“THE CURSE OF CARELESS WORSHIP”
Malachi 1:6-14

In our first two messages on the book of Malachi we focused on the greatness of God’s electing love (1:1-5) and on the honor of God’s majestic fatherhood (1:6-14). This morning we focus again on 1:6-14, and particularly on the curse of careless worship.

You recall that the priests were despising the name of God by the way they handled the sacrifices in the temple. Notice a few examples.

Verse 8: “When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that no evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that no evil?”

Verses 13-14: “What a weariness this is, you say, and you sniff at me, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand says the Lord? Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished.”

The priests are offering stolen animals and animals that are lame and sick; and the Lord says this is unacceptable (v. 13). It is in fact a curse according to verse 14. “Cursed be the cheat who . . . sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished!” So you can see clearly why it is that this morning we must deal with the curse of careless worship.

In the time we have let’s ponder the

origin of careless worship,
the essence of careless worship and
the opposite of careless worship.
The origin of careless worship.

Malachi leaves us in no doubt about the origin of careless worship. It is the failure to see and feel the greatness of God. He makes this clear in at least two ways.

First, by focusing our attention on the greatness of his sovereign love and the greatness of his majestic fatherhood.

You recall that the very first thing God says in this book in verse 2 is, “I have loved you, says the Lord.” They respond in their careless offhanded way, “How hast thou loved us?” And what does God say? He does not say, “I forgave you. I cared for you. I’ve been patient with you. I’ve provided for you.” That’s true.

But what does God call attention to for this careless people? He speaks these ominous words, “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? says the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau.” And we saw a few weeks ago what that meant: it meant that God’s love for Israel (=Jacob) is an electing love. God chose Jacob not Esau — Israel not Edom. And his electing love is free and unconditional: “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” In other words, “Didn’t Esau have as much natural claim on my love as Jacob did? Yet I chose you.”

In other words in dealing with the problem of careless worship God unfolds the nature of his love not first as something warm and gentle and kind and tender, but as something awesome and strange and fearful in its electing freedom. There is in God’s love a great and awesome sovereignty. And that’s what God draws attention to first.

Then he does the same thing with his fatherhood, as we saw last week, in verse 6. “If I am a father where is my honor?” God could again draw attention to the gentle and tender dimensions of his fatherhood, but he does here just what he did in the case of his love: he focuses attention on the majesty of his fatherhood, and asks not, “Where is your affection?” But, “Where is my honor?”

That is the first way that God shows the origin of careless worship. It comes from the failure to feel the greatness of God’s sovereign love and the greatness of his majestic fatherhood.

It is greatness in particular that is crucial when worship is at stake. You might have a horse like Flika, or Fury or Black Beauty or a dog like Rin Tin Tin or Lassie or Benji that saves your life a hundred times. You might have a deep affection for the animal and weep when it dies. But you are never tempted to bow down and worship it. The same is true of a human friend. The closest bond of friendship and love and unity might develop, but you never think of worshipping your friend. Why? Because one indispensable element in worship is GREATNESS, majesty, grandeur. So when careless worship is the issue God focuses attention not first on the gentleness of his love or the tenderness of his fatherhood, but on the sovereign freedom of his love and the majesty of his fatherhood.

The second way God shows the origin of careless worship is by the logic of verses 11 and 14. Each of these verses is given as the reason God rejects careless worship.

Notice how verse 11 is connected to verse 10: “I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. FOR from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations!” In other words, the reason careless worship is so reprehensible is because it fails to recognize the greatness of God.

Exactly the same logic turns up in the connection between verses 13 and 14: “Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished; FOR I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name is feared among the nations.” In other words, careless worship is unacceptable because it utterly fails to come to terms with God’s greatness.

So the origin of careless worship is a failure to see and feel the greatness of God.

But how does this cause careless worship? Malachi’s answer: It makes a person bored with God and excited about the world. If you don’t see the greatness of God then all the things that money can buy become very exciting. If you can’t see the sun you will be impressed with a street light. If you’ve never felt thunder and lightning you’ll be impressed with fire works. And if you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God you’ll fall in love with a world of shadows and short-lived pleasures.

I get this from verse 13: “What a weariness this is, you say, and you sniff at it, says the Lord of Hosts.” They are bored with God. Their basic attitude toward worship: “What a weariness this is!” And when you become so blind that the maker of galaxies and ruler of nations and knower of all mysteries and lover of our souls becomes boring, then only one thing is left — the love of the world. For the heart is always restless. It must have its treasure: if not in heaven, then on the earth.

And so when it is time to bring sheep from the flock to sacrifice, what do you bring? You bring the sheep with disease and broken legs. Or you steal a sheep to bring. Why? It’s obvious. The good sheep sell better and you love money more than God.

So there it is: the origin of careless worship is a failure to see and feel the greatness of God. And so God becomes boring and the world becomes exciting, and worship . . . well, there may be some social usefulness in keeping up a front of religion, but O how the heart beats fast for the world.
Now we turn to the question: what is the essence of careless worship?

The essence of careless worship is worthless religious activity. Or to be more precise: it’s religious activity that illustrates how little a person values God. That is the sense of verse 10: “Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire upon my altar in vain!”

There is a little Hebrew word behind that phrase “in vain” that carries a lot of freight. The word is hinam. It is used for example in 2 Samuel 24:24 in a way very similar to this verse, but the translation is much fuller. David was trying to avert a plague. To do so he needed a place to build and altar to offer sacrifices to the Lord. The threshing floor of Araunah was in the right place and Araunah offers the threshing floor and animals to David for nothing.

But David responds, “No, but I will buy it of you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God hinam — which cost me nothing.”

In other words, I value God so much — the sovereign freedom of his love and the majesty of his fatherhood are so satisfying to my soul — that I cannot bring myself to worship in away that looks as if I love money more than I love him. It must cost me something. It must say that he and not the world is my treasure.

So the essence of careless worship is empty religious activity: it doesn’t express the worth of God. In fact it expresses that our treasure is on the earth, and that what we really love is the world.

Finally, we ask, what is the opposite of careless worship?

And this raises the whole question of excellence in worship. For surely one good answer to the question is that excellence is the opposite of carelessness in worship. But what is excellence? I don’t think it’s helpful to talk about excellence in the abstract. First you have to define what the nature of true worship is, and then define excellence in worship as those thoughts and attitudes and words and feelings and forms which most successfully let the true worship happen.

And what is the nature of true worship? I would put it like this: the nature of true worship is worship that does two things:

it expresses the feeling of God’s value and greatness;
and it seeks to sustain in the congregation that same spiritual sense of God’s immense worth and beauty.
Or to put it another way, true worship

comes from a heart where God is treasured above all human property and praise,
and it aims to inspire the same God-centered passion in the hearts of the congregation.
What then is excellence in worship? What is excellence in the music of worship and the architecture of worship? What is excellent dress for worship and art and posture and prayer and preaching? We could talk for hours.

But let me be more general as we close. Let me describe three dead end streets of excellence which are not really excellence, and then one street that I think will guide us aright.

First the dead end street of cool professionalism.

It’s a dead end because it defines excellence mainly in terms of technique and forgets that performances that do not express the feeling of God’s worth and don’t aim at to inspire a God-centered passion are not worship at all, no matter how technically perfect.

Second, the dead end street of warm emotionalism.

This is a dead end street because it focuses not on the feelings, short circuits the understanding and therefore employs manipulative means of stirring up natural enthusiasm. It neglects the centrality of God and the necessity of extensive teaching to know him in his Biblical fullness.

Third, the dead end street of laid back spirituality.

This is not quite a dead end street, because there is genuine spiritual feeling for the worth of God. But there is a lingering carelessness that hinders the intensity of a God-centered focus. When you go down this street, there are recurrent distractions because of individualistic indifference and inattention to the spirit of the moment and because of distracting mistakes and shortcomings in the worship forms.

The street that has the greatest promise for reaching true worship is the street of conscientious spirituality. I don’t have in mind here any particular form of worship. What I have in mind is worship that really comes from a feeling of the greatness of God and that seeks humbly to express and inspire that same intensity for God without the distractions of errors or artificiality or inattention or inappropriateness or ostentatiousness.

May the Lord teach us how to worship at Bethlehem. May the Lord open our eyes to his greatness. And may he forbid that we offer him in the pew or in the pulpit or in the choir loft or at the instruments the leftovers of our lives.

Copyright ©1987, 1997 John Piper
Used by permission.
Piper Notes

Technorati Tags: CARELESS WORSHIP, Curse, John Piper, Malachi

“THE CURSE OF PRIESTLY FAILURE”
Malachi 2:1-9

“And now this admonition is for you, O priests. If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name,” says the LORD Almighty, “I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honor me. “Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the LORD Almighty. “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin. “For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction — because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the LORD Almighty. “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.” (NIV)

Last week we looked at the curse of careless worship. And Malachi drove his word against the priests in the temple. Verse 6: “If I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name.”

But the sense you get as you read last week’s text is that not just the priests but the people too were being careless in worship. For example, in 1:14 the Lord says,“Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished.” This is not just a priestly problem. All over Israel people loved profit, and so brought the worthless leftovers of their business to God.

In today’s text Malachi focuses directly on the priests. Verse 1: “And now, O priests, this command is for you.“

Before we get into the text let’s ask what relevance this has for us. Who are the priests today? Or are there any? The New Testament never uses the term priest to describe a pastor or elder in the church. There is no official priesthood in the New Testament church. The reason for this is very clear: Jesus Christ himself has become a permanent priest for us and the Old Testament priesthood is now obsolete. Hebrews 7:23-25,

The priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues for ever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

Christ is now the one and only priest between us and God. The reason for this is that his sacrifice was final and his life is indestructible (7:16).

When Christ appeared as a high priest . . . he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11-12)

So the Old Testament priesthood is replaced once and for all by the priestly ministry of Jesus — the offering of himself as the final sacrifice for sin, and the interceding for us today in heaven. There is no official priesthood in the New Testament church.

Therefore wherever you find today an emphasis on the priesthood of the clergy, there you also find minimizing of the once-for-allness of the sacrifice of Christ. For example, in the Roman Catholic church the official priesthood is extremely important because the mass is a real sacrifice. The bread and cup are really transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ and are offered up to God for the forgiveness of sins. This repeated sacrifice in the church necessitated an official priesthood to administer the sacrifices just like the Old Testament had an official priesthood to offer the animal sacrifices.

But both the mass and the clerical priesthood minimize and distort the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. The truth is lost or minimized that there are no more sacrifices for sin; the death of Christ once for all is sufficient to forgive all who believe; and that’s why there is no more official priesthood in the New Testament; the priestly offering of sacrifices is done. Christ ended it.

Instead, Peter calls the whole church a “holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5) and a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9); and John says that Christ made the whole church “a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Revelation 1:6). This means that Christ has opened the way for all of us to come directly to God through him. We do not need any human mediator. We can walk with Christ — our high priest — right into the Holiest Place where God dwells and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

So there is no official priesthood in the New Testament church. No church leaders are called priests because of their office in the church. But this raises the question: Were there other duties that priests had in the Old Testament besides offering sacrifices for the sake of the people — duties that may indeed be continued in the New Testament?

The answer is a clear yes. Notice Malachi 2:7, “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.”

In other words the priests were teachers. This part of their ministry is continued in the church of the New Testament. Ephesians 4:11 says that Christ gave to the church some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. 1 Timothy says that there are to be overseers who are able in teaching (3:2), and that some elders in the church are to labor in preaching and teaching (5:17; cf. Titus 1:9).

So this part of the priests’ duties in Israel is continued in the elders of the New Testament church — they are responsible to teach and guide the church. But they are never called “priests”, because that would imply too much likeness to the Old Testament office. Pastors do not offer sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins — not in the mass or any other way. We do not offer people Jesus Christ in the mass, we point people to the finished, all-sufficient work of the cross and directly to the living, interceding Jesus Christ, by the Word of God. We are teachers and preachers above all else.

So my conclusion is that Malachi 2:1-9 is very relevant for us today because the priestly failure that Malachi talks about has to do especially with their duties as teachers and moral examples for the people. The failure he warns against would be just as much failure today!

But now the question rises: Why should you (who are not pastors) be interested in two messages on the failures and successes of the pastoral ministry. There are at least four reasons.

1. I will die someday, and this congregation will have to call another preaching pastor. Most churches are very unprepared to do this because they have not been taught the Biblical vision of the pastoral ministry.
2. You should be praying daily for the pastoral leadership of the church. But you can’t pray with confidence and power if you don’t know what the Bible teaches about the pitfalls and purposes of the pastoral ministry.
3. You should hold your pastors accountable to fulfill the Biblical vision of pastoral ministry. This is not inconsistent with a submissive spirit toward the leadership of the church which Hebrews 13:17 commands. It means that the church and not the clergy is the final court of appeal in matters of order and discipline (Matthew 18:17; 1 Corinthians 5:4). But you can’t hold leadership accountable to do their duty if you do not know the Biblical teaching of what that duty is.
4. It is a great encouragement to a pastor when the people respond to his ministry with understanding — when there is a deeply shared common vision of why he does what he does. But that kind of deep, joyful responsiveness is simply not possible except where the people learn what the Biblical vision of the pastoral calling is.

So I hope we have laid a foundation now for this week’s and next week’s messages — that is, a foundation for why this text about Old Testament priests is relevant for pastors today and why even non-pastors should care about what it teaches.

Of course I have left out what might be the most obvious reason why a text dealing with pastoral failure is relevant today, namely, that there is so much of it, especially sexual failure.

I was reading this week an essay by Erroll Hulse, a Baptist pastor in Liverpool, England in which he said,

It is a morbid and depressing fact that when it comes to adultery, there are too many casualties among pastors. Ministers are just as vulnerable as others. No area, no country, no denomination is immune. The damage done in each case is irreparable: the breakdown, as far as ministry is concerned, final. This is a distasteful subject, but we cannot shirk it. The matter demands faithful treatment. Let him who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. (The Preacher and Preaching, ed. Samuel Logan, pp. 75-6)

And just this week I was on the phone with another pastor in the BGC who had preached recently for a colleague. During the series of meetings they took a walk together and discussed this issue with great earnestness. Only a few weeks after my friend returned to his own church he received that word that his pastor friend was forced to resign over an affair with a woman in the church — even though he had looked him right in the eye and never confessed it.

And what we see today in the moral collapse of the ministry is not the worst priestly failure. Far more devastating for the church long term is the doctrinal defection of thousands of pastors away from the authority and sufficiency of Scripture and away from Biblical truth.

When the Great Awakening in New England was over back in the 1740’s there were pastors who reacted against the Calvinistic basis of this great revival and turned to Arminianism. And then, led by Charles Chauncy, a Boston Congregationalist, they moved to Unitarianism and Universalism.

And you can feel to this day, 200 years later, the icy effects of that doctrinal departure on the state of the church in New England. Would that Charles Chauncy had only committed adultery! And would that this were our only problem today! Don’t be misled! The pastoral scandals of our day are not the greatest danger to the church. The great danger is the minimizing of deep spiritual commitment to doctrinal, Biblical truth.

When God predicted the ruin of his people Israel in the book of Amos he said that the famine that would destroy was a famine of the word of God:

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.

That’s the most devastating priestly failure, and that’s the one Malachi is most concerned with. So let’s turn to the text and see how Malachi treats this issue of priestly failure.

What Malachi does in 2:1-9 is contrast the failure of the priests in his day with the successes of the early priests in Israel’s history. In verses 2, 8 and 9 Malachi mentions five failures. And in verses 5, 6 and 7 he describes what a successful priesthood looks like.

I think that all we will have time for this morning is to look at two of the deepest priestly failures — the two mentioned in verse 2. And then next Sunday we move straight into the other verses and round out the picture of the true minister of the word.

Verses 1-2:

And now, O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings.

Two priestly failures are mentioned here. First, the failure to listen to God, and second the failure to have a heart burden for the glory of God.

1. “If you will not listen. . .” I will send the curse upon you. One great danger to the pastoral ministry is that the voice of God in Scripture may be drowned out by other voices. One of the most frightening things in the ministry is the possibility that one day we may wake up and read the sacred page and hear nothing from God.

Why is this so terrible? Because the last line of verse 7 says the minister of the word is “the messenger of the Lord of hosts.” There is a difference between a lecture on the meaning of ancient texts and a message from the Lord of hosts. God has appointed preachers in the church not simply to lead discussions, not simply to explain problems, not simply analyze texts, but to herald a message to his people. And you can’t herald what you don’t hear.

I heard W. A. Criswell of First Baptist Dalllas quote the laymen of his church one time. They said, “Pastor, we know what the editorialists say, and we know what the commentators say, and we know what the economists and politicians say. What we want to know from you is, DOES GOD HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY?!”

“If your will not listen . . . says the Lord of hosts, then I will send a curse upon you.”

2. The second priestly failure in verse 2 is the failure to have a heart burden for the glory of God. “If you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you.”

Note very carefully the wording here. The issue is not merely whether the glory of God is the explicit unifying theme of the minister’s doctrine and preaching, but whether there lies on his heart a burden to see God glorified. “If you will not lay it to heart (put it on your heart) to give glory to my name . . .”

The congregation must ask, Is it not only a part of his theology but also the passion of his soul? Does the glory of God come before the approval and praise of his people? Does it come before professional advancement? Does it come before financial reward and material comfort? Does he come back to it again and again, like the needle of a compass toward the magnet of truth, or like a weather vain in a heavenward wind? Does it come out in private as well as in public, in praying as well as preaching, in playing as well as studying?

What could be more crucial in calling a pastor, or praying for a pastor, or holding a pastor accountable than that he “lay it to heart — that it weigh on his heart — to give glory to the name of God”?

And so I close with this admonition: desire that kind of pastor, love the word of God and the glory of his name and pray for that kind of pastor until you have that kind of pastor, to the glory of our great God and Savior. Amen.

Copyright ©1987, 1997 John Piper
Used by permission.
Piper Notes

Technorati Tags: Bethlehem Baptist Church, John Piper, l987, Malachi, Morning, November, Pastor, Sermon, Sermons

Desiring God 2008 National Conference

September 27, 2008

By Bob Kauflin

Technorati Tags: 2008, Desiring God, John Piper, National Conference, Sermon, Why, worship

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Psalm 42

To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.

As a deer pants for 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? 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.

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. 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. By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. 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?”

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.

One of the prominent emotional conditions in the Psalms is spiritual depression. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote a book titled Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure and based it on Psalm 42. That’s the psalm we will focus on today—the one that says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?”

The Psalms: Song and Instruction

The heading of the psalm reminds us of what we saw last week. “To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.”

The sons of Korah were a group of priests who were charged with the ministry of singing. Second Chronicles 20:19 describes them in action: “The Korahites, stood up to praise the LORD, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice.”

So the heading implies that this psalm was probably used in public worship and was sung. That’s one part of what we said last week. The psalms are songs. They are poems. They are written to awaken and express and shape the emotional life of God’s people. Poetry and singing exist because God made us with emotions, not just thoughts. Our emotions are massively important.

The second thing to notice in the heading is that the psalm is called a “maskil.” It’s not clear what the word means. That’s why most versions don’t translate it. It comes from a Hebrew verb that means to make someone wise, or to instruct. So when applied to psalms, it may mean a song that instructs, or a song that is wisely crafted. That reminds us of the other thing we emphasized last week: The psalms intend to instruct. “Blessed is the man whose delight is in the instruction of the Lord, and on hisinstruction he meditates day and night.”

So “To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah” underlines both points from last time: The psalms are instruction, and the psalms are songs. And Jesus taught that they were inspired by God. They intend to shape what the mind thinks, and they intend to shape what the heart feels. When we immerse ourselves in them, we are “thinking and feeling with God.” That’s what I am praying this series will help us to do.

An Overview of Psalm 42

The way I would like to take us into Psalm 42 is to give an overview, and then show six things that this godly man does in his spiritual depression—six things that I think are meant to shape how we deal with our own seasons of darkness.

Here’s the overview. Externally his circumstances are oppressing. Verse 3 says that his enemies “say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” And verse 10 says the same thing, only it describes the effect as a deadly wound: “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?’” And the taunt “Where is your God?” implies that something else has gone wrong too, or they wouldn’t be saying, “Where is your God?” It looks to them like he has been abandoned.

The internal emotional condition of the psalmist is depressed and full of turmoil. In verses 5 and 11, he describes himself as “cast down” and “in turmoil.” In verse 3 he says, “My tears have been my food day and night.” So he is discouraged to the point of crying day and night. In verse 7 he says that it feels like drowning: “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me.”

Fighting to Hope in God

In all of this, he is fighting for hope. Verse 5: “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.” Verse 11: “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.” He is not surrendering to the emotions of discouragement. He is fighting back.

I cannot tell you how many hundreds of times in the last twenty-eight years at Bethlehem I have fought back the heaviness of discouragement with these very words: “Hope in God, John. Hope in God. You will again praise him. This miserable emotion will pass. This season will pass. Don’t be downcast. Look to Jesus. The light will dawn.” It was so central to our way of thinking and talking in the early eighties that we put a huge “Hope in God” sign on the outside wall of the old sanctuary and became known around the neighborhood as the “Hope in God” church.

His external circumstances are oppressing. His internal emotional condition is depressed and full of turmoil. But he is fighting for hope. And the really remarkable thing is that at the end of the psalm, he is still fighting but not yet where he wants to be. The last words of the psalm—and the last words of the next psalm—are “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.” He leaves us still fighting for the joyful experience of hope and freedom from turmoil. He is not yet praising the way he wants to.

A Bittersweet Ending

Is it a happy ending? Like almost everything else in this life, it’s mixed. His faith really is amazing, and his fight is valiant. But he is not where he wants to be in hope and peace and praise.

So I assume this psalm is in the Bible by God’s design and that if we listen carefully, if we watch this psalmist struggle, if we meditate on this instruction day and night, our thoughts about God and life, on the one hand, and our emotions, on the other hand, will be shaped by God. And we will become like a tree that bears fruit and whose leaves don’t wither when the drought of oppression and discouragement and turmoil comes.

How the Psalmist Responds to Discouragement

So here are six ways that this psalmist responds to the discouragement and turmoil that has come with the taunts of his enemies. I’ll put them in an order that they might have happened, though they surely overlap and repeat themselves.

1. He asks God Why?

First, he responds to his circumstances at one point by asking God Why? 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?’” The word forgotten is an overstatement. And he knows it is. He just said in verse 8, “By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me.”

What he means is that, it looks like God has forgotten him. It feels as if God has forgotten him. If God hasn’t forgotten him, why aren’t these enemies driven back and consumed? It would be good if all of us were so composed and careful in the expression of our discouragements that we never said anything amiss. But that is not the way we are. In the midst of the tumult of emotions, we are not careful with our words.

Those of us who were around in 1985 when I preached through Job may remember how this truth came home to us as a church. For years afterward, we would refer to the words of Job 6:26 and talk about “words for the wind.” Job says to his critical friends, “Do you think that you can reprove words, when the speech of a despairing man is wind?” In other words, don’t jump on the words of a despairing man. Let it go. There will be ample time to discern the deeper convictions of the heart. Let the wind blow them away. They are words for the wind.

So the psalmist asks Why? It’s a legitimate question. He may not have asked the question with theological or linguistic precision, but if he proves in time that he did not mean that God had forgotten him, we will let that be words for the wind.

2. He affirms God’s sovereign love.

Second, in the midst of his discouragement he affirms God’s sovereign love for him. Verse 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.” In verses 5 and 11, he calls God “my salvation and my God.” And even though he says it looks as if God has forgotten him, he never stops believing in the absolute sovereignty of God over all his adversity. So at the end of verse 7, he says, “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me.” Yourbreakers and your waves have gone over me.

In other words, all his crashing and tumultuous and oppressing and discouraging circumstances are the waves of God. He never loses this grip on the great truths about God. They are the ballast in his little boat of faith. They keep him from capsizing in the tumult of his emotions. O how many of you have learned this more deeply than I because of the waves that have broken over your lives. You have learned deeply that it is no relief to say that God does not rule the wind and the waves.

So the psalmist affirms God’s sovereign love for him in and through all the troubles.

3. He sings!

Third, he sings to the Lord at night, pleading for his life. Verse 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.” This is not a song of jubilant hope. He doesn’t feel jubilant hope. He is seeking jubilant hope. This is a prayer song and pleading song—a song “to the God of my life.” That is, a song pleading for his life.

But isn’t it amazing that he is singing his prayer! My guess is that this is where Psalm 42 came from. This very psalm may be that night-time prayer-song. Not many of us can compose songs when we are discouraged and weeping day and night. That’s why a singable psalter is good to keep around—or a hymnbook with the whole array of emotions. For example, Isaac Watts wrote these verses to be sung:

How long wilt Thou conceal Thy face?
My God, how long delay?
When shall I feel those heav’nly rays
That chase my fears away?

How long shall my poor laboring soul
Wrestle and toil in vain?
Thy word can all my foes control
And ease my raging pain.

The Psalter of 1912 contains these verses to be sung the way the psalmist of Psalm 42 sang at night:

How long wilt Thou forget me,
O Lord, Thou God of grace?
How long shall fears beset me
While darkness hides Thy face?
How long shall griefs distress me
And turn my day to night?
How long shall foes oppress me
And triumph in their might?

O Lord my God, behold me
And hear mine earnest cries;
Lest sleep of death enfold me,
Enlighten Thou mine eyes;
Lest now my foe insulting
Should boast of his success,
And enemies exulting
Rejoice in my distress.

These are not jubilant songs. But they are songs of faith. And they are shaped by thinking and feeling with God in the Psalms.

4. He preaches to his own soul.

Fourth, the psalmist preaches to his own soul. Verse 5: “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.” O how crucial this is in the fight of faith. We must learn to preach the truth to ourselves. Listen to Lloyd-Jones take hold of this verse:

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says,: “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.” (Spiritual Depression, 20-21)

On this side of the cross, we know the greatest ground for our hope: Jesus Christ crucified for our sins and triumphant over death. So the main thing we must learn is to preach the gospel to ourselves:

Listen, self: If God is for you, who can be against you? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for you, how will he not also with him graciously give you all things? Who shall bring any charge against you as God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for you. Who shall separate you from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:31-35 paraphrased)

Learn to preach the gospel to yourself. If this psalmist were living after Christ, that is what he would have done.

5. He remembers past experiences.

Fifth, the psalmist remembers. He calls past experiences to mind. He remembers past corporate worship experiences. Verse 4: “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.”

O how much could be said here about the importance of corporate worship in our lives. Don’t take these times together lightly. What we do here is a real transaction with the living God. God means for these encounters with him in corporate worship to preserve your faith now and in the way you remember them later. If corporate worship were not a real supernatural work of God, it would be pure sentimentalism for the psalmist to remember his experiences. He is not engaging in nostalgia. He is confirming his faith in the midst of turmoil and discouragement by remembering how real God was in corporate worship.

O how much more serious we should be about corporate worship. Ask the Lord to show you what is at stake here.

6. He thirsts for God.

Finally, the psalmist thirsts for God like a deer pants for the stream. Verses 1-2: “As a deer pants for 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?” What makes this so beautiful, and so crucial for us, is that he is not thirsting mainly for relief from his threatening circumstances. He is not thirsting mainly for escape from his enemies or for their destruction.

It’s not wrong to want relief and to pray for it. It is sometimes right to pray for the defeat of enemies. But more important than any of that is God himself. When we think and feel with God in the Psalms, this is the main result: We come to love God, and we want to see God and be with God and be satisfied in admiring and exulting in God.

That is my ultimate hope and prayer for these weeks that we spend together in the Psalms. That God would be revealed, and we would want to know him as he is in himself and fellowship with him.

Seeing the Face of God in the Gospel of Christ

A likely translation of the end of verse 2 is: “When will I come and see the face of God.” The final answer to that question was given in John 14:9 and 2 Corinthians 4:4. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). And Paul said that when we are converted to Christ we see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

When we see the face of Christ, we see the face of God. And we see the glory of his face when we hear the story of the gospel of his death and resurrection. It is “the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.”

May the Lord increase your hunger and your thirst to see the face of God. And may he grant your desire through the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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