God, Did You Fall Asleep? A Meditation in Psalm 44

Reading: Psalm 44  

Do you ever wonder if God is sleeping on the job? Or, do you ever want to say, “God, I know you have done many wonderful things in the past—I could certainly speak of great acts of God which culminate in the cross and resurrection of our Lord Jesus—but lately, if I dare say so, it seems like you might have fallen asleep. I need you to wake up and act.” You might not dare to pray such things even if you felt them, but the psalmist did.

Psalm 44 may adjust your understanding of the kinds of prayer God invites to come to Him, even teaches us to bring to Him, and of the willingness of our God to hear such prayers. The first 8 verses start off sounding like a promising and proper prayer.

We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what you did in their days, in days long ago. ²With your hand you drove out the nations and planted our fathers; you crushed the peoples and made our fathers flourish. ³It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.

⁴You are my King and my God, who decrees victories for Jacob. ⁵Through you we push back our enemies; through your name we trample our foes. ⁶I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory; ⁷but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame. ⁸In God we make our boast all day long, and we will praise your name forever. (Psalm 44:1-8)

The psalmist speaks of the truths of God's deliverance that have been handed down—what God did in days of old. There is no denying the history of redemption laid out in Scripture. The psalmist trusts God and even boasts in God. Suddenly the prayer changes direction. The current experience of the psalmist causes him to wonder if God has fallen asleep.

⁹But now you have rejected and humbled us; you no longer go out with our armies. ¹⁰You made us retreat before the enemy, and our adversaries have plundered us. ¹¹You gave us up to be devoured like sheep and have scattered us among the nations. ¹²You sold your people for a pittance, gaining nothing from their sale. ¹³You have made us a reproach to our neighbors, the scorn and derision of those around us. ¹⁴You have made us a byword among the nations; the peoples shake their heads at us. ¹⁵My disgrace is before me all day long, and my face is covered with shame ¹⁶at the taunts of those who reproach and revile me, because of the enemy, who is bent on revenge. 

¹⁷All this happened to us, though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant. ¹⁸Our hearts had not turned back; our feet had not strayed from your path. ¹⁹But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals and covered us over with deep darkness. ²⁰If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, ²¹would not God have discovered it, since he knows the secrets of the heart? ²²Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

There were many times in Israel's history when afflictions like these came, bit God was “off the hook” because Israel had forgotten His name and been false to the covenant. However, this is not such a time. This list of current experiences ends with a familiar verse (Psalm 44:22)—familiar because it is quoted in the New Testament. The Christian Standard Bible captures the emotion of the statement well, “Because of You we are slain all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.” In other words, “God, because you have stopped doing for us what you did for our fathers, we are being destroyed while You do nothing to even slow down the enemy.”

The psalmist, feeling forsaken by God, says what seems inappropriate—at least to our sensibilities. He says something that almost feels we've reached the edge of blasphemy.

Wake up, LORD! Why are You sleeping? Get up! Don't reject us forever! (Psa 44:23 HCSB)

Elijah mocked the priests of baal with a similar question about why their altar was not burning (1 Kings 18:27). Now, the psalmist in his despair is bringing a similar kind of question directly to God. He is nearly mocking God in this prayer because of His inactivity. We may wonder why the psalmist dares to pray this way. However, there is a bigger question. Why did God put a prayer like this in our inspired prayer book? Is God inviting us to bring our worst feelings about Him to Him in prayer? Is God willing to bear our near mocking and ridicule in prayer about His seeming inaction? He must be.

It should be no surprise to us that God is willing to bear our near mocking and ridicule in prayer when we feel forsaken and in despair, because Jesus came and bore our mocking and ridicule at the cross while we were still enemies. How much more, now that we are saved, will the Father not bear our fears and doubts when we bring them to the Author and Finisher of our faith. In fact, as we are discovering in our series in Job at Gulf Coast Community Church, Job is commended for bringing his hardest questions, his greatest doubts, and his accusations to God with a earnest desire for God to hear and answer. Far too often, we feel we must finish our faith and then bring finished faith to the Father. Only the One who gave us faith can complete it.

What is God's answer to our crying, “Because of You we are slain all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered”? His answer is,

³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

God assures us in the cross of our Lord Jesus, that His stance toward us is love, even in the midst of the kinds of afflictions described in Psalm 44:9-19. In fact, even in these horrible circumstances, God is working it together for our good. He is not condemning us, He justifies us (Romans 8:28-36). So God not only hears our prayers, bears our near mocking Him for inaction, He answers us with assurance of His love, and in so doing He matures our faith.

Love the Gospel, Live the Gospel, Advance the Gospel,

Jerry

Tired of Living on Your Tears?

Reading: Psalm 42  

When I was much younger, I thought the opening of Psalm 42:1 was an expression deep passion for God. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” I suppose that was partly due to not reading it in context carefully (my greatest exposure to this verse was from lyrics in a song), and partly due to my own experience of life. Depression was far from me and life was all before me. I am generally optimistic.

However, the experience of life and many times of reading Psalm 42 have made clear that the deer in this psalm is a deer that is dehydrated and is about to pass out. This deer is in a dessert place and all is dry—not dripping with passion. This thirst for God (Psalm 42:2) is not a deep, intense, longing desire, but a deep, intense desperation. It might be expressed as, “I'm going to die if God doesn't show up and meet with me.”

Why? Why is the psalmist feeling as if it is “God, or bust!”? In contemporary terminology we would say he is depressed—seriously, clinically, actually, whatever other term you'd like to apply, depressed!

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" … (Psalm 42:3)

The psalmist is experiencing life in such a way that those looking on question what's wrong with him. “Where is your God?” expresses their doubt about whether his God exists, or whether he has been forsaken by God (due to sin). Jesus experienced this kind of ridicule and mockery (Matthew 27:43). That was what he experienced from the outside. But worse still was what he experienced from within.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. (Psalm 42:7)

From within, the psalmist experienced doubts about God's intentions toward him. Though the language may seem foreign to us at first, it is not so difficult to comprehend what is meant. The psalmist's experience of life right now is as if he is in the sea, trying to find shore, but God keeps pummeling him with wave after wave crashing in on him. Every time he comes up for air a wave pummels him again.

The word for deep is also the word for the sea, or the abyss. This is the “pit”— the pit of despair. The psalmist is going from one pit to another, one depth of despair to another, because, as far as he can tell, God is directing the storm to pummel him. Are you in that place in now? Have you been? Do you know someone who is? This psalm is written for you and me in times like this. It is written to help us pray when we are in despair, and to help us know how to pray with others when they are.

In his despair the worshiper remembers when things weren't as they are now. He remembers times when he participated with the people of God in joyous praise and festivities before God. He recalls the time when all was bright. (Psalm 42:4) But now, all is dark for him.

The psalmist then does something instructive. He speaks to his own soul, to his own thoughts and heart. “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” (Psalm 42:5) Sometimes it just helps to vocalize this truth. To remind ourselves of God's promises though our feelings are screaming otherwise.

However, the psalmist doesn't merely tell himself truth that he doesn't feel. He also is honest to God about how he feels. He brings his toughest questions to God also.

⁹I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?" ¹⁰My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?" (Psalm 42:9-10)

And then he repeats the instruction to his own soul. (See Psalm 42:11)

When we are in the place of despair, depression to the point of feeling we will die if God doesn't answer us, when it seems we have been living on our tears, we must remember that there were better times, we must speak truth to our souls about God's promises for our future, and we must be honest with God about what we are suffering and experiencing. Bring your worst fears to God. Bring your depression to God! But also bring His promises. This is a prayer for the depressed. This is a prayer for all of us as we learn how to pray with and for each other.

Love the Gospel, Live the Gospel, Advance the Gospel,

Jerry