 42 and 43. I have a Bible that I had in that season, and I guarantee you there are salty tears and a whole lot of coloring on these pages as I wrestle through this psalm. Um, and it's something that why I want to preach to us and just honestly say I'm still working through what it looks like to pray through my pain. That there are times that I think, just as a confession, sometimes I do a lot of really good ministry as a way to keep God at a nice safe distance. Um and I personally do still struggle to be with God in long periods of time. Um, because sometimes I wonder if if I'm gonna find myself back at Oak Street Beach if I go there too much. And so, just as your leader, I'm confessing that this is hard, and I want to pave the way and being honest with that. But there was this guy, Jesus, that came along in the story, and he entered fully into human pain and suffering. He used a lament psalm, Psalm 22, to cry out to God when God seemed distant. And he experienced the ultimate rescue that is resurrection and new life that sets the tone for not just our individual lives, but the whole cosmos. And because we are in Christ, God's Spirit dwells with us, and maybe we may not be physically distant from the temple, but even still, I almost think that it makes it harder when God's presence isn't limited to the temple, but we are temples and God still feels distant, right? How are you still distant when you dwell in me? That's what it means to be a Christian. And so, citizens, this is a tension that, like the psalmists, we wrestle through. And so I invite us to be people who both individually and corporately learn how to lament as we bring our pain to God.