| Hoping in God…and Why It Matters |
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
For I will yet praise him,
My savior and my God. Ps. 42:5
Introduction
I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that within the last 2 years no verse has ‘put ballast in my hull’ or fixed my eyes on the gospel of Jesus as has this one. Since my unwitting discovery of this Psalm, I have begun listening to sermons and reading books carefully for ‘hope in God’ language, but have been shocked with how little attention the doctrine gets within our culture. Initially, I was perplexed and not a little frustrated. I think now that there are two primary reasons why it has been largely neglected. 1) Cultural unfamiliarity/uncomfortability with the term ‘hope’. ‘Hope’ carries with it a strongly negative connotation. For instance, it wouldn’t be uncommon to hear a student who stayed up all night playing Halo instead of studying for an exam the next day say, ‘I hope I pass this test…’. He could pass it, but the odds are strongly in his disfavor. 2) ‘Hope’, even when understood within a proper biblical context, seems so far removed from any immediate solution. If a close friend of mine’s child died, a phrase like ‘brother, just hope in God’ doesn’t seem to help at all. ‘Joy’ and ‘peace’, while also involving future and eschatological elements, can be experienced and savored now and seem so fitting for just such crushing circumstances. But ‘hope’?
Response to 1): We aren’t hoping in baseball games or lottery tickets or relationships, we’re hoping in the One who says things like, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please’, and about One of whom things are said like, ‘In the Lord alone are righteousness and Strength. All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame…’ (Is. 45:18, 24). When we hope in God, we hope in the only One/Thing capable of bearing the staggering weight of human expectation.
Response to 2): First, it feels distant but is in fact intimately immediate simply because it (as defined above) is the impetus for and foundation of every ‘more immediate’ action and emotional response toward God. Could we rejoice in or have peace about a God who couldn’t first demonstrate his Own self-sufficiency? Certainly not. Second, creatures must/will hope in something, and if we aren’t consciously Godward with our expectations, we run the risk of damnation. All that to say: the stakes are high.
The more I read Scripture and think on the subject the more I’m convinced that without stockpiling a ‘ready supply’ of Godward hope, we doom ourselves to a slow and torturous death.
D. M. Lloyd Jones/John Piper’s Ideas on Ps. 42:5
The first thing we are struck with as we read this song is the psalmist’s horrific state of spiritual depression, brought on primarily by his sense of utter abandonment by God. ‘My soul thirsts for God…When can I go and meet him?’ Then his enemies, like salt rubbed into a deep wound, assault and mock him by asking ‘Where is your God?’, strikingly reminiscent of Job’s friends as they berate him for invoking the wrath of God by his own wickedness. What is it that keeps him afloat? What gives him fortitude to let the accusations role off his back? What shines light on his ‘downcast’ soul (vs 5b)? To what does he cling as ‘all [God’s] waves and breakers’ sweep over him? His ‘hope in God’.
What is initially startling but ultimately admirable about the psalmist here is that while enduring incomprehensible oppression, he is seen talking to himself. D. Jones observed that most of us, in contrast, are guilty of too readily listening to ourselves. When we wake up and discuss with ourselves how we don’t ‘feel’ ready to fight sin or how we don’t ‘feel’ joy in the Spirit, we aren’t lending our ears to the right audience. The poet here doesn’t fall in that trap. No, he speaks to his aching soul…and he speaks what’s true. We might object though, ‘How can I hope in God?’ This does appear to be a tenuous question, for our sins are great and the anger of the ‘I AM’ is fearsome. But, it is precisely at this seemingly ‘hopeless’ realization at which the scene explodes with vitality (and, yes, especially ‘hope’) for us as A.D. earth-dwellers. Peter says it best when he writes: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…Through [Christ] you believe in God, who raised him from the Dead and glorified him, so your faith and hope are in God’ (1 Peter 1:3, 21). We’re in a Covenant with the Sovereign One, sealed in His Son’s blood. If ever there was a reason to hope and to preach that hope to again and again to ourselves and our brothers and sisters, surely this is it. In short, we hope in God through/because of the Gospel. So, brothers, do it. Hope in God because of the Gospel. Hope in God because hope of this sort (namely one rooted in the One who never trips on a hurdle or topples off a balance beam but is Sovereign over every sparrow and galaxy) cannot fail, for it’s been secured by a Covenant of infinite value since it was inaugurated by the Infinite’s blood. Hope in God because if we don’t hope in Him we’re hoping in a lesser thing that can’t bear the weight of expectation and will serve only to banish us from his presence. May it be said of us like those in Hebrews 11 that God is not ashamed to be called our God. We can be willing to sacrifice anything because our Hope is other-worldly.
4 comments:
Wes, I've been thinking through the same Psalm this summer. One morning before church (at SIL) I was looking to see if Piper had a sermon on Psalm 22 or some other Psalm. I can’t remember which it was specifically. But I happened to stumble upon Piper’s sermon on Ps 42 as I was looking for the other. It was a message I desperately needed to hear. I was extremely discouraged because I had been sleeping so poorly I was really struggling with my classes. I couldn’t concentrate on something longer than 20 or 30 seconds at a time. That’s no exaggeration. This also was affecting my time in prayer and the word. When I prayed I would start out and then end up distracted after 30 seconds or so. It was really frustrating because my mind and my theology were telling me that I should be praising God in spite of this but I felt so much the opposite. If you look at this Psalm, you notice that following every pledge to hope in God and every pledge to continue in praising God despite the depth of his circumstances is a statement of remembrance of God’s activeness in his life. He finds power in remembering the God he led the procession for, in the help of His presence, the help of his countenance and so on. If we want to experience the fullness of “hope in God,” then we should be seeking just that – experience. More specifically, we should be seeking the experience of the presence of God which is communion with Him. We can’t praise God if we have no present and past works of God in our lives. The essence of true worship is the change from slavery to sin to conformity to Christ that true salvation brings. Consider Romans 5:5-11 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 ¶ For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11 And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
God did not spare giving up his son…how will he not also freely give us all things…all things work together for good…what can separate us from the love of God…
I think the thing Paul is trying to get across is that a real God spilled the real blood of His real Son who was really God who he really raised from the dead to make a real restoration to the very real problem of sin and separation which means that authentic knowledge/relationship with God is constantly working real change in the life of the believer. This is what we can always hope in, a real God whose goodness we really know whose real works in our life overpower all other real but temporal struggles. Hypocrites give in to the flesh but the true worshipper finds reason to praise God in any circumstance. This is what I’ve been learning recently. Today the grandest display of the sheer absence of the works of God can be heard on Wednesday night at the traditional prayer meeting. If you go to a typical fundamental Baptist church, you will mostly hear requests for things like the following: safety in traveling, good health for sick people, for so and so to get a good job and so on. You rarely hear any prayer for freedom from sin because we are too proud to admit we sin. We rarely hear prayer for God’s name to be honored and His kingdom to be brought in. Rarely do we pray to see more love and the fruit of righteousness in our lives so that God is glorified in us (Phil. 1:9-11). Consequently when Sunday night roles around for testimonies of God’s grace, the church has nothing to say except maybe something like a quick word thanking God for so and so almost but not quite hitting a deer. Today we have no authentic experiences of grace to fall back on when things are against us and it is marked by the total absence of change in the lives of professing believers. I find I have difficulty hoping in and praising God when I’ve disregarded God and ignored communion with him. When he has been active in my life, I have plenty of remembrance to fall back on and hope in God. This is true hope that the Spirit and love of God have been poured out in my life. It’s as certain and unmovable as any mountain and as real as the blood in my veins.
DJ: that was a good word for me...thanks.
One thought before bed. First, thank you both for that - it was grace to me. Second, I was thinking about the occasions we have for hoping in God. I can remember a few times that I felt like my only hope was God. A few times I was sick, in pain, and angry. I felt like my soul was crumbling beneath me as couldn't find a moment of joy. A few other times I was exhausted (sounds like what you mentioned DJ), a desperate, downward spiraling feeling that is far from God, with no relief in sight. But I think the deepest and most common times of utter hopelessness save in God have come after seasons of sin. At the bottom, when my sin has been so disgusting to me that my anger seethes when I hear myself pray, the anger usually breaks into utter despair and dependence on God. What a hopeless feeling to have every area of your heart laid open and bare to a God fierce enough to create Hell, and to have Him find it a fetid, putrid, stinking tomb of rotting sin. To go to pray and make Him gag. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.
And at those moments, when I feel that I am watching the dust from my feet fall into Hell because I am standing so close to the edge of it, and that a fully righteous and sovereign God will be worshiped forever for demonstrating His justice by pushing me in, I have no hope but in God. There is no other hope. Were we not to hope in God, the next greatest hope we could have would be that He did not exist and that we could pass into annihilation at death instead of facing judgment.
But what a hope we have instead! We are not merely criminals who have been handed a pardon for our crimes and sent free to the street. We are that - we have been emancipated from our penalty. But then God has been pleased to give us something. And not something - all things in Christ. An inheritance. Heirship with Christ. His presence. Union with Himself. We have been forgiven the greatest possible offense and given the greatest possible reward. Then, in what situation could we not hope in God?
"Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget none of His benefits; who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion, who satisfies your years with good things."
For all the time I've spent pondering Romans 8:32 I still feel like I can't fathom the depths of it. No matter how much pain I'm in God still has not withheld one good thing from me. In faith I can earnestly expect all physical pains and trials to work together for good because for the believer they will ultimately bring conformity to the Son. While physically disadvantaged, I have spiritual advantage. Even pain and hard things are a gift from God.
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