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Psalm 43
43:1 Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
against an ungodly people,
from the deceitful and unjust man
deliver me!
2 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?
3 Send out your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!
4 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.
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.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Thomas Ritchie. I'm an elder here at Redeemer, and it's my privilege to open up God's word today. This is my 7th sermon ever. I've been doing this for 6 years.
Caleb Chancey:I got 2 sermons 1 year. This is my 7th sermon. And of course it would just happen to be that the ordained topic for this week was trouble, and that this would land in my lap to preach about. And I'll tell you that all these topics were picked, in fact, this sermon was mostly written before all these things happened this week. And I view that as God's providence.
Caleb Chancey:This sermon was planned, these scriptures were selected, before we knew the context that we were speaking into. And so I take hope that God's in control, that He prepares His word for us ahead of time. Now like I said, my 7th sermon, which means I've been preaching long enough to have developed bad habits, and one of them is this, that I view preaching very narrowly, as theologically intellect theologically intense intellectual task. You know, in my mind I can't preach a good sermon if I can't quote an ancient language or pull out some nifty historical anecdote. And that's an overly narrow view of preaching, and God's showed me that, through my preparation here today.
Caleb Chancey:Because this text was assigned to me and I don't speak any Hebrew, and I don't know a whole lot about the background of Psalm 43. But as soon as I found out that I was gonna have this text about trouble, God has blessed me with lots of trouble. He's sent things my way that I've had to deal with and wrestle through, and I've had the chance to cling to these words. And so I can stand up here today, maybe not as a scholar, but instead as someone who can testify that, God's word is true. That this the hope that's in this psalm has been real in my life, and I'm going through it right now.
Caleb Chancey:So with that in mind, open up your Bibles to Psalm 43. I'll read the whole thing. 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.
Caleb Chancey: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.
Caleb Chancey:Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with a liar, oh God, my God. Why are you cast down, oh my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. The word of the Lord. Please pray with me.
Caleb Chancey:God, thank you for your word. Thank you that it is a sure help for us in times of trouble. Thank you for giving it to us, and I pray now that you will give me the wisdom and courage to say what is true, that I can faithfully preach this text and nothing beyond it. By your spirit, make this happen through me and in spite of me. In Christ's name, amen.
Caleb Chancey:Alright. So there's 4 things that I wanna talk about today in Psalm 43. And the first of them is this, I can sum it up in these words. In this world, you will have trouble. You will face suffering.
Caleb Chancey:You will face injustice. I'm not talking about you will face the bad consequences that flow directly from your sin. I view that as justice, not injustice. When I do something wrong and bad things happen to me, I get, I understand that. But when I try my best to do the right thing, and sometimes I even do the right thing, bad things can still happen.
Caleb Chancey:That experience of injustice is where I think this Psalm really points us. I'd planned on giving a a longer explication about injustice, but I really don't think I need to. I think all of you know, both objectively and in your own lives, subjectively, about suffering, about injustice, about unfairness. And if you didn't know, the Bible shouts it at you repeatedly. I mean, it doesn't get much more angsty than Solomon in Ecclesiastes when he says, what happens to the fool will happen to me also.
Caleb Chancey:Why then have I been so very wise? He's saying, what good is all my wisdom when the result is the same? And Jesus says, in this world, you will have trouble. Consider David's particular complaints in the first stanza of this psalm. Look at the words that he uses.
Caleb Chancey:He needs to be vindicated. He needs defending because of ungodly, deceitful, and unjust men. He's oppressed, and he is mourning, and he puts all of this squarely in God's lap. The core of his complaint, underneath everything else, he says, God, why have you rejected me? I've held up my end of the bargain, God.
Caleb Chancey:Why haven't you held up yours? Do you know that feeling? Can you relate to it? Has there been a time in your life when you've suffered, and you've come to god and said, this is your fault, why are you doing this to me? Maybe it's something that happens at work.
Caleb Chancey:Maybe it's someone who's been prejudiced against you. Sometimes you've been judged unfairly, wrongly accused, falsely punished. Maybe you've had pain in your family. Maybe you've had a a relationship where you tried to honor God and it, and yet it turned out badly, and now you're hurting and you don't know why. Maybe your kids have turned from you, turned from the Lord, even though you've tried to do what's right.
Caleb Chancey:This experience of injustice, this coming of suffering in trouble is, I fear, universal. It comes for all of us. Not all the time and not in every way, but for all of us, we're going to go through this. And when we do, when we feel that God has rejected us, there's places like Psalm 43 for us to go and look. When we get to that point, like David, that we blame God, that we accuse God, maybe we doubt, maybe we wander, We have God's word that brings us back and teaches us.
Caleb Chancey:So first point, trouble is coming for us. And the rest of these points are gonna be, what do we do in those times? How are we gonna respond? If you are like me, you want an answer to the when and how questions when it comes to the end of suffering. How is God going to fix the problem, and when is God going to fix the problem?
Caleb Chancey:How are you gonna provide for me now that I don't have a job, God? When is this relationship going to be healed? We want concrete answers. We won't find them in Psalm 43. David ends this psalm in the exact same circumstances in which he began it.
Caleb Chancey:Same enemies, same oppression, same injustice. And yet he's immensely comforted. He's not comforted because God has said, look, I'm gonna fix your problems on Tuesday, or I'm specifically going to do this to that bad person who is oppressing you. But something else has happened. Remember that David's core complaint is, God, why have you rejected me?
Caleb Chancey:And that comes in that first stanza. The the second stanza and the third stanza of the psalm are David realizing that God has not rejected him, that his identity is secure in God. And David finds hope in tribulation and comfort in suffering by looking to God. It's really simple. It's very basic.
Caleb Chancey:David looks to God in his time of suffering, and yet it has profound implications for us. David does not look to God so that God's gonna swoop down and fix his problems or get him out of a jam. Now he longs to be taken up to where God is. He wants to be comforted in God's presence, not to have God fix David's problems from afar. Our hope is ultimately in God's presence, not in God coming down and just rearranging our circumstances.
Caleb Chancey:Look more closely at the text, you'll see that it kinda breaks up into 2 parts. The second stanza is David's petition to God. He says, send out your light and your truths that they may lead me. So David asked something from God. And the rest of that stanza elaborates on it.
Caleb Chancey:And then the final one is David saying, because these things will happen, because I know that God's going to keep his promises, he instructs his soul to not be downcast. He instructs his heart to hope in God. And he can do that because he's assured that God's promises are true. When David says, send out your light and your truth, he's making what I think is a very humble prayer, because, remember, David's a king. He's anointed to rule over God's nation.
Caleb Chancey:This is not a man who's blind. This is not a man who doesn't know the truth. This is a guy that stood up and slayed Goliath. I mean, he he has been to the heights, and yet in his suffering, he has the humility to come before the Lord and say, God, I'm not seeing things rightly right now. What I think, what I see, what I think I know might not be right.
Caleb Chancey:My feelings might be leading me astray. God, I need from you light and truth that I may see that I may see rightly and know rightly. We could translate or we could paraphrase what David is saying. God, show me what is true. Show me what is real.
Caleb Chancey:And that leads us to our first point of application, which is that God has answered David's prayer and answered it to David by providing us with his scriptures. The most ready answer to this prayer, When you in that time of trouble, when you say, God, give me light and truth, open your bible and seek God in it, and you will find light and truth there. Those are the very words that David uses to describe God's word a few chapters over in Psalm 119. He he calls God's word a lamp unto his feet and a light to his path. He says this, the sum of your words is truth.
Caleb Chancey:Every one of your righteous rules endures forever. David knows that he can go to the bible, go to God's word and can find in there light and truth. He can have the the true nature of things revealed to him. And so when you feel downcast and oppressed, open your bible, read it in faith, and God will comfort you. If you had the privilege of coming to doctor Ginellett's theological talk back, I think it was in May, he talked about how God, in a special way, meets us in his scriptures.
Caleb Chancey:The holy spirit takes what are just words on a page and makes them come alive. In a sense, we can see behind the curtain into, into God's reality. That this isn't just reading, it's not just discipline, it's not just comprehension, but there's something miraculous and divine that happens in God's word when we read it in faith. Little show and tell. Dietrich, I wanna show you a book.
Caleb Chancey:Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great 20th century pastor, theologian, and martyr, wrote this little book about the Psalms. It's called Psalms, the Prayer Book of the Bible. He wrote this to be a guide to helping believers pray, especially in times of trouble. And his thesis is really this. It's that we meet Jesus in the Psalms and that the Psalms teach us how to pray.
Caleb Chancey:And one of his main arguments is that the Psalms can give us prayers. They provide for us right ways of praying when we don't otherwise know what to pray. They teach us how to respond to the circumstances around us. And he he puts it it has a beautiful way of putting it. He says, the richness of God's word ought to determine our prayers, not the poverty of our heart.
Caleb Chancey:When there's times that our hearts are poor, that we feel emptied out, or we feel like we're suffering, it's a great time to cling to God's word and to pray it. I would even go a step further here. Beyond just reading your bible, beyond just praying through the words of your bible, I challenge you to memorize it. Maybe not the whole thing right at first, but more than just sound bites and snippets. You can do this.
Caleb Chancey:You can you can memorize scripture. All of us can. I certainly could do much, much more than I do. We are promised that suffering will come. It's it's not a conditional if in the bible, it's when suffering comes.
Caleb Chancey:It will come. When it does come, when we're faced with trouble, what a great hope it would be for us, what a rock for us to stand on if we have hidden God's word in our heart. That instead of in our exhaustion, in our weariness, in our sadness, as the trouble is upon us, in that hour you don't wanna be saying, I should open my bible and read something that makes me feel better. We should take the time now to store up that word, to treasure it, to learn to study it, that when that hour comes, we are prepared. I don't wanna oversell here.
Caleb Chancey:It's it's not like, trouble is a vampire, and if you memorize scripture, you can ward it off. That that doesn't happen. But neither do I want to undersell. We believe great things about God's word. We believe that it comes from God to us, and it is profoundly unwise if we are given this great gift and we do not use it.
Caleb Chancey:We don't treasure it. We don't take advantage of it now. So to sum up, point 2, in times of trouble, we should seek light and truth from God. And we find that light and truth most readily when we see it and we meet God in his scriptures. My third point, really is about worship, but it rests on this kind of bizarre transition between the first stanza of the psalm and the second.
Caleb Chancey:Because if you read the first stanza by itself, it's this downcast, like, God, why you hate me? Why are all these bad things happening to me? I've got this long list of complaints, I'm oppressed. And then with no transition at all, 2nd stanza, starting in verse 3, God, all I wanna do is be in your presence. I wanna play my guitar.
Caleb Chancey:I wanna sing. You're my you're my joy. So verse 1, God, I blame you. Verse 3, God, I just wanna be where you are. It almost seems like it's 2 separate Psalms, and yet I think it's intentional, this juxtaposition, that these things are right here to get our attention, that David is doing this on purpose, he's teaching us something.
Caleb Chancey:I think what he's teaching us is this, that God's presence satisfies us in a way that having our complaints resolved never could. That we are made to worship God and we are satisfied in God's presence and all of the things that we that that trouble us, all the things that we suffer from are healed in God's presence. All that we long for finds its solution and its rest in him. David uses a very definite progression in verses 34. So God sends out this light and truth, and it comes to him.
Caleb Chancey:And then that light and truth leads David. It leads him into God's presence, to God's dwelling place, to his holy hill. But not just generally into God's presence, it leads him to the altar of God. Because David knows we can't approach God or worship God without sacrifice. We must go through the altar.
Caleb Chancey:And when when he's when he's done that, his heart responds joyfully in singing, and he calls God his joy. Maybe you were like me and you think that this is just David longing for, an escape. He doesn't wanna solve his problems. He just wants to put them aside for a little while. He wants to be forgetful.
Caleb Chancey:And in that sense, I mean, is he treating worship like people treat alcohol? Like I can just sit down with a bottle and forget about my cares for a while? Like I just wanna go church and sing a happy song, and everything will be okay, and then I can deal with the problems on Monday. I really wrestled with this question as as I was preparing the sermon, and frankly, as I was living my life and trying to deal with trouble. God showed me this, that David's not being an escapist, just the opposite.
Caleb Chancey:He's being profoundly practical. He's being even realistic, profoundly so, in seeking to worship in the face of trouble. When David encounters futility and injustice in the world around him, he doesn't go back to the world saying, alright, don't give that to me again. This time, give me something that I want. He doesn't look for justice in the world because he knows that he won't find it there.
Caleb Chancey:He doesn't look for meaning or significance in the world because that's not what the world has to offer. It's like going to a car dealership to get fresh vegetables, They just don't have it there. You've gotta look somewhere else. We could use the language of Isaiah 55, you know, where David has has eaten what the world has to offer and it does not satisfy him. He's feasted on food that does not satisfy.
Caleb Chancey:And instead of going back for seconds, he knows he has to sit down at a different table. More than having his problems fixed, he needs to go to God's presence where he is truly satisfied. He needs to see, he he needs to know that God accepts him. He needs to know that god has not rejected him. He needs to see the beauty of the lord that he was made to love.
Caleb Chancey:And when he's done that, when we have done that, when we have been in God's presence, then we can have endurance through suffering. More than just endurance, we can have such a sure confidence that God has provided for us and loved us, that we can go out into an unjust world and be instruments of justice there. When we don't have to find our meaning from the world, then it's okay if the world is meaningless and it's okay for us to go out and to suffer on behalf of the gospel. It's okay for us to go forth when we don't have clear answers because we get our answers from God. So by worshiping, by stepping back, he's actually battling injustice.
Caleb Chancey:He's battling back against trouble. You may not think that worship is a way to fight injustice, but I stand here before you today to challenge you that it is. When we love god's law, and it's not just rules to us, but it's beautiful, and we will obey it better, and we will forgive more readily. When we remember God's great works and his faithfulness, we will trust his promises more when we're in difficult circumstances. When we know, when we have tasted the satisfaction perseverance when life doesn't turn out the way that we want it to.
Caleb Chancey:And if we see God as a beautiful and loving king, then we will work harder and longer to establish his kingdom on earth. Don't have time to look at the passage in detail, but Acts 4 23 through 31 gives a great picture of how worship is effective in the face of trouble. So the the church in acts 4 is brand new. It's 4 chapters old. And these new believers are encountering resistance.
Caleb Chancey:The Roman and religious leaders of the day are threatening them. You know, we're going to arrest you. We're going to take your stuff away. And they have this beautiful prayer that they raise up in response. First, they worship God and they say, God, you have made everything.
Caleb Chancey:You rule over everything. And then they say, God, look upon these threats that are made against us and grant us boldness to go forward and continue to do your work. God, look on these threats, and you're expecting to say, protect us, deliver us, defend us, do something, God. But instead, no, God, grant us boldness to ignore the threats altogether. We have seen that you are beautiful.
Caleb Chancey:We know that you are in control and we are so convinced that you are ruling over everything right now that the believers rightly recognize that their problem was unbelief. They needed to trust God, and if they did and they went forward boldly, God would protect them, God would satisfy them, God would provide for them. Their prayer is to ignore the threats made against them. That kind of singular focus, that fearlessness, that determination only comes from when we have been in God's glorious presence. If your soul is not driven by profound and lasting delight and joy, then I fear the troubles of the world will bog you down.
Caleb Chancey:It takes that strong joy just to make it through. In all of this, we see that when David worships in the midst of his troubles, when he longs for God's presence, he is not escaping. He's being practical. Worship is a cure for trouble and injustice. Because it is, that brings me to the last point that I wanna make today.
Caleb Chancey:Because worship is a cure for trouble and because we are a troubled people, we need to worship God. We need to see Christ. We see him in this Psalm. When when David cries out, send out your light and your truth, he's calling for Jesus. Jesus says of himself, I am the light of the world.
Caleb Chancey:I am the way, the truth, and the life. That call, send out your light in your truth. If addressed to Jesus is, oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel. Jesus also fulfills that progression of worship that we saw David cry out for. Jesus is the light and truth of God that comes into the world, and he is the fullness of God's presence, perfectly God amongst us in human form.
Caleb Chancey:And remember that as soon as that light and truth goes out and as soon as it leads David into the presence of God, David recognizes a sacrifice is necessary. It must go through the altar. And Jesus is that sacrifice. Jesus leads us through the altar. He tore the curtain.
Caleb Chancey:He made the way in his own flesh for us. And because of his resurrection, he leads us in triumphant and everlasting song. We've looked at God's word today and how it's a treasure to us. Jesus is the word of God, the word made flesh. And because he's alive, he comes to us even when we're not so disciplined in reading and studying and praying and memorizing.
Caleb Chancey:It doesn't depend on us, it depends on him. More than this, Psalm 43 speaks of deep and profound troubles and injustice. We see and know that Jesus is the answer to those things. Have you suffered injustice? I say that Jesus is your brother.
Caleb Chancey:He has suffered injustice and far worse than any of us have. Though truly innocent, He was executed by the state in a sham trial that took place in the middle of the night. More than that, though completely without sin and utterly blameless, god laid on him my sin, your sin, the inequity of us all. He took all of that on himself, though he did not deserve any of it. Do you feel rejected by god?
Caleb Chancey:I felt rejected by god. Do you feel rejected? Jesus again is our brother. Though he had lived always from everlasting in perfect unity with God, He was cut off. God turns his face from him on account of our sin on the cross.
Caleb Chancey:And he was cut off so that we don't have to be because he suffered and died in our place. We know that we are accepted, that we are not rejected, that we are not cut off. Whatever troubles we face, and indeed we may face great troubles, but whatever troubles we face, we know that they are not ultimate troubles. We have the promise of resurrection. It's demonstrated in Jesus' resurrection as promised to us by the Holy Spirit.
Caleb Chancey:We will rise from our troubles because Christ has already defeated them. I quoted earlier from John, when Jesus says, in this world, you will have trouble, But he does not stop there. The next thing that he says, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. We are secure and we have hope in the person of Jesus Christ. See, David's hope that he talks about in the 3rd stanza down in verse 5 is general.
Caleb Chancey:He says, hope in God. It's it's not a very concrete instruction. It's very general. Hope in God. But we have been given the fullness of that hope.
Caleb Chancey:It says in Titus 2 13, we are waiting for our blessed hope, and it says what it is, The appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ. And that blessed hope is what overcomes our troubles. In Romans 818, Paul says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. That glory is revealed in the risen Christ, the ascended Christ, and soon in the returned Christ. To face the concrete troubles that we face, to deal with the injustice that we see on the news, to deal with the oppression that some of us deal with daily, We need to look in the face of our savior and know that he loves us, that he accepts us, and that he himself conquers.
Caleb Chancey:On that last day when the darkness lifts and the smoke blows away, it is Jesus himself in Revelation 21 who wipes away the tears of the oppressed and the broken and the hurting and the troubled. It is through Jesus that the broken things of the world are made right and made new. He has answered David's prayer, but in a far greater way than David could have imagined. Yes, he will vindicate us, but by his own righteousness. And yes, he will indeed defend us, but not by our merits, by his own.
Caleb Chancey:Our great cry in suffering is that Christ would return, that he would come back and fix what is broken. And as we long in these days to see suffering lifted, don't try to separate that from God. Don't put that far away. Recognize that as we long for things to be made right, we long for Christ to come back. When we say it shouldn't be like this, we have in our minds a way that it should be.
Caleb Chancey:And that, by the Holy Spirit, what we are granted to see is a world that's just and true and has meaning. It isn't senseless. That is only found in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. Pray with me. Come, Lord Jesus, is our prayer.
Caleb Chancey:That's what we long for. We live in a world that is broken and troubled, and we are broken and we are troubled. And you have come and you have given us victory over the grave and over sin and over the kingdom of the world through your death and resurrection. But yet the consequences of sin are still around us, and in this world, we are still troubled. Will you lead us into your presence that we might have hope, concrete and sure hope in you?
Caleb Chancey:God, might you come and make this alright? Show us in the meantime what we can do. Give us the courage to do it. Give us the strength to do it according to your spirit, but, god, we know that suffering remains until you come and take it away, until you say enough and that it's over. For that day, we long.
Caleb Chancey:We see now in the mirror dimly, but then face to face. Lord Jesus, come. Your name we pray. Amen.