n my last sermon I told you of
the terrible tragedy that was experienced by Jerry Sittser. Jerry lost his mother, wife and four-year-old
daughter when a drunk driver careered across a road and crashed straight into
their car.
Over the next few years Jerry
would often relive those awful moments.
He would ask the haunting question, ‘why me?’ ‘Why did we have to be in that precise place
and that precise time?’ He thought, ‘if
only we had left on our journey just a little later. If only we drove just a little bit quicker or
slower. If only we had paused just a
little bit longer at a stop sign. Then
we would not have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
One of the questions that come up
repeatedly in the Book of Psalms is ‘why?’
Why would this happen to me? Why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble
(10:1)? For you
are the God of my strength; why have you rejected me (43:2)?
Arouse yourself, why do you sleep, O Lord (44:23)? O Lord,
why do you reject my soul? Why do you
hide yourself from me (88:14)? In
this morning’s psalm the sons of Korah ask, ‘Why
have you forgotten me? (42:9).
The
importance of hope
This morning’s passage opens with
some very famous words. As a deer pants for the water, so my soul
longs after you, O God. The psalmist
is clearly in distress. My tears have been my food day and night. He is been taunted by his enemies who are
asking, where is your God? His soul is downcast. Tim Keller points out human beings need a
sense of God’s presence and love as much as the pants after water. So why does he seem so absent when we need
him the most? In a following psalm the
sons of Korah ask, why do you hide your
face and forget our affliction and our oppression (44:24)?
During a time of depression one
of the things I struggled with was a sense of hopelessness. I hadn’t experienced depression in quiet the
same way before, and I feared that maybe it was going to become a permanent part
of my life. I tried everything to find
hope. I ordered books that would help me
work my way through my problems and I made appointments to talk with
people. But I was gripped by the fear of
hopelessness. However, the deepest parts
of depression do lift. People need to
realise that they will not always feel this way.
The psalmist clings on to such
hope. He speaks to his soul and assures
himself, I shall again praise him, my
salvation (5) and I shall again
praise him, my salvation and my God (11).
Your life may remain broken. You
don’t want or need to forget your loved one.
Your marriage may never be repaired.
Your infertility may leave you without children. The diagnosis may be terminal. But you will again praise him. There will be times when the sorrow is less
acute. There will be moments when you
can breathe. There will be times when
the clouds will part. Even in the
darkness you may learn to praise him.
Even if your life seems to be tragedy followed by tragedy, God has an
eternity to put it all in perspective.
I don’t want to be simplistic
here. One of the psalms ends with the
words, ‘darkness is my closest friend’ (Psalm 88). But even in the pain we need to cry out to
God to show us that he loves us. In his
book on depression Ed Welsh writes, ‘Just think what it would be like to be
certain that the God of this universe loved you. That alone would probably change the contours
of depression.’ ‘For this reason I bow
my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is
named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be
strengthened with the power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and
established in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all God’s people
what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of
Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness
of God (Ephesians 3:16-19).
The
need to preach the gospel to ourselves
We have something very unique in
Christianity. We have a suffering
God. We have a God who knows what it is
to cry out with a ‘why’ question. On the
cross Jesus screams in agony, ‘my God, my God why have you forsaken me
(22:1)?’ Jesus knows what it is to be
bewildered by suffering. He has
experienced the silence of heaven. In
fact he was forsaken by his heavenly Father, in order that we never would be, even
if we feel that God has turned his face away.
It was as if he was forgotten so that we would always be remembered.
Look at how the Psalmist preaches
the gospel to himself! He talks to his
downcast soul. ‘Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God’ (5). His soul is downcast, so he resolves to
remember God, even while he is literally in the wilderness (6). He tells his downcast soul, ‘hope in God … my
salvation and my God’ (11). I can’t
guarantee that it will always lift your emotions, but it is good to seek to
sing when you suffer. It is noteworthy
that the title to Psalm 88, the darkest of all the psalms, is actually a
song. We please God as we lean on him in
our suffering. We may get a new sense of
hope as we remember the love of our suffering Saviour.
I remember one Easter a member of
our last congregation chocking with tears as he read the following words from
theologian Sinclair Ferguson. ‘'When we
think of Christ dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God’s love
goes in order to win us back to Himself. We should almost think that God loved us more
than He loves His Son. We cannot measure
His love by any other standard. He is
saying to us, “I love you this much.” The cross is the heart of the gospel; it makes
the gospel good news. Christ died for
us; He has stood in our place before God’s judgement seat; He has borne our
sins. God has done something on the
cross which we could never do for ourselves. But God does something to us as well as for us
through the cross. He persuades us that
He loves us.'
The
comfort that God is in control
Finally, we have to come to terms
with the fact that God is in control.
Sometimes that is a comfort.
During my depression I was helped by words of John Newton, who said,
‘everything is needful that he sends, and nothing is needful that he
withholds.’ I knew I was suffering
whether there was a meaning to it or not, and I found help in the fact that God
would use it for good. However, in the
case of tragic loss, the thought of God being in control raises unbearable
questions. Jerry Sittser said that he
could not even bring himself to consider the sovereignty of God after the
tragic death of three of his family. How
could God let this happen? A woman who
had struggled with infertility for years got pregnant. Then she miscarried. She was angry with God. She said to her husband, ‘my earthly father
would never treat me like this, but my heavenly Father has.’
God is in control. The psalmist says to God, ‘your breakers and
your waves have gone over me’ (7). Many
factors would have contributed to the psalmist’s agony, but he knows that God
is on his throne. All things ultimately
happen according to God’s will. ‘If I
had anyone to turn to for help,’ explains Jerry Sittser, ‘it was God. Then again, if I had anyone to blame, it was
also God.’ The questions were
troubling. ‘If God really was God where
was he when the tragedy occurred, why did God do nothing?’
Jerry hasn’t got all the answers
he would want. God graciously permits us
to shout our ‘why’ questions to him. But
often heaven is silent in reply. That
doesn’t mean there is no reason, but simply that we cannot know the reason for
now. Yet Jerry took comfort from
realising that God does not relate to us as one who knows nothing of our pain. He comforts us as one who has experienced
death, rejection and abandonment for our sake.
He may not give us answers that satisfy.
We might see some of the reasons, but not enough to satisfy us. But God is not aloof, and one day we will
receive an explanation.
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