Parched

Zach Marks

One Off • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

Psalm 42–43

Hope

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In our times of feeling abandoned we can still have hope in Jesus who sacrificed himself for us.

Notes

Transcript

Introduction

Dismiss Masterpiece Kids and Spanish Ministry

I am so happy to see you all here!

I have titled this sermon Parched. We are gonna get to why in a moment but I was thinking about this one time that I was thirsty. Now I would like to preface this story with I am fine and mom I am sorry in advance that I never told you this.

My very first job was when I was 14 and I bailed hay for this crazy old farmer named Jerry. Now when I say “crazy old” I mean that he was insane and he constantly told me that he was old. Well I remember on my first day I showed up to work and we went to this big barn that he had where we stored the chaff hay that he had. I remember 2 things super clearly, the place was massive and it was super hot inside. The barn was ancient so it did not have any sort of cooling in it at all. Now the reason that he brought me in here was that he wanted me to take a pitchfork and clear off all the walkways in the entire place. I said yes sir and started working. It was hot, I mean really hot. And I got all this hay dust coming into my lungs. I finished 30 minutes later. I got down from the walkways drenched and I mean DRENCHED in sweat. I have never been that thirst in my whole life. He told me that he had to make a quick phone call but that he would be right back. I remember grabbing my water and taking a drink and just sitting on this barn floor. Suddenly my vision started going dark and I couldn’t see. All I could do was drink my water. My vision slowly came back and I was fine to work the rest of the day.

My problem here was that I got so focused on the task that I forgot about filling up. Often times we get like that with God. We get so focused on our life that we forget about the hope that God gives us. We become parched of the hope of God.

We get so wrapped up in what is going on in the world that we forget about who Jesus is and what he has done. This leaves us feeling abandoned. Left by God and worst of all, it leaves us hopeless. There is a psalm that talks about this idea of hopelessness, Psalm 42-43.

Main Points

The Drought

Psalm 42:1-4

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.

V. 1 - We find this psalmist explaining to us that he is in a place in his life where he does not feel God. It describes his thirst for God is exactly like how a deer thirsts for water.

When he says that his “...soul pants...” he isn’t talking about his soul like we often think about it. It isn’t talking about this conceptual idea. No, the Israelites use of the word was far more practical. Soul to them mean the feelings, will and desires of a person. What the psalmist is saying is that every part of him wants God. That is how disconnected he truly feels.

V. 2 - The psalmist is feeling disconnected from God.

This shows us that the psalmist believes in God. That it isn’t that he doesn’t have faith but instead that he feels that God isn’t with him anymore. That God is just outside of his reach.

V. 3 - He is feeling beaten down by the world and broken. He is feeling day and night that He has no hope and no direction

V. 4 - His hope has been relegated to but a memory.

To this psalmist, God is nothing more than a memory. The comfort, the love, the hope that God provides is only accessible through a memory.

Summary

Who has every felt like this? You look back at the day that you first met God and you remember that feeling. You remember the hope. You remember the excitement and joy unlike any other. However, now it is but a distant memory. It is something that is now out of reach. Now you look around and you see nothing but bills and not enough money coming in to cover it all. Or you see a world that rejects God and seemingly wants nothing do with him.

It is easy for the hope that we found with God to go on the back burner. Suddenly when we feel that we need God the most wee feel neglected, even abandoned by God. We are left wondering ourselves, where is God?

However, this memory did something for psalmist.

Psalm 42:5

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.

V. 5 - These memories of the past kickstart his feelings of hope. He remembers who God is. He remembers why he went to Temple. He remembers the God that He served.

The Depths

Psalm 42:6-8

My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon - from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me - a prayer to the God of my life.

V. 6-7 - With this surge of remembrance he calls out how great God is and how far his remembrance of God goes.

Now a little geography for you all. Mount Hermon is the tallest peak in the Anti-Lebanon mountain range in Jordan. It was located at the northern most edge of Isreal. It is over 9,000 feet above sea level

We do not know where Mount Mizar is. What we do know is that the name “Mount Mizar” in English translates to “Little Hill”. So It is possible that the psalmists was saying one of two things.

Either it is a specific hill in the Anti-Lebanon mountain range and the psalmist is saying that his remembrance of God goes from the highest mountain to the lowest.

Or he is saying that Mount Hermon is “little” in terms of sacredness when compared to Mount Zion, basically God’s favorite mountain. Mount Hermon was a favorite place of pagans to worship their gods since it was so tall.

However, regardless of his exact intention, the over all point is that we will remember God vastly. Vastly to the point that he wants God to over take him like a waterfall.

V. 8 - He is remembering the ture power of God

Now while this remembrance fills him for a moment, it is fleeting.

Psalm 42:9-10

I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?” My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

V. 9-10 - But it wasn’t enough. The memory of God and his hope is not what he needed, he needed God himself

Even with his faith he still feels the suffering. He knows that God is a Rock in his life however he can’t help but feel abandoned. Again, he has faith in the existence of God, just not that God is present right now. He has no hope. He feels forgotten.

He is saying that his suffering goes to his very core. All the way down to his bones. The doubters or “foes” as he calls them are grinding at him. Reminding him of the separation from God that he feels.

Summary

Even with our faith it is easy for us to lose sight of God. We know that God is our Rock and that we believe in Him but we still feel left. Scared and alone. Asking yourself how you are possible going to get out of this one.

Psalm 42:11

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.

V. 11 - Once again though it jump starts his memory of God.

The Release

Psalm 43:1-5

Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God. 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.

V. 1-5 - We end with a triumphant regaining of hope. That doesn’t mean that everything in the psalmists life was fixed. The people that ask him where God is are still there. He is still separated from the Temple. However, he has hope because he knows that God is there. He knows right where God is and has hope of his eventual return to the presence of God. All of this happened because finally the psalmist tried a different approach with God, he asked for vindication.

In other words he asks for forgiveness. That is what makes the difference. He understands that just because he doesn’t feel God right there that He knows that his God, the living God, is still on this earth. He has hope because he knows that with God he can be vindicated. He finds the hope that he was seeking.

Not through God coming in and fixing the situation, but from turning his attention to God and letting him take care of the situation.

In verse 2 he asks the question of why? But that question did not stop him from praising God. Through the difficulty, the frustration, the doubt he finally remembered that the hope that God provides is bigger.

Summary

We need that reminder. We need to remember the hope of God because when we forget, we end up running our life our way and not God’s way. We want get so caught up in our own self pity that hope sounds impossible. However, God has given us hope. The psalmist found hope.

Conclusion

He had hope because he knows that he can return to the Temple, where God’s spirit resides. It says “Let them bring me to your holy mountain (Jerusalem) to the place where you dwell” Who here knows that God is not held down to a place anymore? That God inhabits His church, and His church is not a building. His church is you and me. His church are the believers that stand and would say that they believe in Jesus Christ. His church is those that have faith that God came down to this earth as a man and lived a perfect life, was murdered and the resurrected from the dead for the sins of all of us. For your sins and my sins. We don’t have to go to a Temple, God lives within you. As a believer his Holy Spirit dwells within you.

All the way back in the beginning of the psalm he was parched. He equated his want for God to the way a deer needs water. It is a physical part of him that he knew he needed but that he lacked. He was parched not of physical water but of the living water of God.

I have a question for you. For both the believer and the non-believer, are you parched? Are you in a place right now that you need hope? Jesus offers us something that is far more powerful than just water for us. He offers us living water.

John 4:13-14 Living water to Samaritan woman

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 7:37-38 Living water inside us all

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

We all long for God. Whether you sit in here today and say that you believe in Him or not you still long for God. We try to fill that whole with all sorts of things however, they all leave us parched. They don’t satisfy. The only thing that will satisfy is the hope that is given to us by the living water of Christ. Regardless of our situations we can have hope because Jesus Christ paid the price for your soul. Because of that we can know God and spend eternity with Him. And better yet Jesus said after His resurrection and before his ascension that He isn’t through yet, He is coming back for His creation. Jesus gives us hope because of what he has already done and what He is going to do! So once again I ask you all, are you parched?

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For believers - Do you need a reminder of Christ’s hope? As believers we can sometimes get so encompassed in the terrible things in the world. Turning on the news and seeing hurt everywhere. We get deafened by all the voices yelling about all of their ideas that we begin to lose sight of the hope that we once had when we first humbled ourselves and came to Christ. Maybe you need a fill up, just like the psalmist. However, unlike the psalmist, you are always with God. He is right there with you. Do you need a fill up of hope today, then do as the psalmist did in psalm 43, ask for forgiveness and use this a reminder that God is bigger than your circumstance.

For non-believers - Are you tired of chasing things that won’t satisfy you? God offers you salvation. God offers you love. God offers you hope. We live in a very difficult world. A lot of things feel like they are going wrong all the time. We try to fill the empty feeling with drugs, acceptance from others, or anything that can take the pain away for a moment. Trust me, I know all to well how that is. God offers peace. It is available for the taking. The Bible says that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth you will be saved.

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