Anxious Waiting

Psalm 4

Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer. How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?Selah Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord will hear when I call to him. In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.Selah Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord. Many are asking, “Who can show us any good?” Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord. You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Calvin Trillin, in his book Remembering Denny tells us about Denny Hansen. Everyone knew that Denny was headed for privilege and prestige. He was one of these young men that seemed destined for success. A rising star in everything that he did. He was a varsity swimmer. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He won the Francis Gordon Brown Prize as a junior at Yale. He was a Rhodes Scholar, sent to Oxford to study on the expense of the state. He was a member of the Elizabethan Club and the Skull and Keys. Life magazine covered his graduation. He talked often of becoming Governor of California, but everyone thought that was aiming too low. They assumed that he was going to be President of the United States.

This poor man, however, never fulfilled people's expectations. He never became the success that seemed his destiny. He could not live up to the expectations of his culture. He slowly sank farther and farther into despair, and at the age of 55 he took his own life. After the memorial service for Denny someone said this, “What struck me this afternoon is that his story is really not all that unfamiliar. It's a matter of degree and not difference in kind, I think. I've come to believe that we live in a time when those people who were golden boys of one kind or another have to take great falls at some point in their lives. And if you don't figure that out in some way and don't perhaps find a different spiritual basis to go on with your life, then it is indeed over, whether it's suicide or drugs or one thing or another. ... You know, the unhappy truth about our time, I think, from the fifties until now, is that you're either a winner or a loser, and that makes most of us suffer.” (pp. 49-50)

Most of us suffer, because, in the eyes of society, most of us are losers. Our culture measures success in specific ways, and when we fail to measure up in those ways, then we are failures. There is always someone better than us. There is always someone more successful, someone who has a better family, someone who has a better life. According to the cultural rules of the game, we have lost.

We are here this evening because we know that we have to find a different spiritual basis to go with life than what the culture presents to us. We know that we cannot live on our own merit. We know that our lives, if guided and directed by what the world thinks, will have no lasting impact. We know this. This is why we chose to trust in God. This is why we are searching for answers and for fulfilment in him. This is why we come to meet with him in worship. This is why we read from this book. We are looking for God to give us what we need. With the psalmist we call out to God.

1     Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

be merciful to me and hear my prayer.

We come almost begging God to give us peace, to give us joy, to give us life. We come knowing that we are not worthy of his love. We know we cannot earn our salvation, yet this is something hard for us to swallow, something hard to understand. The structures of society seem to seep into our faith, and we begin to judge our faith by the categories of our culture. Are we successful? Are we growing in our love of God? Are more people turning to God because of us? Is the name of God held in more honour?

Often we seem to be failing. We listen to the news and hear Christianity derided. We tell our friends we are Christian and they put us down and call us names. We tell people we go to church, and they mock us for our weakness. We go to work and hear the precious name of Jesus bandied about as a curse. The world takes the things that we hold dear and turns them into objects of scorn. Our prayer goes up with the psalmist.

2     How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?

How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?

How long will people turn away from the truth? How long will they look with scorn on the free offer of salvation? How long will people think that they can make a good life for themselves without Jesus? How long will Christianity be looked upon as something outdated, antiquated, old-fashioned? How long will people make idols out of themselves, or money, or fame, or their children, or their countries, or the environment? How long will God allow the world to continue as it is without intervening in mercy or judgement? How long do we have to put up with the world as it is and while anxiously waiting for its renewal? How long do we have to put up with this unbelieving and perverse generation before Jesus comes to set all things right?

It is hard to pray a prayer like this. It is hard to bring to God the issues and frustrations that we have with the world. I was talking with a friend, Eric, not that long ago and he told me about a time when he had difficulty seeing the reason for praying. He had lost his daughter to a drunk driver when she was 19 and on her way home from a friend's house at the end of the summer. He told me he fought with the idea of praying for a long time.

He said, “At that time I thought that prayer made no difference. God is all knowing, right? And he sees and controls all things. If prayer makes any difference, then why did my daughter die? I prayed that God would keep her safe. I prayed that God would bring her home to me. I prayed that I would be able to spend a long happy life with her. But he did not hear my prayers. He is going to do what he wants to do, and there is nothing I can say to him that is going to make any difference.”

Sometimes prayer does not seem to make a difference. The psalmist gives us hope.

3     Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself;

the Lord will hear when I call to him.

Even though the world is against us, God is for us. Even though the world does not understand why we love the Lord, he has called us as his own and given us new life. Even though the world loves delusions and seeks false gods, we follow the one true God. We can have confidence that God will hear us because he has chosen us and set us apart as his children. He has called us to him, and that causes us to turn away from the delusions and false gods of the world to follow the true God. We can be confident that God hears our prayers if we have the seal of Jesus Christ upon us. As it says in Hebrews 4:14-16

“... [S]ince we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

We can approach our almighty, creator God with boldness because we know that, for those who are covered in the garments of faith in Christ, this throne is not a throne of judgement, but of grace. We have a high priest who has experienced all the pain and suffering that we have experienced, and then some. Our God is not some distant unconcerned, misunderstanding god, but the God who can sympathise with our every need.

We are set apart by God. Set apart to the ministry of prayer. Set apart to pray for the renewal of those we love. Set apart to pray for the ending of war. Set apart to pray for reconciliation between peoples. Set apart to pray for the ending of persecution against Christians. Set apart to pray for God's glory to be revealed. Set apart to pray for our own sanctification, for the growth of our own faith. We are set apart to be godly. We are called to be holy, pure, without sin.

4     In your anger do not sin;

Our anxious waiting may cause us to get angry. When it seems as though God does not answer our prayers, we may feel hurt and frustrated. It may cause us to get a bit unruly. It may cause us to become downright rude at times. When Eric lost his daughter he was not that easy to be around. He was constantly angry with people, and mostly with God. He did not know why God took her, and he was sick of waiting to find out. He was anxiously waiting for the pain to subside, for his depression to lift. For God's comfort to come. It did come in time, though his pain will remain until he is reunited with his daughter in glory.

Waiting for God to come through on his promises can cause us to become angry. This anger, in and of itself is not wrong. Jesus himself got angry when people were not doing God's will. But our anger must not lead us to sin. We must get angry about the right things. We must get angry about the things that cause God anger. The psalmist is urging us to take stock of our anger and to examine it. He is urging us to not get carried away by it, but take time to explore it.

when you are on your beds,

search your hearts and be silent.

When we are alone in the silence of our own thoughts at the end or the beginning of the day, that is when we are to search our motives. When we are most vulnerable to the wanderings of a busy mind, when we are most likely to drift off to sleep, that is when the psalmist calls us to search our hearts. When our conscience is strongest because we are not yet awake enough to rationalise away our guilt, we can search our hearts and be silent before God. We can turn over to him the coming day. We can pray to him that we would be able to live our lives for him. Or when we are on our beds at the end of the day, we can run the day through our minds and praise God for the good that we did, and repent of the sins that we committed. In this way we can do what the psalmist asks. We can;

5     Offer right sacrifices

and trust in the Lord.

Our world is such a place that it is hard to know what right sacrifices are. Our culture has robbed the words 'right' and 'wrong' of all meaning. We have more respect for someone who says, “I think it is like this,” than someone who says, “It is like this.” The world would have us believe that moral truth is relative; that there is no objective 'right' and 'wrong' but simply what works for you, or for you family, or for society. We can identify with the statement of the psalmist.

6     Many are asking, “Who can show us any good?”

But we know this is simply a way for people to assuage their conscience; to make what they do seem less wrong, less bad, less evil. This way of thinking is simply another attempt to make ourselves into God, to make ourselves the ultimate judge of truth. This is simply a way to avoid our responsibilities to follow the truths outlined in God's revelation to us. So we ask with the psalmist.

Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord.

In the face of the relativism of the day, we ask for God's revelation. In the face of the denials of absolute truth, we point to the Holy Word of God. To those who ask, “Who can show us any good?” We point to God incarnate. We point to truth made flesh. We point to the ultimate good. We point to Jesus Christ. We point to the one so incredibly described by Paul in Colossians 1.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Col 1:15-20)

We ask God to let the light of his face shine upon us, because then we know true goodness. Then we know true love. Then we know true mercy. Then we know true joy. When we get these small glimpses of God's face, we are overwhelmed with praise. We cry out to God.

7     You have filled my heart with greater joy

than when their grain and new wine abound.

God gives us little glimpses of his glory to give us the strength to endure our anxious waiting. He gives us little examples of his majesty. He shows us his power by bringing people to faith in his son, by bringing someone back from the brink of the grave, by helping us overcome an addiction to sin. He gives us the grace and peace we need to relieve some of our anxiety.

Next week will be celebrating the sacrament of holy communion. This sacrament is one of the things which God has given us that is meant to sustain us on our journey. We will be looking at a passage in Isaiah which describes the feast that God will give at the end of time. This feast will not only include incredible food, but at that time God will renew the world. He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples. He will wipe away all of our tears and remove all of our disgrace. The incredible thing is that in the sacrament of communion we get a foretaste of this feast. We get an appetiser to the sumptuous banquet prepared for us in glory.

This is just one of the ways in which God works to relieve some of our anxiety as we wait for him to return. It is things like this that allow us to say with the psalmist;

8     I will lie down and sleep in peace,

for you alone, O Lord,

make me dwell in safety.

Conclusion

In the face of our failure to measure up to the terms society has set for us, we search for a different spiritual basis to go on with life. As people who are called by God and set apart by him, we come to him in prayer. Expressing to him our pain and our anxiety while we wait for him to return opens up our hearts to him. With this we can lie down and sleep in peace, for God alone makes us dwell in safety.

Let us Pray