Introduction to the Lament Psalms
We will look at a good many of the Psalms. And in the evenings here, we’re trying to analyze them more and try to find out how to read and understand them. We’ve looked at the praise psalms. We’ve analyzed them and seen their structure and how they’re put together. And our attempt in that is to get behind the psalm into the mind of the psalmist and say, what is he trying to say here? And how do we follow his thought? What’s going on?
And I’ve tried to emphasize that there are—and this does not happen all the time—but there are standard forms to many of the psalms. The various genres of psalms have standard forms that the psalmist was following. He’s thinking of that. We saw that with the praise psalms, and tonight now we come to look at the lament psalms. If I had announced ahead of time that I would be teaching you how to complain this evening, I wonder how many of you think you needed any help with that. And if I had said more specifically how to complain biblically, I’m not sure how much interest there’d be in that either. But that’s the lament psalms. Lament psalms do exactly that. They lament. They complain and protest before the Lord concerning some suffering that they’re in. And we’ll look at those this evening.
Let’s begin with Psalm 5:
Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my groanings. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before me, for there is no truth in their mouth. Their inmost self is destruction. Their throat is an open grave. They flatter with their tongue. Make them bear their guilt, O God, and let them fall down by their own counsels. Because of the abundance of their transgressions, cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. But let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them ever sing for joy and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord, you cover him with favor as with a shield.
Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we love this book of the Psalms. It has been a refuge place for so many of your people throughout the centuries. We love to go to it when we are in joy and when we’re in sorrow. And tonight we hope to begin to learn how to approach you from the Psalms, learn how to approach you when we have our own complaints and we’re sad and we’re suffering in some way. We pray that you’ll teach us through it, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
General Description and Terminology
All right, I have your handout there. First of all, a general description and some of the terminology that’s used with regard to the Lament Psalms. These are called, as you see in the title of your page, Lament Psalms or Petition Lament. That’s actually more definitive. And the reason that’s there—they’re usually just referred to the short way, the Lament Psalms—the reason I put that there, the petition lament, is because one of the marks of a lament psalm, at the heart of the lament psalm, is a petition. He’s asking God to help, to save him, to deliver him, or whatever. So, petition lament psalms.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know which English word to use to describe exactly what’s going on in the psalm. Lament, or complain, complaint psalms. Some of them have more of a tone of just complaining. Sometimes the tone is more of a protest: “I don’t deserve this. This is wrong. I’m suffering and it’s not right. What’s happened to me is unjust.” It’s that kind of a protest. So he’ll say, “Vindicate me, O God.” So this is the genre we’re dealing with: lament psalms, complaint psalms, protest psalms, and then with the word petition somewhere in there. Because at the heart of them always is the ask and the request for help. Petitioning: “Save me, O God, hear my cry, deliver me.”
So here we have the psalmist in danger of some kind. It might be persecution, it might be a military crisis of some kind, some life-threatening circumstances. And we should note here—we won’t get to this for a couple of weeks yet—but one subset of the lament psalms is the imprecatory psalms. These are the psalms that call down God’s judgment on his enemies. So it’s a lament psalm; he’s complaining about his situation, but in the midst of his lament, his petition particularly is for God to bring judgment on those who are causing his suffering.
And then there’s another subset of the Lament Psalms, and that’s the Penitential Lament Psalms, most famous of which, of course, is Psalm 51, where here the psalmist is lamenting before God, but in this case, he’s lamenting his sin, and his petition is not for God to bring judgment, but for God to bring mercy on him, the sinner, who has come to God for mercy. So all of those are the kinds of things we’ll be looking at under this category of Lament Psalms. That’ll be the next couple of weeks. I will try to give some brief expositions along the way as we go.
The Identifying Mark
First of all, though, some of the characteristics of it. The identifying mark. Here’s how you can recognize a lament psalm right off the bat. Usually the first words are in the first line. Almost always in the first line you have a direct address to God. “O God!” “O Lord!” So you hear this cry. He’s lamenting, but he starts out with that. “O Shepherd of Israel!” You have some direct address to God. That’s usually your mark for a lament psalm. It usually signals it right off the bat.
So let’s look at some examples. In your outline, I have Psalm 3, verse 1: “O Lord, how many are my foes?” Psalm 4, another lament psalm: “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.” Psalm 5: “Give ear to my words, O Lord.” There’s the direct address to God. “Consider my groaning, give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.” So he’s addressing God specifically, and he calls out to him in the very first lines of the psalm.
Psalm 6, we have again another lament psalm: “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.” Psalm 7: “O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge.” Psalm 10: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?” When you get the whole line, you can see the lament, like here in Psalm 10: “Why are you so distant from me? Why aren’t you helping more?” But there’s the direct address, “O Lord.” That signals right away that we’re dealing with a lament psalm.
Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?” Psalm 22, the very famous one that was on the lips of Jesus on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Another lament psalm. Psalm 80: “Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock.” So here we have, in this genre of psalms, we have the psalmist who’s in some extremity of some kind and he turns to God for help and he cries out to him. In fact, that word “cry out” is typical of these psalms as well.
Now beyond that, that’s your first mark of a lament psalm. By the way, keep in mind as we go through these—we won’t get to this this evening—but keep in mind that we have in these lament psalms models for us how to pray when we want to complain to God. On one hand, we might hear someone say that it would be wrong ever to complain to God. It would be a lack of faith. And there’s some reason to that. You can understand why someone would reason and conclude that way. But on the other hand, you have the Psalter, which this is one of the major, the dominant genres of the Psalms. Something like 73 of the Psalms are Lament Psalms. So there’s got to be a biblical way to do it. Inspired writers did it. David did it all the time in his suffering. So watch in here; we’ll learn something of how to pray in our extremities as well.
Standard Components of a Lament Psalm
Now there’s also not just the identifying mark—I give you that first—but it’s really part of the standard components of a Lament Psalm. And I have those for you in your handout. I’ll just go over these briefly here tonight, and then we’ll look at some samples for it. We’ll look at more next time.
So first of all, we have the direct address. Here the psalmist turns to God in his suffering. It’s almost always among the very first words of the psalm. It’s usually abrupt. Often with the direct address, there’s an initial plea for help, an initial petition. So that’s the first component of a lament psalm. Notice you have several of them there: the direct address, then the lament or complaint, then an expression of confidence, then a petition, and then a concluding praise or conclusion of some kind.
So first, the direct address that we’ve just looked at. Second then, you have the lament itself, or the complaint. And this is marked by language like, “How long, O Lord? Why do you leave me alone? Will you forsake me forever? Why do you stand far away?” So here the psalmist is describing his lamentable situation, and he brings it to God, tells God about his suffering, complains that God seems to be absent, that no help seems to be coming, that he needs this help for now his protection and it’s not there. “I’ve waited on you; you haven’t shown up. You haven’t helped. My enemy is strong; there’s too many of them. I can’t handle this. I’m at death’s door. Where are you?” That’s the tone of the lament section of the lament psalms.
But one of the very important components of a lament psalm—you’ve got the direct address, the lament or the complaint or the protest—one of the very important elements also is this next one we have in your outline, and that is the expression of confidence. So he’s complaining, and he may even say, “Why have you forsaken me?” which taken by itself might seem to be accusing God. But a standard component in these lament psalms is this expression of confidence in God. So: “You are the God in whom I take refuge. You are my shield. You’re my rock, my fortress.” There’s this expression of confidence in God. So it’ll assert confidence that God is my God; it will assert trust in God as the one who will help, who has always helped.
Often in this section there’ll be an appeal to God’s attributes. Standard in the Psalms is an appeal to God’s faithfulness, his steadfast love—those two are big in the Psalms—but others include his sovereignty, his rule, his rulership overall. He’ll appeal to something about God that makes him confident that God will yet help him in his suffering. He’ll refer to God’s covenant relationship with him: “You’ve made me yours.” It’ll sometimes refer to God’s past actions: “You’ve helped me before, you’ve brought me out, and yet here I am again, where are you now?” But it’ll appeal to God’s past actions, his attributes, in some way expressing confidence that God will help. And so you find language here like “God is my help,” “God is my refuge,” “God is my shield,” “God is my hope,” referring to God’s attributes like His justice, His loving-kindness, His mercy, things like that.
And actually, there’s one important aspect of these psalms, and it happens many times in the psalms, and it’s what’s called some historic psalms, historical psalms, where he’ll recount history. And often those historical psalms are part of a lament psalm, where they’re appealing back: “You brought us out of Egypt, you brought us out of slavery, you brought us across the Red Sea, you helped us defeat all our enemies, you brought us into the land, you defeated all of them, you’ve done all of that for us in the past,” and all of that is appealed to now as a ground that God will help again in this particular circumstance.
So we have the direct address, we have the lament or the complaint, expression of confidence, and then the heart of the psalm will be the petition, asking God for help. “Save me, God. Save me. Save me from all my pursuers and from my enemies.” So here, really, the heart of the psalm, the psalmist is seeking to move God to act on his behalf and bring deliverance from the circumstance he’s complaining about. Often it’s included in the initial cry of the psalm, crying out to God, and it’ll express this petition—”Help me, O God, deliver me, O God”—up in the initial words of the psalm, this sometimes will be. And then often with this, there’ll again be a rationale, and again, he’ll refer to God’s attributes, his past actions: “Vindicate me, O Lord, I don’t deserve this, your name is at stake.” And often the petition and the expression of confidence are combined together.
And then the last element or component of the lament psalm is the conclusion. And this can take a variety of shapes actually, but typically there’s a vow to praise: “I will praise you when you deliver me,” or “so that I may praise you.” Or sometimes the conclusion is just a burst of praise. He begins to praise already as though the deliverance has already come. So he’ll either express what the psalmist will do when the deliverance comes, or he goes ahead and gives the praise that he will give then. Now the concluding section can take various kinds of shapes, but those are typical. A praise or a vow to praise.
Now these are the standard components of a lament psalm. You recognize it initially with the direct address to God, but then you see it with the complaint and these other elements. Now, I’ve given you these elements, but be careful. Don’t think that the psalmists are enslaved to these forms. They’re not. They are standard forms that evidently were in use in their day and they are using them. But they don’t feel enslaved to it, and so there can be varieties. Sometimes one might be missing or the other. Sometimes the order is changed in different ways. But these are the standard components that you’ll find in the Lament Psalms.
Samples of the Standard Components
And just to show you that I’m not making it up, let’s look at a bunch of samples here. Psalm 5 that we’ve already read. First of all, we have the direct address with an introductory petition: “Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my groanings. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God.” Then we have the, in verse four, the confidence with lament. Here we have them together, and it’s often marked by this conjunction “for,” so he’s crying to you, O God, “for you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies.”
In verse 7 we start with a petition, and here with a confidence in salvation that God will give. “But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love”—notice that “but I,” you often see that as a turning point in the psalm—”But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before me.” So he’s complained, he’s lamented his situation, but now he vows with a confidence, turning to God, “I will continue to worship you.” Then we have Petition, verse 9, with confidence in the coming judgment that God will give. “There’s no truth in their mouth.” And then in verse 10, “Make them bear their guilt, O God.” And then you have a concluding section with praise: “Let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them ever sing for joy,” and so on.
Psalm 6, we have another example. Notice the first words, the direct address, “O Lord.” And then you have the petition with a lament. And here we have seven petitions: “Rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord, how long? Turn, O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for your sake, sake of your steadfast love, for in death there’s no remembrance of you; in Sheol, who will give you praise?” So we’ve had the direct address. Then he makes his lament with petition, his petition with lament. And then verses six and seven express the lament more pointedly: “I’m weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows weak because of all my foes.”
But then an expression of confidence, verse eight, with some implicit praise: “Depart from me all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.” So here he’s lamenting and he’s still in the lamentable situation, but he concludes the psalm with an expression of praise as though God has already given it, in full confidence that God will bring the deliverance that he asks for. So again, you see the standard components.
Analysis of Psalm 42 and 43
Now we have the Lord’s table this evening, so I’m going to skip Psalm 13 here. I have it on your handout there. You can see that the elements, the components of a lament Psalm are there. Let’s spend the rest of our time in Psalm 42 and 43. Let’s read both of these together. I’ll explain why in a moment. We have the superscript, “A Maskil of the sons of Korah.” That will become important for us in a minute. But then notice he begins with a direct address and a lament.
As a deer pants for the flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. (There’s the direct address.) My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. (And then the confidence.) Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (And then more lament.) My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. (And then praise or confidence.) By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. (And then, lament again.) Verse 9, I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? (But now another expression of confidence.) Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
Now Psalm 43, we come to the petition:
Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people from the deceitful and unjust man. Deliver me, for you are the God in whom I take refuge. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. (And then a vow to praise.) Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God. (And he ends again with the repeated expression of confidence.) Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
Now it appears that Psalm 42 and 43 were originally one psalm. They were probably divided at some point for liturgical use. But they appear to be one for several reasons. One, notice there’s no superscript here over Psalm 43. And that we have the repeated refrain, “Why are you cast down, O my soul,” in both of the psalms together. And together, these two psalms comprise the common components of a lament psalm. So they seem to have originally been one, probably separated in ancient times for liturgical purposes. The repeated refrain, “Why are you cast down, O my soul,” probably marks off what would be the three stanzas of the one psalm. So verses one to five, you have stanza one. And then you have the expression of confidence. A lament and then a confidence: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” And then verses 6 to 11, you have the next stanza ending with the refrain, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God.” And then Psalm 43 verses 1 to 5 is the third stanza. You have the petition, a vow to praise, and again the repeated refrain with confidence.
All right, let’s look through the psalm quickly. The opening verses of Psalm 42 may seem like a mere expression of devotion. “I long for God. He’s the object of my heart.” That kind of thing. And that certainly is there. “As the deer pants for the flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” This seems like most of it, anyway. Most of it seems like a mere expression of devotion to God. And that, of course, is where we have our contemporary chorus that we’ve sung now—I guess not real contemporary anymore; it’s been around for a while. “As the deer pants for the waters.” It’s a great song. But when you read the first two verses in total, and then Psalms 42 and 43 together in whole, you find that there’s more going on here than just an expression of devotion.
Verse one, you have the opening direct address. “O God”—this marks it as a lament petition psalm. Verse two, we have the essence of his lament. In the essence of his lament, verse one, “my soul pants for you.” Why? Verse two, because he can’t stand and appear before God. So here we have the psalmist at some distance from the temple, and he’s not able to be there to praise God as he would like, and he’s unable then to meet with God in the temple. “When shall I come and appear before God?” And then verse three, that while he’s being mocked, presumably for his continued faith, “my tears have been my food night and day while they say to me all day long, where is your God?” Verse four: “These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.”
So what’s going on here? Well, notice the superscript again. This is a Maskil of the sons of Korah. So this is a Korahite psalm. This is actually the first of a group of those. Psalm 42 to 49 are psalms of Korah. You have three more in the Psalter: Psalm 84, 85, and 87 are psalms of Korah as well. But verse four, notice that we’ve read, it says he would lead them in procession. So this is probably a Korahite priest who would lead the people of God in procession at the temple for worship. And now evidently he’s barred from doing that. He can’t attend the festivals. And so the setting here is evidently the apostate northern kingdom. And here we have this priest writing this lament psalm that he can’t worship God in his presence at the temple as he once did. He can’t lead the people in procession as he did before. And that is why his soul is cast down. Verse 42:5, 6, and 11, then 43 verse 5 as well.
Verse six of Psalm 42—this is a severe trial for him. He’s banished to an area at the source of the Jordan River. “My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Mizar.” Now remember I told you at the beginning, one of the marks of poetry—not just Hebrew poetry, but English poetry most all, I think—is that it’s terse, it’s brief, it doesn’t give you a lot. One of the marks of poetry is there’s a lot of white space on the page. And there’s a lot of white space on the page in the Psalms. It’s poetry. And what happens is the psalmist is saying a lot, but he’s crunched it down into just a few lines. And so you can’t read the Psalms like you read a narrative. A narrative you read through quick and get to the end and you see the point of what’s going on more directly. The Psalms are crunched. And you’ve got to take your time, and you think, and once you see all of these details, and you’ve considered this—okay, I see what’s going on. He’s a priest. He’s barred from the temple. The people are in mockery. This is an apostate condition, and he’s not allowed to be there. His soul is there, his heart is there, but he’s not allowed to. And now he’s at Jordan, and Hermon, and Mount Mizar. This is the source of the Jordan River.
Verse 7: there are waterfalls there at that place, and they come to symbolize his continued affliction. So: “Deep calls to deep. At the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.” So he’s banished. He’s out where he doesn’t want to be, away from the temple. He’s at the headwaters of the Jordan River, and he sees these waterfalls. I don’t know how big they are, but he sees these waterfalls and these breakers coming over. And he’s thinking, “That’s me in there!” All the suffering—it just keeps coming and keeps coming, and he’s using the symbolism of what he’s seeing as he writes the psalm.
In verse 9, verses 9 and 10, it seems now to the psalmist, and to his mockers, that God has abandoned him. “I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me all the day long, where is your God?” So not only has he been banished, he’s been banished for his faith. He’s being mocked by it. And the mockers seem to have the upper hand. They seem to have the evidence. “If your God is who he says he is, where is he?” So he’s estranged from his own countrymen, and it seems that he’s estranged from God as well.
So we have the psalm—I think it’s been called this before—the psalm of a depressed saint. Well, there’s his lament and his situation. But, and I mentioned this earlier, this is important to keep in mind, the note of confidence in God remains in the psalm. And in fact, it dominates. And this is a standard component of the Lament Psalms, an expression of confidence that God will help. So verse 5, Psalm 42 verse 5: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.” So here the psalmist is talking to himself, and he’s giving himself a self-exhortation, and he’s encouraging himself to think better. “Don’t dwell on all of these negative points so much that you lose sight of truth. You have great truths about God that have been revealed. Hang on to those.”
And that’s the point here. In fact, it’s a very important practical lesson from the Lament Psalms, particularly this one. He talks to himself. He exhorts himself. “Look, you know better. Get a hold of your emotions. Don’t judge God by your circumstances. Judge your circumstances by what you know about God.” That’s the essence of what’s happening here. So we have the refrain, 42:11: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Again in 43, verse five: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” So he keeps coming back with this refrain. With all of his lamenting and his complaining, he keeps coming back, reminding himself of revealed truth about God, expressing his confidence and taking encouragement from it.
Now, if Psalm 42 and 43 are, in fact, one psalm, then the center verse of this psalm is 42:8: “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” Now this is interesting. Remember we’re talking here about how he’s expressing his confidence. And he says, “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love.” That’s an interesting expression. God’s steadfast love is one of his attributes. How do you command steadfast love? What’s the sense of this? I think what he’s saying here is that by day God sends assurances of his steadfast love. God renews my heart, he refreshes me with reminders of his covenant love for me. And so he commands his steadfast love, or he commands his steadfast love to go forth and to encourage the psalmist. God sends assurances, is the sense of it, I think. In response to which, then, the psalmist can say, “At night, his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” So in response to God sending these assurances to him, he can respond with confidence and sing at night and pray with confidence.
Now, this God-given confidence that he has, in turn, Psalm 43, now verse 1, informs his petition. “Vindicate me, O God.” Here’s where he makes his plea to God, his petition. “Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man. Deliver me, for you are the God in whom I take refuge. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.” So he’s pleading to God. Here’s his petition. “God, right this wrong. Make it right. Fix this situation, and I trust you to do it.”
And then he concludes with a vow to praise, an expression of confidence. Verse four: “Then I will go to the altar of God and to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O my God.” God will hear me, I’ll get back to the temple, and I’ll be able to worship him again. And then the final conclusion, of course, is the refrain again, an expression of confidence: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted or in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him.”
Practical Lessons from the Laments
All right, then we have the psalmist here with this psalm reflecting what was too often in Israel’s history—a low point in their history. Perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, this is the northern kingdom where he’s been banished. We don’t know for certain, but in some situation like that, this is a low point in Israel’s history where the priest who would lead the people in faithful worship of God has himself been banished and he’s in fact mocked for his faith and for his faithfulness.
Now you read a psalm like that and you think, you want to say, “Okay, what does that mean to me? How does this meet me where I am?” And in a psalm like this, it pretty quickly becomes clear. We don’t live in ancient Israel. We’re not a priest leading the people of God in procession at the temple or anything like that. But we do live in the world and we have learned that the world and the church are not the same thing. And more and more in our society, we find ourselves pretty much where we find this priest. On the outs, banished, we don’t accept the mark of the beast, we’re laughed out of court. We’re told we can’t do business here because we don’t conform. We’re not woke enough yet. We don’t acknowledge the rights of the gays or trans or whatever the issue happens to be of the day.
For many years in the West—I’ve said this to you several times before—many years in the West we’ve lived in something of a historical bubble where Christianity has had the upper hand. And all over our culture, the culture that most of us grew up in, Christianity enjoyed the moral superiority. The world would be the world, and the world would do its thing just as much as they do now, but they recognized that Christians had the moral standards. They recognized that they were the sinners. And they may mock at the sin, but they recognize that that was the sin. But our culture has turned on its head where that’s all been reversed and we’re much more now like it was in the days of the early church in a very pluralistic culture where Christianity is something to be mocked and ridiculed. And if you abide by those standards, well, you just don’t fit in the world.
And like this Korahite priest, we might feel mocked, excluded from the society around us, shunned, destroyed. The New Testament gives us plenty of verses to warn us about this, of a tribulation marking this entire age, a final outbreak of evil at the end. All those who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, and throughout history that’s been the norm. We feel worse about it today because it’s been reversed from something we’ve enjoyed that was an anomaly in history for Christians. But all of that can leave us, like this psalmist, with some sense of abandonment. And we might then learn to pray with the psalmist, Psalm 43 verse 1. And I think this is something we ought to learn to pray: “Vindicate me, O God. Defend my cause against an ungodly people. From the deceitful and unjust man, deliver me.” What’s the hymn line? “Jesus who died shall be satisfied.” We have to pray like that. A better day is coming. Christ will vindicate his own people. Those who persecute and trouble his people will themselves be troubled when he returns. He will establish his kingdom. He will reign. He will rule. Righteousness will prevail.
We have to learn to pray like that, and we ought to learn with the psalmist here to talk to ourselves. This is an important practical lesson from Psalm 42 and 43. Refresh our hearts in the love of God. Don’t get so caught up with the suffering that you judge God by it. Remind yourself of revealed truth about God. Judge our circumstances by what you know. Reason with ourselves as we have here in this refrain: “Why are you cast out? Why are you in turmoil? Hope in God. We will praise him again.” Well, there’s a lot to learn from the laments, and we’ll do more of that in the coming weeks. Learning how to pray, we’ll find that the laments are put on the lips of Jesus in the New Testament and how that applies to him. But one of the very practical lessons is learning ourselves how to pray when we are suffering.
All right, let’s bow for prayer.