Psalms, #11                                                                     

April 1, 2010

WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?

Psalm 22

          Our church body is hurting.  Let me just mention the names of people who are seriously struggling right now:

·       Dave Blakemore’s daughter died

·       Betty Hankins’ husband, Keith died

·       Don and Bobbi Pearson lost a son recently

·       Betty Ehresman lost her legs

·       Roger Hart’s wife, Tracy, died unexpectedly yesterday

·       Arliss Schleiger’s husband, Bob, is dying, doesn’t know Christ.  Met with him once, presented the gospel. He understands but isn’t ready.

·       Marie Hoch, dying, perhaps in a week or two.

·       Norma Gingery, dying. 

·       Bob Daniels’ lymphoma has returned.

·       Anne Rudolph has 2^nd and 3^rd degree burns are not healing well.

·       Langs & Shanes recovering from the trauma of the mission field. 

And that’s not all! 

          Where is God when it hurts? That’s often our question, isn’t it?  When the pain and anguish and suffering just continue relentlessly, we want to know:  Where is God? Does He know how much we hurt?  Does He care?  Why doesn’t He do something about it?

          That was Jesus’ question, as He hung on the cross.  As it turns out, Jesus was quoting from Psalm 22, which was written a thousand years before.  It starts with this line that Jesus actually quoted,

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

so far from the words of my groaning?

2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

by night, and am not silent.

          We cannot possibly understand or appreciate the agony that Jesus felt when the Father rejected Him. Jesus repeatedly taught that He and the Father were one, united in a way that we cannot imagine. But then, there, the Father turned His back on the Son, and Jesus cried out, “Why?!” 

          He knew why, of course.  He knew that He was bearing the sin and guilt of the world.  He had told His disciples, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28). Every false accusation, every abuse of a child, every neglect of the poor, every grudge carried, every wish for someone’s misfortune, every greedy or lustful thought, every lie of every color—every sin committed by anyone who had ever lived, or was living, or would live in the future, was laid on Jesus, and the Holy God could no longer look at Him. “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (Hab 1:13). 

          But just because we understand something intellectually, doesn’t mean that it penetrates to the level of our emotions.  I think Jesus understood why He was abandoned, but this cry of agony is not really a request for reasons; it’s a cry of pain.  It expresses His anguish at the loss of His fellowship with the Father. That separation is what we call spiritual death, or hell.

          Sometimes when we ask, “Why?” we really don’t want to know a reason—there usually isn’t one that we can grasp.  But we hurt, and we cry out, “Why, God?  Why me?  Why my child?  Why my spouse?”  The psalmist expresses how we feel:  God seems very far away in times like that.  “Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.”  We are not silent in our pain, but God often is.  What do you do then?  What do you do when you are screaming into the silence, and nothing comes back, not even your own echo?  Jesus knows what that feels like.  He was there, on the cross.  He didn’t get an answer, either.  Where is God when it hurts? 

          Sometimes, there are people who are the immediate cause of our suffering, or who at least gloat over us in our pain. They take great delight in our downfall, and maybe even mock us for our faith in God.  The psalm describes the situation this way:

6 But I am a worm and not a man,

scorned by men and despised by the people.

7 All who see me mock me;

they hurl insults, shaking their heads:

8 "He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him.

Let him deliver him, since he delights in him."

          That’s the way it was for Jesus.  Hung up naked on a cross in a public place, so that others would not dare to commit His crimes, the Jewish authorities, especially, mocked Him.  “Oh yeah, now let’s see what Mr. High and Mighty does.  He talked so much about His Father this, and His Father that.  Let’s see if the Lord rescues him.”  We call this, “rubbing salt in the wound.”  They are doing everything they can to make Jesus feel worse.  Not only does He have to suffer one of the most painful forms of execution ever devised, but He also has to listen to them mocking Him.  And in light of His earlier cry of abandonment, these jibes cut all the more deeply.  He wonders why the Father doesn’t rescue Him, too! 

          Sometimes, we get in situations like this, where we have let it be known that we are Christians; we tell others we trust in God; we brag about how great God is, and how good and loving and powerful He is; we tell stories of how He has helped us in this or that situation.  And then something happens and God is absent.  He doesn’t come through for us. We pray.  We plead with Him. We tell Him that His reputation is on the line.  We point out how much glory He will get if He would just come deliver us or heal us or help us now.  But still, the heavens are brass, and there is no answer.  We continue to suffer, even though others taunt us, “Where’s your God now?”  We have no answer for that, either, and it makes our suffering all the more bitter.  Where is God when it hurts?

          The psalmist continues:

14 I am poured out like water,

and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax;

it has melted away within me.

15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;

you lay me in the dust of death.

          This was probably a very good description of how Jesus felt, following His ordeal of the night before and the brutal beating of that morning.  Feeling like He had been poured out like water; like His heart had turned to wax and melted away.  And His bones were out of joint—His shoulders were literally dislocated from hanging on the cross;  no strength left—just all dried up.  His tongue stuck to the roof of His mouth, so He croaked, “I am thirsty”, and they held a sponge with some vinegar on it up to His mouth on a stick.  Very shortly thereafter, they literally laid Him in the dust as they took Him down from the cross. 

          You may have felt some of that at some time in your life—maybe not as severely as that, but something like it.  What do you do with that? Where is God when it hurts? 

          The psalm goes on,

16 Dogs have surrounded me;

a band of evil men has encircled me,

they have pierced my hands and my feet.

17 I can count all my bones;

people stare and gloat over me.

18 They divide my garments among them

and cast lots for my clothing.

          The Jews called Gentiles “dogs” as a term of racial prejudice and derision.  So it was that when Jesus was crucified, He was surrounded by Gentiles—the Roman execution squad.  They pierced His hands and feet, nailing Him to the cross like you might nail an animal you shot up on the barn door. 

          But then there is an interesting detail in this psalm that catches our attention: “They divide my garments among them, and cast lots for my clothing.”  How incredible that this is exactly what the soldiers did as Jesus hung dying on the cross above them—they divided up His clothes, and cast lots to see who would get the last piece, the seamless undergarment. 

          So this is a remarkable psalm that both describes the author’s suffering and also predicts with amazing accuracy the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion.  There is no attempt here to sugar-coat the situation.  He tells it like it is, with excruciating details and emotional feeling, and we can identify with parts of it ourselves.  Where is God when it hurts? 

          Psalm 22 has an answer of sorts for that question:  interspersed between the descriptions of his trouble, he says things that tell us where his head and heart are:

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;

you are the praise of Israel.

4 In you our fathers put their trust;

they trusted and you delivered them.

5 They cried to you and were saved;

in you they trusted and were not disappointed.

          When we are suffering in this world, we should remind ourselves that God is still on the throne.  He has not abdicated His position of authority over the world.  We should read the Scripture and take note of all the times God delivered His people when they put their trust in Him.  And we should continue to trust Him, no matter what happens to us.  It’s true: we walk by faith and not by sight.  There are times that we just have to go on what we know is true, even though all the evidence is against it.  The world will say we are crazy, but in the end, we will be vindicated.  God is no man’s debtor—no one who trusts in Him will say at the judgment seat, “you failed me.”  Keep your eyes on Him, and keep trusting.  

          As we wait, we should pray, as the psalmist does:

11 Do not be far from me,

for trouble is near and there is no one to help.

…19 But you, O Lord, be not far off;

O my Strength, come quickly to help me.

20 Deliver my life from the sword,

my precious life from the power of the dogs.

21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;

save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

          As we wait for the Lord, we should continue to pray for help.  Don’t give up.  Keep asking, keep pleading.  You see the graphic imagery here—this man is really in trouble: he feels like he’s facing swords, dogs, lions, wild oxen.  And there is no one else to help him. But he keeps his eyes on the Lord and keeps praying for help.

          So we keep trusting, and we keep praying, and we keep praising God. 

22 I will declare your name to my brothers;

in the congregation I will praise you.

23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!

All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!

Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!

24 For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one;

he has not hidden his face from him

but has listened to his cry for help.

          Trust, and pray, and praise.  This last verse is a statement of faith.  He hasn’t been rescued yet, but he expects to be.  He is so sure that God will listen to his prayer for help that he puts this in the past tense, as though it had already happened.  He’s determined to praise God, and calls others to do the same. 

          Where is God when it hurts?  We often don’t know.  But we do know God is still on the throne; God is good; God is worthy of our praise; He has often delivered His people in the past.  So we should continue to trust Him, pray to Him, and even praise Him in the midst of our pain. 

          This psalm is an amazing prophecy of Jesus’ experience on the cross, and as such, it  points us to another answer to that question of where God is when it hurts.  Jesus went through all these things that the writer did, and that we sometimes do, only far worse.  He has been there Himself.  So when we are suffering from some painful situation in life—whether it be physical pain, or emotional pain, or whatever—we can say, our Lord was there, too.  Where is God when it hurts?  He was on the cross, suffering along with us. 

          And more than just with us, but for us.   It was our sin that put Him there.  We may complain that we don’t deserve the suffering we are going through, but neither did Jesus.  That’s the point of the cross.  That’s the point of this evening—that we would come to grips with the fact that Jesus suffered what we deserved but He did not, and therefore He is able to be the comforter and the strength of all who suffer for any reason—or no reason.  In your pain, look at the cross.  Know for certain that Jesus suffered more than any of us ever will, and He did it because of our sin.