Well, it’s good to be here with you. I know it’s summertime. We’ve got a lot of folks moving around, traveling, doing vacation. We were in Kentucky for the last nine days, and I was afraid we weren’t going to make it home. Jessica’s battery went out the last day, and then we got 45 minutes down the road, and her alternator went out. So we had to turn around and go back and got it all put together. But here we are. Here we are. So we made it, and it’s good to be with you. I’m going to be in Psalm chapter 22. If you want to turn there in your Bible, Psalm chapter 22.
And I’m really just going to stay in verses 1 and 2. Psalm chapter 22, verses 1 and 2.
David writes, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?
Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer. And by night, I find no rest. This psalm… This psalm is kind of the opposite, inverted one of what Elder Chris preached last week. Because last week, Chris talked about fear and how fear so quickly binds us. But God is our salvation, right? And so the psalmist had a sure trust. This psalm is… This psalm is very unique for a number of reasons. But mostly, we read here in verse 1 that it seems David is in this moment lost as to where his salvation is. He experiences a certain forsakenness. And I think there are times in our lives as believers where we experience something very similar. We know the Bible stories, and we know the truth, but then there is real experience. And sometimes real experience seems, unfortunately, to match up with this verse. Where is God sometimes in deep spiritual struggle? Where is God when life seems to… unravel?
I don’t know if you read the story, but there’s a just terrible story this past week of a pastor on sabbatical, much like you allowed me to take in January. It was the last day of sabbatical for him and his family. And the boys were playing badminton in the backyard last day, and the badminton racket snapped in half. And it just flew across the yard and went right into the head of his six-year-old daughter. And she passed away in the hospital a couple days later. All kinds of strange, terrible things happen. And we’ll always have perhaps an opportunity, like David, to say, Lord, where are you? I feel abandoned. Lord, how could you… How could you let this happen? Or why is it lasting so long? So I want us to consider… Let’s consider these verses. And here’s the thing I want to say up front over this, and it’s going to sound like a really odd thing to say, but abandonment, the feeling of abandonment, is oftentimes a normal Christian experience. The feeling of abandonment, the feeling of forsakenness, is a normal Christian experience. Let’s consider David. How could it be that David, a man so loved by God… God said about David, he’s a man after my own heart. Yet, what do we see for David? That his soul is… Oh! It’s agonized. It’s agonized. He’s not just expressed discomfort for some trial, and he had plenty of trials, plenty of enemies. This isn’t a moment of discipline for something he did wrong. We could read that psalm. This is unique in its distress and misery. And David says out loud, he’s been abandoned. He’s been forsaken. He’s been forsaken. And we can be sure it’s not an overreaction, because the next thing he says illumines what he means he’s been forsaken. He says that God is so far from saving him. So far from saving him. It doesn’t matter if he groans. God doesn’t seem to do anything about it. So this is a long, deep, dark valley, and David languishes there. He languishes there.
It’s true, I think you agree, pain has a way of slowing down time. If you were to put your hand on a hot stove, like one second is like one minute, right? When you’re in severe pain, it kind of consumes you. It consumes your best thoughts. It consumes your energy, even. I’m probably a sissy when it comes to pain. But you get a little toothache. And it’s not, I’ll get that fixed in a few months. That’s like call the doctor right now. The clock stopped. So David finds his soul in that sort of excruciating suffering while he thinks about his life. He thinks God is elsewhere. And when we see groaning here, this isn’t just, this is not just a word just to suggest that he’s awfully upset. This really means a roaring lion. So imagine an animal wounded. This is the thrust of the word here. And the wounded animal is crying out, excruciating pain. No help. No help. And then God, whom he’s always known to be, a father, is not responding. My one and a half year old, when she screams, she knows she’s going to get my attention. She’s going to get Jessica’s attention. That’s what children expect of even half decent parents, I think. So don’t write this off as some trial for David. This is the ultimate trial. This is the ultimate trial for David.
And God, I think, for each of us in our lives, he brings us also through the ultimate trial. What is the ultimate trial? It’s the trial of faith. It’s the trial of faith. You and I have no real faith if it’s not tried. If you take a survey of God’s peace, if you take a survey of people from the Old Testament, take a survey of David’s life, if you take a survey of the New Testament, you find that God’s best servants are tried the hardest. They live under a certain severity, even as it were. That’s clear from David’s life. You go through the Psalms and you discover the majority of them are laments. David didn’t live a happy life as king and everyone did what he said. He lived a life that was often sorrowful and heavy and weighty, as did Paul, as did Elijah.
So I think you and I should always be able to say that severe trials, it’s not like I hope I don’t go through something where the Lord’s going to really test my faith and try me out. No, you should expect severity of trial to be your bosom buddy in this life. And really, nothing proves it more than Hebrews chapter 11 when we get the hall of faith from Abel to Noah to Abraham to Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel. These are tried, tried servants. So you’re never, you’re never, you’re never in bad company nor are you ever alone when you are under the ultimate trial. It’s interesting if you had perspective on yourself which you never do when you’re going through trials, you would realize you’re in good company. And there’s many who are going through this. Yet, what do we do and what does the devil lead us to do? And that’s to feel supremely alone under the severity of it. As if, as if, the severity is a sign, a sure sign, God has left me forever. That’s what it’s got to mean. A God that loves, a God that cares would not allow this. Maybe if you turn down the dial to eight or nine, but we’re at 11. God wouldn’t, God wouldn’t do that.
But I want you to notice three words in verses one and two. And these three words, are so very important for you to see. David does not say, God, God, why have you forsaken me? He does not say in verse two, Oh God, I cry by day. Notice the possession. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Oh my God, I cry by day. David is pressed hard, by God, but he doesn’t lose possession of his God. That’s all the difference. God may be appearing one way for some awful length of time, but genuine faith on the other side will never give up the possession of the thing it treasures most, which is what? It’s the Lord. David’s not pressed hard, he’s not pressed to give up his God. He will still say by faith, My God, my God. I want to read you a quote from Calvin’s commentary, and I think it’s just so helpful, even if it’s a little long, I just think he says it so well.
When therefore he suffers us to lie long in sorrow, and as it were, to pine away under it, we must necessarily feel according to the apprehension of the flesh as if he’d quite forgotten us. When such a perplexing thought takes entire possession of the mind of man, it overwhelms him in profound unbelief, as he neither seeks nor any longer expects to find a remedy. But if faith comes to his aid against such a temptation, the same person who judging from the outward appearance of things regarded God as insensitive, against him, and having abandoned him, beholds in the mirror of the promises the grace of God which is hidden and distant. Between these two contrary affections, the faithful are agitated, as it were, and they fluctuate when Satan, on the one hand, by exhibiting to their view the signs of the wrath of God, urges them on to despair and endeavors entirely to overthrow their faith, while faith, on the other hand, by calling them back to the promises, teaches them to wait patiently and to trust in God until he again shows his fatherly countenance.
Friend, God will allow the severest of seasons, not because he hates you, but because he’s drawing out your faith, to believe against belief that he loves you. And that’s a needed reminder for us constantly, isn’t it? Because the temptation to distrust God is ever-present. You know what distrusts God? The experiences you have. I don’t know if I’ve gone through that. How come things are this way? My experience tells me God can’t really be with me. These little things we call intuitions. I just, I just got a feeling about something. Passing thoughts, whether they’re your own or Satan’s, ever lurk, and you kind of surmise on your own through a series of unfortunate events and feelings you have that it just must not be as I thought it was that God was for me. Don’t go down the if I were really a Christian road. You know, if I really, if this, you know, if this didn’t happen, or if this did happen. Friends, this text does not ask you to be dishonest with God. This text tells you you can cry out to the Lord and you can be so honest with real tears and you can weep loudly. True faith doesn’t prohibit you from that. In fact, it’s the honesty I think that true faith brings us to where we can say, can I still believe that God loves me and is bigger than fill in the blanks. And faith trumps every time. Every time.
Why is that true? It’s true because faith is a grace. Faith is a grace given you. And that grace can see God even if it’s just His silhouette a long way off. In a moment of forsakenness, still faith can hold on to God. Genuine faith most importantly genuine faith most importantly in that severity of forsakenness and abandonment genuine faith sees Jesus. Jesus. And this is why I think this text is so powerful. Because yes, David is writing this under the influence of the Spirit but this is ultimately prophetic for us. Because this text is prophetic for us. These words find their truest meaning when they come from the mouth of our Lord Jesus as He hangs on the cross. In fact, Charles Spurgeon says quite flatly David and his afflictions may here in a very modified sense be but as the star is concealed by the light of the sun he who sees Jesus will probably neither see nor care to see David.
See Jesus here. You read in Matthew chapter 27 verse 46 In about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani that is my God, my God why have you forsaken? What a thing for the Son of God to say. So see this then friends. Our forsakenness is apparent. His was very real. Ours is very apparent. His is very real. The Son of God took the place of the guilty the condemned the lawbreaker one who is vile one who is wicked and in that state stood before the God of heaven and in that moment was a baby. Abandoned. Abandoned. How do we conceive of the God-man being forsaken by the Father? John MacArthur has noted that Martin Luther, the great reformer he was so bothered by this verse and what it meant he went into long seclusion to understand it and he came out just as confused as when he went in. There’s many suggested ideas about what this verse really means theologically and you can find it in the Bible. You can find a lot of theories. I think we can just take this verse at face value when we’re told that Jesus in some very real but mysterious way He was abandoned in that moment. He was forsaken by the Father. He lost His intimacy His nearness with the Father He had always known. Galatians chapter 3 verse 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse not by carrying a curse it says by becoming a curse for us for it is written cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through here it is faith faith so you see what that means that means if Christ was truly forsaken and He was on that cross you and I never can be you and I never can be our superficial abandonment is there to draw our faith out so that we would look by faith at Jesus who is really forsaken and when everything in my life is in shambles and when my faith is tested and I’m tried by every devil and I’m tried by the powers of hell and I’m tried by this world my faith says look at Jesus who is really tried by hell look at Jesus who carried every sin look at Jesus who stood as a condemned man before the Father and see how He overcame so that you never will be overcome see how Jesus won
friends this verse invites us to behold our Christ hanging on a tree this verse invites us to have all peace and all comfort knowing that we are truly right with God this verse invites us friends to see every trial and every sin as right under the thumb of God and we can be sure that we are not sure his tender fatherly care will come in due time.
George Mueller, the theologian, spent the majority of his life saving children from poverty,
from being orphans, did so much to build houses for orphans in his time. He said, God delights to increase the faith of his children. We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God’s hand as a means. I say, and I say it deliberately, trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats are the very food of faith. The very food of faith. So I want to give us just a few practical applications from this text. A few practical applications here. The first one is this. Faith for each of us is a necessary reflex. Faith for each of us is a necessary reflex. Faith for each of us. Here’s chapter 10, 23.
And I probably could have preached just on this verse because I’ve been reading it to myself so much lately.
The writer says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. For he who promised is faithful. You see what he said? It’s not a suggestion. It’s a confession. It’s a confession. It’s a command. Let us do this thing. What thing? Not loosely hold on to your confession because if something’s loose in your hands, and let me tell you, I’ve got a four-year-old and a one-year-old and they can show you what happens when things are loose in their hand. They slip out. Go over the floor. Or when things are loose in your hand, someone can snatch it real easy. The Hebrew writer says, you have to grip that confession you have in Christ Jesus. You must hold it tight. And you must not waver. That’s convicting because I think we so often live the Christian life in a sort of topsy-turvy, well, I’m a Christian. I think I’m going to make it. I hope God’s not mad at me. I believe today. I don’t believe tomorrow. This, that, that. And it’s really, it’s really just disobedience. That’s all it is. God says, no, don’t waver. I was thinking about that even as I was driving my wife’s van. I put the battery in and it seemed to work. But it wasn’t as loud as it normally was loud. Like the engine was on, but it kind of wasn’t on. It was in all the electricity was it was going on. It was weird. And so I went down the road, but I couldn’t go as fast as I could. And I think it was firing on a few cylinders. And I think that’s what we do. We have an engine, but we choose by disobedience to just fire on a few cylinders. And the Hebrew writers say, no, no. You obey this text. You hold your confession and don’t you waver about tomorrow or whether it’s true or whether it’s good. And you say, well, how can I, how can I be so sure? Answer. Because he who promised is faithful. Which is great. Because what’s the first thing you and I do when we find ourselves in spiritual battles? We look at self. If I was stronger, if I was wiser, if I hadn’t made that mistake, oh, this.
Don’t look at yourself to find more faith. Look at Jesus who is faithful. And as you look at the one who is faithful, boy, does your faith meter go through the ceiling. Don’t look at yourself. Looking more at yourself will lead you to a better future. It will lead you deeper into unbelief and despair. Look at Jesus and how wonderful he is and the promises he’s made. And then beholding your Christ, your faith grows. So I say that as a very, I think, important application to this text. You will, I think, drag your feet through the Christian life and have partial successes, not because they’re not yours, but because you choose not to fully embrace what you’ve been given in Christ Jesus. Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus. See how sure he is. Go straight to the cross. Second application point here. Prayer is indispensable. Prayer is indispensable. The psalms are songs in their own way. They’re poems in their own way. But they’re songs. They’re songs mixed with prayer. They’re David’s heart to God. And not happy. As I’ve said before, the psalms are often David really, really hurt and upset. And I don’t think that this text gives us a right to be irreverent or disrespectful to God, but I certainly think in all things we come to God and we talk to God and we tell God where we are and we tell God how we’re suffering. And here’s the thing. Here’s why. To cut off communication with God, I think it enforces unbelief. Now, our relationship with God is beyond any other relationship we could have, but how much trust would you say one person has in another person if they never talked to that person? Pretty low. If there was a husband and a wife and the husband said, I’ve not talked to her in forever, I don’t confide in her about anything, he’s not looking for help or answers or wisdom from her or her from him. Friends, talking to God is faith moving. Hold on to that. Faith, how do you know it’s alive and it’s real? It moves, it’s animated to communicate with God. You’ve got all these psalms and what are they but reflexes of faith through communication to God and praising Him for who He is and thanking Him for who He is and asking Him for what’s needed. And fussing about what’s not right in life. The whole thing is a reflex of faith. So when Jesus says to the people in Luke 18, when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on earth? He’s talking about prayer in Luke 18. Don’t stop praying. Prayer is your food in all things, not just the good things, but in the bad things as well. Number three, life, whether it’s going good or bad, your life, whether it’s going good or bad, is not a commentary on your relationship with God. Your life, whether it’s going good in your eyes or bad, is not a commentary on if God loves you or He’s changed His mind about how much He loves you. And it’s easy even to get superstitious with these things. We think, the water heater went out. What did I do wrong? And we’re like the pagans. Lord, did I not pray enough yesterday? I don’t know. What did I say? I wasn’t generous enough. Well, the guy next door, his water heater didn’t go out. Does that mean he did pray enough? It’s not to say that the Lord doesn’t discipline us, but friends, using your experiences and how positive they are as a meter will never tell you how much God loves you. God loves you. Why? Because He said He loves you. So don’t look to other sources besides God’s own mouth to discover if He loves you. We’re told in the Scriptures to renew our minds. We’re told in the Scriptures to conform our minds to who God is. So, the battle of the Christian life, the battle of the Christian life, especially in these deep, dark seasons, is in so many ways a battle for the mind. It’s a battle for the mind. It’s believing right things so that you’ll trust and move forward Godward. Here’s the fourth point of application, and that is to remember always God’s past faithfulness. Remember always God’s past faithfulness. If we look in Psalm chapter 22,
we do see David in such distress in verses 1 and 2. But then we read in verse 3, he’s going back to the things he knows. He says to the Lord, yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you, our fathers trusted. They trusted. And you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame. So, friends, look back and see how God has been faithful to His people and their abandonment and their moments and their ultimate trial of faith. And see that David’s life. You can look back in your own life and know, man, God has brought you this far. God has brought you this far. How did you get this far in the faith? How did you not give up? How did you not apostatize this morning and say, that’s it. 35 years, 45 years is enough. I can’t go another step. I’m not going to one more church service. I’m done. You’re sitting here because the grace of faith has brought you here. And you’re believing against the great trial of this life.
But most of all, friends, we can remember back to the cross. And we can remember the one who was nailed to a tree and who was forsaken and who was abandoned. That you and I could be loved and accepted. By the Father. So I want to say to you here as we close, look to Jesus. Look to Jesus.
He was crucified. And He was buried. But He was resurrected. And He sits at the Father. Victorious forevermore. And in Him we are eternally kept. Let’s pray. Lord, thank You for this Word. Lord, let it fortify our hearts. Whether we be in the throes of adversity now or, Lord, some future season, let us know Lord, we’re never truly forsaken because of Christ’s sacrifice. Because of Jesus and Jesus alone, we’re loved. And Your promises are all yes and amen in Christ Jesus. And we can take You at Your Word that if we repent of our sin and we believe on the Lord Jesus, we shall be saved. Let us hold that simple, beautiful Gospel truth so close to our hearts and minds, I pray, Lord. So close. Lord, we trust it will weather us through every storm. Lord, we trust It will weather us Lord, we trust It will weather us