Trusting God in Hard Times

I trust that the words that we've sung that are rooted in truth and scripture would anchor our souls this morning, and I'm confident have been preparatory for the preaching of the Word of God. The title of my message this morning is Trusting God in Hard Times.

Sounds better than the dark night of the soul, at least. Same sentiment though, trusting God in hard times. Although technically Psalm 88 is not one of the lament Psalms, it has that genre, flavor to it. It's uncharacteristic to the lament Psalms because the lament Psalms typically take you on a journey. They begin in despair and pessimism and darkness and difficulty and trial and move you through and usually conclude with renewed confidence, renewed hope, faith in God. And that's where the similarities end because this Psalm doesn't have that flow to it. It starts well, but where it starts, it just is a downward descent and never comes up.

So it's unique in that way. You say, oh great, just what I need to hear, just what I had hoped I'd hear this morning, something uplifting, something optimistic, something hope-filled. And you say, pastor, why are we here? Why this Psalm? Well, because we all will find ourselves in such a place at some time in our lives, if not right now this morning.

And I remind you that all scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. What is the dark night of the soul? How would we define that? Well, it is a state of intense anguish in which the struggling, despairing believer feels as though he has been abandoned by God. As we walk our way through this Psalm, I want you to make a conscious delineation between what the psalmist is describing in terms of his experience and how he feels. I want you to identify with him as a believer. And as you're identifying with him, I want you at the same time be correcting what he's communicating, because there is a disconnect between what a believer knows and what a believer feels.

And he's giving expression to how he's feeling. And how we feel oftentimes is disconnected from the reality of our Christian experience. Why this is, I think, helpful is because life seldom is as we wish it was.

Because that kind of life is future, it yet awaits us in heaven and glory. But for now, God has ordained difficulty and hardship, difficult circumstances, gloomy forecasts, suffering, and trials to grow our faith, to mature us, to teach us to trust Him. And there are other reasons, but those are the ones that this Psalm was going to deal with. So, trusting God in hard times. Notice with me as we begin, verse 1, O Lord God of my salvation. That's the high note of the Psalm right there.

That's why we sang, How Firm a Foundation. Because, listen to me, as a believer, you have got to have your soul anchored in this truth. You must rest in the confidence that you are right with God, that salvation has come to you. All else can be going wrong in this temporal life, but if you're right with Him, you're a saved man or a woman, that will anchor your soul. It will tether your life when the storms of life come. And I'm glad, man, that the Psalmist starts there. O Lord God of my salvation.

It's a testimony of confident trust. But as I've already suggested, that the trajectory of the Psalm from that point forward is downward. Who is this man? Who is the Psalmist? Well, it's not David. The author is mentioned there in the beginning. It is Haman the Esriite. He's one of the sons of Korah. And according to 1 Kings 4 31, he was one of the five wisest men in his generation.

He was known for his depth, his insight, his maturity. So Psalm 88 is a portrait of a godly man, a mature man, crying out to the Lord in the midst of great suffering and seeing no light at the end of the tunnel. So Psalm 88 reminds us that life is filled with trouble, even to the point of despair, even for godly, mature believers. Here is a Psalm to help us in our pursuit of trusting God in hard times. So here's how I'd like to move through the Psalm. We're going to take an overview of this Psalm.

We're going to make four observations and then make some applications. So let me give you my four observations. Number one, I want you to see the pain of unanswered prayer, the pain of unanswered prayer in verses 1 and 2. Number two, I want you to see the sovereignty of God over suffering in verses 3 through 9. Number three, I want you to see the searching questions only a believer wrestles with, the searching questions that only a believer wrestles with in verses 10 through 12. And then number four, the determination to pursue God, the determination to pursue God. So let's begin with the pain of unanswered prayer.

Haman is a godly, mature man, but here we find him hopeless and in despair. He describes his prayer as a cry. We're looking at the pain of unanswered prayer. He has been crying out to God day and night, that is to say unrelentingly without an answer.

Been there? Have you known that? You say well I've known periods like that, I don't know it's been night and day.

Well you live long enough you'll go through a season like this. It's one of the trying times that God appoints and ordains for us in this life. He has been calling out to God for a very long time. Notice what he says in verse 15, I have been afflicted and ready to die from my youth. He has been afflicted from his youth. We don't know how old he is at this point, but this trial has gone on for month after month, year after year, he's cried out to God. But God has not removed the cause of his suffering. At times we make the mistake of assuming that mature believers always have their prayers answered. Have you ever thought that godly men and women, they're not meant to endure suffering.

Yes for a season, but not ongoing and ongoing with no end to it. But that's not the testimony of Scripture is it? Listen to Job 23, let me just read these verses to you, you don't need to turn there, but remember who Job is. Job is a man, in his day God says there's none like him in all the earth, upright, so he is he is an outstanding man by God's estimation, godly, but that did not insulate him from difficulty. Job says in Job 23 8 through 10, I go east but he's not there, I go west but I can't find him, I do not see him in the north for he is hidden, I turn to the south but I cannot find him. He's got a compass and he's going in every direction and he cannot find God, but this is what he says, when he has tested me like gold in fire he will pronounce me innocent.

Job 23 10. I think you know this, but let me remind you of it, the same man that God called a man after his own heart, we're talking about David, sometimes cried out that he felt abandoned to God. David, Paul the Apostle, listen to what Paul says, we say we don't often hear this part of Paul's life, we venerate him, think he's a man above us, beyond us, we could never arise to that level of maturity, listen to what he said, he's writing to the church in Corinth, he says, for we do not want you to be ignorant brethren of our trouble which came to us in Asia that we were burdened beyond measure above strength so that we despaired even of life, so he said, and you know that situation where he had the thorn in the flesh and prayed three times to be delivered from it, God said, no, my grace is sufficient for you. Sometimes, even the most mature, even the most godly believers, like this man, feels as if their cries for help go unheard by our Lord. That's the pain of unanswered prayer. Notice secondly with me the sovereignty of God over suffering, the sovereignty of God over suffering, that's in verses 3 through 9, but I want to draw your attention particularly to verse, beginning at verse 6, he is giving descriptive language to his heartache and trouble and he says, verse 6, you have laid me in the lowest pit. Now he's praying to God and he's directing these words to God, you have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness in the depths, your wrath lies heavy upon me and you have afflicted me with all your waves. You, verse 8, have put away my acquaintances far from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am shut up and I cannot get out. Wow. I am shut up and I cannot get out.

My eye wastes away because of affliction. The sovereignty of God over suffering. You remember earlier on I asked you to be thinking about how this man is describing his experience. He's using language about how he feels and we've established at the front end that this man is a believer, he's an Old Testament believer.

Oh Lord God of my salvation. So we ought to be able to identify with this man, but how his feelings are out of sync with his experience. I want you to listen to Jerry Bridges who wrote the book Trusting God, Trusting God Even When Life Hurts.

This is on page 194 and 195. It's short, but listen to his admission and his struggle and what I'm suggesting to you is if this is Jerry Bridges challenge and difficulty and struggle, it's yours and mine. He says, for many years in my own pilgrimage of seeking to come to a place of trust in God at all times, I'm still far from the end of that journey, I was a prisoner to my feelings. I mistakenly thought that I could not trust God unless I felt like trusting him, which I almost never did in times of adversity. Now I am learning that trusting God is first of all a matter of the will and is not dependent on my feelings. I choose to trust God and my feelings eventually follow.

That's sound instruction that we need because God has constituted us the way we are. We have feelings, we have emotions. You can't run from them.

They assault us. So what are you going to do when feelings overwhelm you, emotions overwhelm you? You're going to have to bring them into submission to the objective truth of God's Word and what you know to be true about God is my suggestion. This man, he feels unheard and wonders whether God cares for him, but he's also absolutely certain about something.

What is that? That God is sovereign over his sufferings. He attributes his suffering to the hand of God. We've went through that, verses 6, 7, and 8. And unlike many in our day who feel the need to come to God's rescue and defend God and say, well, you know, God would, God's not behind that.

God would never have done that. You just have to stop and think about that. If God's not behind your suffering and your pain, then who is? And I don't know what conclusion you come to if God isn't, but whatever conclusion you came to about who's in charge of your life and who's brought those into your life, if it's not God, there's not much hope in that, is there?

No, that's why we sang this morning, what ere my God ordains is right. Whatever it is, as hard as it is, as difficult as it is, as mysterious as it is, as perplexing as it is, God has ordained it. And we get ourselves in trouble by insisting on an explanation. Well, I want to know what God's up to. I want to know why he's brought this into my life. Well, there are biblical answers to that question. To teach you to trust Him, to mature you, to make you more like Christ, the things that we often speak of. But if God told you exactly what He was up to, then you would be on His par, wouldn't you? And it's another reminder that He is God and we are not. And His ways are beyond our ways.

And they're past finding out. And we are to live by faith and not by sight. I think we've all thought to ourselves, entertained thoughts, you know, I'd like to know about, I would like to know what's awaiting me tomorrow or next week or next month. And with that, how this is going to get resolved and how this is going to come to fruition. So we're going down the road and the road has a bend in the road and we want we want to see around the bend. We want to see what...

Think back through some of the hard times you've been through. Would you have wanted to know ahead of time? Would you have wanted to know a week ahead of time, a month ahead of time, a year ahead of time? I don't think so. Because if you knew, then you wouldn't be required to walk by faith, would you?

You'd be walking by sight. My son and daughter-in-law spent a week of vacation with her side of the family, her mom and dad, her brother and sister and their children. They had a wonderful time together.

A year ago, July, up in the mountains, up in West Jefferson, had a great time together. Robbie had been struggling with his health with complications with diabetes. At the end of the week on Friday, he collapsed. They carried him to urgent care. The doctor said, well, he's just recovering from a case of bronchitis. He'll be alright. He got worse Monday or Tuesday.

They put him in the hospital and he was in glory on Friday. Do you think they would have had a good time on vacation if they'd have known what the end of the week was going to bring? No. No, it's a wisdom of God to keep the mystery of his will from us.

That's just an example that comes to my mind. This man never for once considered the possibility that his suffering was outside the limits of God's control. Let me give you a an acronym to hang on to as we're thinking about sovereignty because I think sometimes we get kind of lost in some of the nuances of sovereignty and how to describe it, how to explain it.

I like the word lock, okay? L-O-C-K. God limits, God orders, God controls, and God knows what he's doing. He limits. He has a purpose in what he's doing and he's going to limit it and to the degree that it accomplishes his intended purpose. God limits what comes into our life. Aren't you glad for that today? The devil doesn't have access to your life to ruin your life because if he did you wouldn't be sitting here.

He'd have killed you a long time ago. What comes into our life comes to us sifted through our Father's hand. It's limited. God orders. He ordains what comes into our life.

It's not by chance. God controls every aspect of our lives and God knows what he's doing. The scriptures tell us that if we want to properly understand what is happening around us, we need to be reminded of what's happening above us. God is on his throne and he has not abdicated it, not for one moment.

Again this is from Jerry Bridges in that same book on page 36 and 37. The subject is not foreign to those who worship at Beacon Baptist Church. We talk about sovereignty. We teach about sovereignty. We sing about sovereignty. We try and rest our lives in sovereignty, but we need reminded of it constantly, don't we?

Listen to what Jerry Bridges says. It seems we will allow God to be anywhere except upon his throne ruling his universe according to his good pleasure and his sovereign will. Even godly Christian writers whose books are helpful to many can in their writings take God off his throne. Now he's going to make a quote from Andrew Murray who wrote a book on prayer who is not one who adheres to the sovereignty of God in all things. He says, one of the common statements is that God has voluntarily limited himself to the actions of men in order to give man his freedom. For example, Andrew Murray wrote, quote, in creating man with a free will and making him a partner in the rule of the earth, God limited himself. He made himself dependent on what man would do. Man by his prayer would hold the measure of what God could do in blessing, end of quote. Really?

Really? If God is not sovereign, this is going to be really profound for you. If God is not sovereign, he is not God. But he is, and we're glad that he is. We're thankful that he is.

I trust that you're thankful. So, we've looked at the pain of unanswered prayer, the sovereignty of God over suffering. Number three, look with me at the searching questions only a believer wrestles with, verses 10 through 12, and there are six of them. This mature godly man says, verse 10, will you work wonders for the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise you?

Shall your loving kindness be declared in the grave or your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Shall your wonders be known in the dark and your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? Six questions, human, this mature godly man asks. And at their core, these questions get at the heart of why we were created and why God has saved us.

Why? That we might praise him, that we might glorify him. Verse 10, that we might declare and testify of his loving kindness. Verse 11, that we might declare and testify of his faithfulness. Verse 12, that we might declare and testify of his righteousness, his righteousness that gives us right standing with him. So he's asking these questions, and here's what he's saying. How can I live for your glory, O God, if I'm dead?

Because this is where I see this going. How can I live for your glory if I am dead? He knows he was put on the earth to glorify God. He knows he's been created to praise the Lord in all of life, but how's he going to do that if he's dead?

His logic is understandable. How can God glorify himself among the dead? Dead men don't have prayers answered. Dead men aren't delivered from trial. Dead man can't sing the Lord's praises. Dead man can't testify to the Lord's righteousness. Any correction come into your mind as he's giving expression to these, his experience, his feelings, his emotion?

How about what the choir sang? It is not death to die. Death isn't the end of the road. Death doesn't silence the believer. What will death do for us?

Death will free us. Death will cause us to have a capacity to do the things we've tried to do on this earth, and those efforts have been muted because of sinfulness, because of the war we're in with the world, the flesh, and the devil. But we'll be able to testify to his righteousness, to his loving-kindness, to his faithfulness. We'll glorify him.

We'll praise him in a way we never could on this earth. So those are questions only a believer wrestles with. Notice with me number four, the determination to pursue God, the determination to pursue God. After he raises all those questions, he says in verse 13, but to you I have cried out, O Lord, and in the morning my prayer comes before you. This man is bewildering as life has gotten for him, and as puzzling as it is, he is still seeking after God. He's still pursuing God. He's still praying. He hasn't given up. He is not a pragmatist.

You know what a pragmatist is? Well, I'm gonna do something because it's going to produce a desired end. In other words, my ongoing fervent praying and seeking after God should do something. It should produce something.

It should bring relief. It should bring answers, and none of that's happening for him. So he's not a pragmatist because he hasn't given up. He hasn't said, why bother?

What has all this sanctified sweat and effort done for me? He's not a pragmatist. Yet there are two other why questions that he raises. He had those six questions in verse 10 and 12, but he is going to raise two more questions, and they are why questions.

They're not questions of unbelief, but notice what he says. Lord, why do you cast off my soul? Why do you hide your face from me?

Why am I still waiting for help? Why am I still standing here looking for an answer to my prayers? Why do you cast my soul off?

Why do you hide your face from me? And he does not have answers to those why questions, but he knows that God is behind what's happening in his life, and because he knows that, he knows there's purpose in what's going on in his life, and therefore he can keep pursuing God. He can keep, but you I've cried out to, O Lord, and in the morning my prayer comes before you. This psalm does not end very hopeful.

Let me read these last three verses and offer some comments, and then we'll get to some application. He says, Your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off. They came around me all day long like water.

They engulfed me altogether. Loved one and friend, you have put far from me and my acquaintances into darkness. This translation, the last word of the psalm is darkness.

Wow. And in the Hebrew text, darkness is the Psalms very last word. He sees himself as having been destroyed, verse 16, and destroyed by God, surrounded and engulfed by God's terror, in verse 17. Separated from his companions and loved ones whom God has taken from him and left to be all by himself in the darkness.

That's what he says. How do we conclude this message? How do we end this message with despair and darkness? Does darkness get the final word?

No, we're not gonna let darkness have the final word. Let's think through some lessons. Lesson number one. Listen to me. We need to trust what we know to be true, not our feelings.

Trust what you know to be true, not your feelings. I like to think of it this way. Never doubt in the darkness what God has taught you and showed you in the light.

What do I mean by that? Well, we're all at a different place. Some are going through, some could say, man, I could have written that. This is where I'm at. This is where, that's descriptive of my life.

Probably not many of us, but some here could say that. But if, you know, clouds aren't over you and this threatening storm isn't hanging over you, it may be, it may be coming a month from now, a year from now. So you're sitting there in the sunshine. You're hearing this sermon. You may want to tuck this away into the recesses of your mind because dark days may be coming. And listen to what I said. Never doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light, what God has revealed to you in the light.

So you're in the light, you're gonna need it. Don't forget it. Another lesson.

This is a hard one. Don't forget God is not obligated to explain himself. God is not obligated to explain himself. Job didn't get a warning on the front end of what came to his life. God never broke in when he was struggling and said, Job, just hang in there. Let me tell you what I've been doing. Let me tell you what, how this has gone all in. God never did that. And at the end, there's no record where God said, Job, you pass with flying colors. Well, let me show you what was happening.

No. No sense that he ever got an explanation in this life. D.A. Carson says, if we tie our comfort to explanations, we may die comfortless. If we insist, I've got to have an explanation. God, you better tell me why this happened or that happened.

What you were up to. He's not obligated to. Let's focus on our response. Our response is to trust him. Job says, though he slay me, yet will I trust him.

That should be our response. How about expectations in life? God has not promised us a life of ease. God has not promised the absence of suffering. In fact, he told us not to be surprised when it comes, right? And when it does come to take heart that he is in charge, that he is sovereignly superintending and is going to use it for his eternal glory and our everlasting good.

Sometimes we entertain thoughts that suffering is going to hinder me from being the kind of Christian that God originally intended for me to be. He wants me to be joyful. He wants me to praise him. He wants me to glorify him. He wants me to testify to his faithfulness, his long suffering, his loving kindness.

How can I do that with all this going on? Listen, suffering that God brings into your life is not to hinder your ability to worship him, praise him, glorify him, but to enhance your ability to do that. Who's going to listen to you when life's great and you go, God's wonderful. I love God. Let me testify to his faithfulness and his loving kindness. And they go, yeah, if I was sitting in life where you're sitting, I'd be praising him too. Isn't that what Satan basically said to God about Job? Yeah, he worships you. Yes, he serves you, but he does it for self-interest. Look what you've done for him.

Take his stuff away and see what he does. And I'm wondering if that isn't still playing out in this universe, that God is showing the angels, the demons. Let me show you about my people. My people don't worship me.

I haven't bought their worship. Look at that man and his suffering. He's still testifying to my goodness. He's still speaking of my faithfulness. Yes, there's a lesson here concerning our eternal perspective.

You say, what do I mean by that? Well, we can take comfort as a believer that the sufferings of this life are the worst we will ever have to endure. The worst that we'll ever have to endure. If we know Christ and have come to him in faith and repentance, then our suffering has an end. The trials of this life are the worst we will ever have to endure.

But, friend, if you're here this morning outside of Christ, you don't know him. You are alone in your suffering. You are in a far, far worse place than this psalmist. His hopelessness was only apparent.

It only appeared to be hopeless, and it was only temporary. But if a man or woman dies outside of Christ, there will be no end to their suffering. Hell has no light at the end of the tunnel.

Jesus said he described hell as everlasting darkness. So, my prayer is that if you're here on outside of Christ, you probably know something about hardship and suffering. God, the Bible says that the way of the transgressor is hard. Let the hardness that's come into your life, the difficulty, the suffering, may it bring you to humble repentance and faith.

And one final application. How can we not, how can we not think about our Lord Jesus when you come to the end of this? I wrestled with a couple of things in this psalm, and you have to understand it in an Old Covenant context. We're New Covenant believers, and our understanding is, if we're a New Covenant believer, Jesus Christ himself bore the wrath of God in our place, and he drank the cup to the bottom. There is no wrath for you and me if we're in Christ. But this man talks about wrath. He says in verse 7, your wrath lies heavy upon me. Verse 13, but to you I have cried out, O Lord, and in you... Oh, no, no, no.

Where did I see that? Verse 16, your fierce wrath has gone over me. I say, now wait a minute. Then I thought, well, okay, this is in a New Old Covenant context, but for a New Covenant believer, no, wrath is not our experience, but who did bear wrath? Who did bear wrath in our place? Jesus did.

And listen to what he endured. In your place and in my place, your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off. They came around me all day long like water. They engulfed me altogether. Loved one and friend, you have put far from me. Jesus died alone on the cross of Calvary. Those who were the closest to him abandoned him. And my acquaintances into darkness. You remember what happened on Calvary's cross on that day when Christ died at high noon?

What happened? Darkness covered the area. Jesus stood in our place, bore God's wrath so that you and I can live in his presence forever and ever and ever. I trust this study in Psalms has been, Psalm 88 has been helpful to you. When God directed me to it, I thought, oh Lord, please. And the Lord says, would you rather be in Revelation? I thought, no, I think I'll do Psalm 88.

Let's bow and pray. Father, how we thank you for your Word, for its honesty, for its setting before us, mystery and difficulty and suffering and the struggles of the Christian life. Lord, we confess that you have given us grace to trust you, and yet at the same time we confess our struggle to keep on doing that.

And when we really stop and think about it and analyze it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. We're willing to trust you with our never-dying soul, and yet we struggle to trust you for these temporal affairs of life. Lord, would you help us in our growth in Christ's likeness? Would you cause the Word of God to dwell richly in us? Would you help us to reason even as Paul reasoned? That you who spared not your own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall you not with him freely give us all things?

We believe in that context, all things is everything we need to live a God-honoring life in this life and in this world in the midst of suffering and difficulty and mystery and unanswered questions. We thank you for this man that perhaps we'll meet in glory someday who had all these questions and wondered what you were doing and yet you made his experience a part of the sacred scriptures. He wondered if you would ever answer his prayer. Oh, you answered his prayer. You preserved his life, his testimony on the pages of Scripture so that many saints since him have been able to learn and to profit from his struggles as we have tried to profit from them today. Seal your word to our hearts and cause it to bear fruit in our lives that we might be in a better place to honor you, praise you, glorify you, and testify of your love and kindness, your faithfulness, and of your righteousness, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.