Good morning, Mercy Hill Church. My name is Daniel Thompson. I'm the college pastor here at Mercy Hill. I want to invite you to open your copy of God's Word to Psalm 42. If you have your phone, pull open Psalm 42.
But as you're turning there, I want to remind you: I know you've already gotten the inviter cards, you know it's coming. You know, Church of the Ballpark is right around the corner. But I want to personally issue a challenge, not necessarily in action, but in thought. I want to challenge you to think, maybe for the first time as a family, maybe sit down at dinner tonight or at lunch right after this. I know some of you guys are going to NASCAR out of here and go to lunch, but I want to challenge you.
As you're sitting around the lunch table. That you would think, maybe, who is that person in my life? Who is the person in the life of my children that is close to me but far from God? and have the thought, or maybe dream a little bit, maybe you don't do this naturally, you can fight. Say, what is it worth for me?
For someone who is close to me, one day, maybe they're on a church plant, they're on the mission field, and they someone asked them, Hey, what brought you to the mission field? What brought you here? And they say, well, one time someone invited me to a ball field, and I heard the gospel, and it changed my life for all of history. I want to encourage you that this is not just a thing for Mercy Hill to do. This is not just a thing for Greensboro.
This is not just something for us as a church at large to do, although all those are true. This is something for you personally. This is something that maybe, if you've never invited someone to church, if you've never taken that step of first inviting someone, this is an easy opportunity to invite someone who maybe would never come to the four walls here, but they'd come there.
So, I want you to maybe take a minute. Ask yourself, do I believe God wants to use me? And if so, what is he calling me to do? And he's calling you to invite somebody. Take that first step.
Challenge yourself. Do the thing that makes you get cottonmouth and terrifies you a little bit, to invite someone to church with you. We've all been there. If we all feel the same thing, we've got to press through it. It's not an excuse if we all feel it.
So let's fight through it and do it together. But today we're going to be in Psalm 42. We're going to continue studying in the Psalms. And I need to give you a little bit of background. Because this psalm is inherently a response psalm.
It's not a command, it's not telling you, hey, do XYZ. It's not saying even believe XYZ. And we love those things. You know, I grew up in church where they affectionately said, don't smoke, drink, or chew, or date girls that do. That was Christianity.
And that's not what this psalm is. It's not telling you, do these things, be a good Christian guy, be a good Christian girl, you know, you wear a collared shirt, you're going to heaven. That's not what it's saying. This is a response to something God has done. And it's really how the Psalms are structured.
I need to teach just for a moment. The Psalms, if you didn't know, there are five books in the Psalter, in the book of Psalms. If you look in your Bible at Psalm 42, right above that, it might say book two. Maybe you didn't know that Psalm has five books within it.
Well, really, what the Bible, how it's set up, is it's a mirror of the first five books of the Bible, what is known as the Pentateuch, the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And at this time that the people of God had the Psalms or were writing the Psalms, really all they had in manuscript form were those first five books of the Bible. The other things, the prophets, the things we know now, were being said, but they weren't necessarily widely common. And what it's said about the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, it says, those are from God to man. But the Psalms, the five books of the Psalms, are from man to God.
They're a response to those things. They're saying, based on God's character, This is what is true in our response to God based on those things. In our circumstances, what we're feeling, what we're understanding. Let us pray these back to God. And so that's what the Psalms is.
But specifically in this Psalm, the circumstances are not really awesome. If you look in yours, it may say that it's written by the sons of Korah. Those were priests who did things like sing and welcome people into the temple. They did things like that. And so that's who is attributed for writing this.
But a lot of the commentators agree. They don't say, it doesn't say it's written by David, it doesn't say it's written about David. But they said this phrase that I really like. They said, it smells like the shepherd. After God's own heart.
They say it smells like David. It said, it doesn't say anything about David. It doesn't even mention David, but it just feels like him. Maybe you guys have known something like that, but I grew up in a small southern town in South Carolina, or as I refer to it, the better Carolina. But, you know, I grew up in a town where my great-grandma, my grandma, my great-great-grandma, all at the same high school.
You know, you're driving down, your dad's like, that's where I did the X, Y, Z. You know, you know those towns. Where if you have a teacher, they're like, I went to school with your great-grandmother. And I'm like, great. You know, you got to be on your P's and Q's.
You know, it's awesome. But I grew up in that town and and every on the weekend we'd hang out with our family. And my great-aunt Mary, she would sit beside me. She was one of those family members who if you sat down with them, they started patting your leg or rubbing your back, and they're telling you stories, just constantly telling you stories. If you grew up in that world, you understand it.
But she used to tell me about her and her husband, before they were married, they were dating, and he was at war. And she said, you know, I didn't want him to forget about me, so I'd write him letters. I'd write him letters and I'd spray perfume on the letters and so when he got it, he would know who to look for when he came back. That was like her thought. But he said he would get the letters and he would smell it and just make him miss home.
And that's kind of how the commentators describe this psalm, that as you read it, it just smells like David. It just feels like him. It just feels like it's him. That when we read it, it reminds us of Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd. You know, it reminds us Psalm 121.
I lift my eyes unto the hills. Where does my help come from? It doesn't say anything about him, it just seems like it's written to him, written about him, or written about him, circumstances. And when that kind of thing I was like, man, this is a really cool thing. This is, as I'm studying them, it's kind of cool.
If I wrote a letter in 3,000 years from now, people were sitting in a room and they're like, it smells like Daniel. You know, Smith just feels like it's him. That would be a cool reality. If the circumstances of this psalm weren't so dire. If it wasn't about one of the worst moments, one of the worst times that the psalmist has ever felt in his life.
I don't know about y'all. I don't remembered for when I was at my worst. I don't remembered for the worst times of my life. But right now, when the commentators and they mention that it smells like David, it's talking about a circumstance that's not that good. And some of you guys will read this and you'll hear it as we read it aloud, and you'll be like, man, that does sound like David.
That sounds like something. But others of you, because you've been there, or you're there now, you'll hear it and you'll say, it sounded like me. It sounds like my life. It sounds like the circumstance I'm in. It sounds about like how I feel.
I mean, it's putting words to feelings and thoughts that I've had that I didn't know we could have. And so I want to make sure that we understand. That While the psalmist is in exile and he's... Physically far away from God, he feels even spiritually further away. He feels like he's miles away and God is nowhere to be found.
I'm not going to ask you at this moment, I will in a minute. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but I know you've been there.
Some of you are there now. And if you haven't, praise God, but you probably will be. You'll feel like God is a million miles away. What do we do? What do we do when we know we shouldn't feel that way, or we don't think we should feel that way?
What do we do with those things?
Well, that's what we're going to learn today. In Psalm 42, it's meant to be read. In one go aloud to the congregation. of God's people, and that's what I'm gonna do, starting in verse one of Psalm 42. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night. While they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul.
How it would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall praise him again. my salvation and my God.
My soul is cast down within me, therefore. I remember you from the land of Jordan and the Hermon and Mount Mizar. Deep cost to deep at the roar of the waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me.
A prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go on mourning because of the oppression of my enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me. While they say to me all the day long, where is your God?
Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. My salvation. And my God, would you pray with me?
Lord, I know. That in a room this size at a church like Mercy Hill, there are people who are in some circumstances that. feel absolutely dire and they they may be and it can feel like you're far away. But God, I pray today that we would begin to learn how to bring those things to you and what you. are trying to do in us and through us in these moments, in these difficult times.
It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Taking notes today, the big idea is this. Hard times teach us to hope in God. Hard times teach us.
To hope in God. You know, this is a psalm of lament. If you don't know what lament is, it's not something that we use all the time. But lament is complaining or even grieving to someone, not about them. It's not complaining about someone.
It's not saying, God, why could you? In isolation. It's taking these things to God and saying, I don't understand this. You know, some of us feel you grew up like me and you didn't think you could ever complain. If you ever had any questions about God, it was something was wrong within you.
That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says you should actually take those things to God.
So I want to free you and let you know that God is not angry with your questions about Him, He's only concerned that you bring those questions to Him. It's very important for you to understand. And so I'm going to ask right now, just so we can make sure that we're not feeling like we're the only person in the room, by a show of hands, who has ever had a season, a difficult time in life, a hard time in life, where things just seem in so much disarray that you're like, God, where are you? Why could this happen? You seem like you're a million miles away.
Who's ever felt that?
Okay, now that you look around and you're not the only person in the room, you can put your hands down. I know some of y'all would have had your hands up all service. All right, you can put your hands down.
Now that you know you're not the only person in the room, what the heck do we do with it? Do we just suck it up? Is it just like, well, we live in a broken world and so it's going to get better one day? Or is God trying to do something in us? Is he trying to use that hard time?
Is he trying to use those things to shape us and help us become the person that he wants us to be? And so, today, what I want us to see is three things: three ways that God uses these difficult seasons. Really, the first two are. You know, kind of things, habits we can learn and reflections. And then the last one is a real action.
that we ought to do. A thing that we ought to feel. And then we'll apply it, that'll be our time together. Let's start back in verse one. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night. While they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? The first thing I want you to say is this: that God uses hard times to remind us what our soul longs for.
He uses hard times to remind us what our soul longs for. He's reminding us that the thing that's within us, that should be our desire, sometimes gets distracted. He uses this first illustration as a deer's desire for water. Have you ever been around a dog that's been outside too long and they get water all over your house? That is my dog.
He just absolutely sticks his whole face in the bowl. And that's what it does. It also reminds me of those nature documentaries. You know, the one like Planet Earth, where they're following the zebras around and they get to the watering hole, then you hear the British guy, you know, talking, and he's like, Will the zebra get the water? You know, whatever it is, that's a horrible accent.
But. You know, and we can see, because we're people, we can see the crocodile right in the water, right? We see the zebra, and then you're like, okay, maybe they don't see it, but then they see it, and they do that weird little dance in, dance out thing. Where they're going for the water, and then they're backing up, going for the water, and they're backing up, they're doing all this. And you're like, surely they won't.
And then right when they do, one of the zebra is at the water and just gets absolutely mauled by a crocodile, and that's it. But the thought is like, why would it do that? Like, why would it keep going back to the water? It's because this was happened: its desire for water, its thirst. has surpassed its desire to stay safe.
Its need for water has gone far beyond its innate desire for safety, that it's willing to put itself in harm's way to get the thing that it desires most. That is exactly how the psalmist says he feels towards God right now. He says the only way I can tell you that my soul longs for you. Is the same way that that zebra that you see on Discovery Channel, when it seems insane that it would constantly do crazy things to get what it desires most, that is how I feel because I feel isolated right now. I feel like I am so far from you.
But I want so desperately to have you again. You know, we hear that. And we think, yeah, man, I've understood that. Why does that happen? It's because we get distracted.
We get distracted by things. And when I talk to people about distracted, they're like, yeah, this distracts me and this and this. And they list off all these bad things in life. But in my experience, as a pastor, working with colleges, working with adults, it's very rarely the horrible things that distract us. It's very rarely those things.
I've never had a person like, you know what? I know my soul really needs God. I've never heard anybody in our campus says nobody at High Points ever come at me and said, you know what, I know my soul wants God. But I'm going to go do this overtly sinful thing and distract myself with that. No one's ever said that to me.
It's never those things. It's rarely the bad things that distract us from God. It's usually the good things that we've made God things that distract us from God. It's usually the things that God has given us as good gifts that we've just continued to elevate, elevate, elevate. God has been like, hey, it ought to be a thing that you see because of who I am.
But what you've done is you've drug it right in the middle of your view of me. When things in life are going well. Our kids, our work, school, 401k. vacations, our house, spouse, all these good things, these God things. These God-given things have become primary.
Listen, God has given you these things to steward, and what's happened? They've begun stewarding you. They've become dictating what your time looks like, where your money goes, where your affection goes. They become the source of joy. and passion and meaning and purpose.
And they begin to distract you. And I'm sure that's what's happened to the psalmist too. Think about it. He lived and he had been around Jerusalem where all these good things have happened. But now he finds himself physically away from those things.
And spiritually, he's far from God. These things have been stripped from him, and God is using him to remind him: this is the deepest desire of your soul, a longing for me. This is not just true for Christians. If you believe that Genesis is true, you were created. If you're in here today and you're not a believer.
You're not a follower of Christ. You were created. To know God intimately. You may have heard Christians said, or some of us know this well, you got a God-sized hole in your heart. You know, we say these things to people all the time, and that's true.
But we think once we become believers, for some reason it's no longer an issue that we might get distracted from that. I'm telling you, Christians, we are the best people ever. I get distracted by good things. We're the best ever. We can get so distracted by the things God has given us that we miss God himself.
And so, what God does to the psalmist here is He reminds him. That hey, the thing that you need most is me. God is going to use all of those hard times. I do have a confession that when I read these first two verses, I had the thought, like, man, I hate that he feels this way. I hate that he so desperately wants God.
And as I said that in my brain, I was like, why do I think that's a bad thing? Actually, God might be using this hard season to get him back to the thing he was always meant to feel. A deep longing for him. Charles Spurgeon said this, and I think it's super well said, and I hope that you would like take it deeply. He says, the next best thing to living in the light of the Lord's love is to be unhappy until we have it again.
The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord's love is to be unhappy until we have it again. If you are someone that you're like, man, I am overwhelmed with what God is doing in my life, that's awesome. But if you're not feeling that right now, but you desire it again, it is not bad that you feel that desire. You should feel it all the time. You should feel a deep longing to be in right relationship with him, in fellowship with him.
But for some reason, we go and complain about the times that we long to be close to him. When it's like that's the desire that he's been trying to draw out of us all the time But he's not going to waste this season that you're in. And the psalmist, his circumstances may be negative, but his desire is pure. And so, the question I have for you is: are you in a bad circumstance? The question I have for you is: are your desires in the right place?
Is it for God to bring you out of the circumstance or is it for God to meet you in them? And those are very different people and they create very different things. And what the psalmist is saying is that my soul longs for you.
So, if you're in a hard time, or as Christians like to say, in a difficult season, we like to use the word season because it seems church year, that we like to prove our Christianese, that we're fluent. And so, we say, if you're in a difficult season, do not mistake this desire for nearness for God as a bad thing. It is a good thing. The real issue arises is if you feel like you're far from God and you don't desire to be close to him. If that's where you are today, that's where the warning sounds, the bells should be going off, the alarm should be ringing.
If you are not longing. If your soul is not panting. Like a deer pants for water. But God may be using this season to teach you how you should have been longing all along. And I want to tell you this, church, is that God loves you too much to settle for a second place in your soul.
He will not do it. If you believe that you were created for him, like the song we sang just a moment ago, that everything is from him and through him and to him, and it's all for your glory, even your life. We really love that song when it's about everybody else's life, but our life, that your whole existence is for his glory. If you believe that, And Christ died to make it true. and he offers you that new life and you've accepted it, why would he be okay with you being distracted with something else?
He wouldn't be. He wouldn't be. He's after his own glory, and he wants your life to do the same. And so he will use the difficult season in your life to clear your field of vision for him. And to get you back right where you should have been.
You know, he uses and sometimes allows these hard times to get your heart, your mind, your soul, your eyes back on him. And that's true for the psalmist and it's true for you, but it doesn't stop there.
So he gets our eyes back on the right spot, but then he also teaches us. How to be grateful over what we have had and what is true in God. Look at verse 4 and then verse 6. He says, these things I remember as I pour out my soul. How it would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God.
with glad shouts and songs of praise. A multitude keeping festival. Number six. My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Second thing I want you to see is this, that God uses hard times to grow our gratitude for him.
To grow our affection for him, our gratefulness over what he has done and who he is. In verse 4, he kind of starts with this thing. All the commentators agree that these are two kinds of illustrations to make one point. Here's what they are. The first one is in the beginning, he remembers times in the past.
He's like, I remember when I used to lead people in for festivals, when we have seasons where we come and offer sacrifices and be grateful for God for things like the Exodus and for bringing us to the promised land. I remember the joy of entering God's presence. But man, that has now become bittersweet. And we understand this. We all have songs.
I'm sure some of you guys have a song. And I look at the high schoolers in the room. You guys got a song that you used to like with a girlfriend, and now it's your heartbreak song. I understand, dude. You post it on Instagram.
We get it, your heartbreak. But we all have that. We have those movies and stuff we used to watch with a loved one. We have the songs we used to love, that now they're kind of bittersweet. I remember when I was in fifth grade, this first time, this is the most distinct memory of this, as my grandmother passed when I was in fifth grade around Christmas time.
Um and and that was kind of the first loved one I'd ever remember passing away. Um and and what had happened Was my parents were there, and I guess they were trying to be helpful at the time. I assumed they were trying to help me understand what's going on. Hindsight, it seems like cruel and unusual punishment. Instead of just, you know, telling me my grandmother passed away as we're driving there and as we're in the home and all this stuff, they just kept playing the song Christmas Shoes over and over.
You gotta, if you know the song, if you're laughing, you know the song, because that is a just absolute gut-wrenching song. If you're not laughing, let me give you two tips. Listen to the song. And do it alone in your car when you do it. You will cry.
If you don't cry, please email me. We'll add you to the church prayer list because that is a work of the Spirit that needs to change your heart. But if you here's a song, I'm gonna spoil it. It's about a little boy. Who basically, his mom's gonna pass away, and he says he wants to buy these shoes because he wants his mom to look beautiful in case she meets Jesus tonight.
Incredibly sad, but he can't pay for it, so the guy in front of him does. It's a gut wrencher, right? Great, really good song. My parents played it over and over. And it is a good song, but now I can't just hear the song, now I hear it, and I think about my grandmother, which is great, but then I also think about my grandmother passing away.
So it's like bittersweet, right? That's what we understand that in a million different areas of life. We understand that these things have happened, but this is what's happened to the psalmist. Him being outside of the city, him being far away from God's presence. He's like, I remember when I used to be this far away, heading into God's presence.
heading into the temple. with the people of God joyful and now I'm the same distance away. And I'm not welcome. And I've been kicked out. And it's bittersweet.
What I feel. Is not what I used to feel. And it's creating this gratitude over what he used to feel, but a brokenness over the reality of a situation. In the second one in verse 6, he says, He begins by saying, You know, my soul is downcast within me. I remember you from the land of Hermon and Jordan.
and Mount Mizar. You know, he starts with feeling grateful over feelings he used to have that he no longer has, and then he moves to feeling grateful over truths of God that are true no matter what. And that's what we have to learn here. that everyone agrees that these things are trying to make that same point. You know, let me give you a little bit of geography.
Jordan and Hermon are about 100 miles, maybe 200 miles outside of the city. And so, what he's saying there is: whether I'm in Jerusalem or I'm hundreds of miles away, you are here. And then Herman, Mount Hermon, is the tallest mountain in all of Israel. It's 9,000 feet of elevation. And then, this is one thing: if you ever read a commentary, commentators can never agree on anything except for this, for some reason.
Mount Mizar, they ain't got a clue what it is. They don't know where it is. It's so insignificant. None of them know. But they know it roughly translates to little mountain or big hill.
So, what he's saying is: whether I'm at the tallest point in all of God's promised land or I'm at the lowest, you are there.
So, what's he trying to get us to see? Whether I feel near or far from God, or whether I feel I'm at my best or at my worst. He is there with me. And that's what he's trying to get himself. He's telling his soul: be grateful, not only when your feelings feel great, but when the truth of God goes beyond your feelings.
When God's truth reigns above those things. The psalmist is painting the picture. That whether I'm at my highest or my lowest. I will remember that God is near. And that's because our feelings towards God are often wrongly based on our emotions rather than his character.
If we base them on how I feel towards God.
Well, God, my circumstances aren't good, so you must not be good.
Well God, I don't feel very loved by you, so you must not be loving. When that's where we are, we get this wrong view of God. When we understand His character, that begins to reshape how we view our circumstance. And it happens both ways. I've seen it and I've experienced it.
I've seen it in people. where I feel like God is a million miles away because my circumstances seem bad. And I felt like God is really close when my circumstances seemed good. But the truth is you can have every single thing you want in life and be a million miles away from God.
Some of you in here, you looked apart. But maybe Christ is not your Savior and your Lord. And some of you, it looks like your life has fallen apart. But the gospel is sweet to you. Then Christ is near to you.
So we cannot let the emotions about our situation dictate what we think about God and his character. And we have to understand that no matter where you are, he is near, because this truth has to reign supreme: your circumstances don't change God's character ever. They never will. If you're taking notes, write that down, that your circumstances don't change God's character. And some of us are so dictated, we're tossed to and fro.
You know, I have people all the time. They'll talk to me about, like, I don't know how you are a pastor for college students. I used to work in high school ministry. I don't know how you work with high school students. They're too emotional.
I'm like, brother. Most men in the church, most adults in the church, are just as emotional. You hear them say one thing, well, my life is this. How could God ever? I'm like, you sound like the 16-year-old is talking about their boyfriend and girlfriend.
God is who he is. We have to work ourselves into alignment with that. That's what the psalmist is doing here. He's not saying, God, I'm far outside the city, so therefore you've abandoned me. He's saying, God, they said you've abandoned me, but I know you are near.
And so we have to work ourselves into alignment with those things. Because our circumstances don't change God's character. We have to understand God's character. Because if you don't understand God's character, this is what will happen. This may be true in your life.
Every single time you find yourself in a bad spot, in a hard time, in a bad circumstance, your circumstance will always try to tell you what God is like. Your circumstances are bad, therefore, God's not good. Your circumstances don't feel loving, therefore, God can't be loving. But when you know God's character, what begins to happen is this. The truth of his character begins to shape how you view your circumstance and reshape you in the process.
It begins to dictate. How you view these things.
So we've seen that God wants us to remember what our soul longs for and be grateful over our feelings towards Him and truth about Him. But now let's get to this last part, and I want to make sure we understand this. This psalm has a very clear structure. Maybe you picked up on it. If you have it.
Here I'll give you the cheat sheet. Look at verse five and verse eleven. I'm not going to wait for someone to answer, but here's what it is: they're the same verse. They're the exact same verse, verse 5 and 11. The psalm is broken up like this: it has lament.
It's asking, Man, God, why are my circumstances like this? People are saying horrible things about you. I don't know why that's happening. Let me speak truth. In verse 5.
Verse 6 through 10, the same thing. God, I don't understand. All these things are happening in my life. I can't understand how this aligns with your character. But let me preach truth in verse 11.
And that's how it happens at the end. It's his internal dialogue. There's only one person in this, he's saying it to his soul. He's saying it to himself. If you don't know this by now, the person you will talk to most in your life is you.
I know some of y'all you hang out with friends and you leave and you're like, why did I say that? In your own head, you're like, oh God, I sound like an idiot. You probably did, but that's okay. But you learned that you talk to yourself. You talk to yourself constantly, way more than you do anybody else.
And that's true for you and it's true for me. And that's what the psalm has done here. Look at verse 5 and 11. I'm going to read them. It's the same verse.
He says, Why are you cast down, O my soul? He's speaking to himself, Why are you in turmoil within me? Then he preaches to himself. Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. This is the third thing I want you to see: God uses hard times to teach you to preach to yourself.
to preach truth in the midst of when you don't feel like those things are true. You have to learn how to preach those truths. You have to learn that when the circumstances try to throw you away from those things, to draw yourself back. I know some of you guys have friends like this, but you guys have met insufferable sports fans, correct? Anyone know a friend?
Okay, we got a few people that know and several sports fans. I was in Columbia, the country, not the city in South Carolina. I was in Columbia, the country, a couple of this past few weeks. It was during the World Cup. And man, the things they said about Switzerland were horrible.
They were just the worst fans in the world. You guys have met the fans that scream and horrible things. You guys have met Carolina fans before. You get it. You understand what they're like, type people they are.
You understand it. You've been around cat people before. It's kind of synonymous. It's good. Um No, but the worst of the worst, the worst are Cowboys fans.
If you've never met a Cowboys fan, you are blessed and highly favored. God has been good to you. No, but my best friend's a Cowboys fan, so I know he'll love this. But one of the pastors did ask me, they were like, You really think Cowboys fans are worse than Eagles fans? I was like, At least the Eagles have won in my lifetime.
So they got something going for them. But any, yeah, the Cowboys were good 35 years ago. But I will give them this. When they were kind of getting their heyday in the 90s, they got a new coach, Jimmy Johnson, and he went to the team and he asked them: if you've ever seen like a football life, all those things, he asked them, he said, what do you want to do? And they were like, obviously, win a Super Bowl.
Every team in the world thinks they're going to win. And he's asking all these players, what do you want to do? They're like, MVP, best player in the league. Hall of Fame, all these different things. But then he says this quote, and it's kind of became his quote for his team for years and years and years.
He quoted General Patton. And he said, fatigue makes cowards of us all. And he went on to tell them. That all these things, these good things that you want, this Super Bowl you want, he said, right now. When you get to the fourth quarter, when you get late in the season and you're hurt and you're tired, it won't mean a hill of beans to you.
All that'll matter to you. Is the doubt that creeps in? Because it's going to make you a coward. No matter how tough you feel, the fatigue, when it sets in, it will make you a coward. And what he told them and how they eventually got good, he said, you have to learn in the midst of that feeling to tell yourself the truth that you believe in spite of what you feel in the moment.
You have to learn to work through that. If that is true about football, how much more true is it for us as a believer? If it is true, that in the moment of a game, when you're tired, you've got to learn: hey, the truth is not equal to what I feel, so I have to preach truth beyond what I feel. How much truer is it for us? And that's what the psalmist is doing here.
He's saying That when you're in those moments, you have to learn how to tell yourself to hope in God in spite of what you feel. If you're banking on me, or Pastor Andrew, or your community group leader, or a friend to walk around constantly and whisper in your ear sweet things about God's truth constantly, all every single day, as much as I'd love Andrew to whisper in my ear all the time, it ain't happening. It ain't gonna happen. You've got to learn to intake the word. and preach the gospel to yourself to preach truth to yourself constantly If you're waiting for every Sunday to lift you up again when moments are hard, you're just like a balloon full of air that needs to be hit, you need helium.
You need to be able to go up yourself. You need the gospel to be infiltrated into your soul.
So, in those moments, you can preach constantly. The psalmist knows who God is, and even though his soul, look at what he says: why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you at turmoil within me? But he doesn't stop there. He knows the truth and he preaches to his own heart.
He says, hope in God, for I shall again praise him. My salvation. And my God.
So let me ask you. How do you fight when your thoughts are encounter to God's character? When they run a different way. How do you fight? Do you do anything?
Does anything happen? Because I can tell you this. Every single person in this room. When a hard time and a bad circumstance, when it comes into your life, it will make doubters of us all. It will make doubters of us all.
We all am openly and admittedly. Said when we've had times in our life when circumstances got hard, it felt like God was the exact opposite of his character. We all admitted it. Like a little bait and switch I did there, where I got you admitted to something for 20 minutes later.
So what do we do? When it makes us doubt that God is near when He said He's near, when it makes us feel like God is not loving when He said He's loving, when it makes us feel like God is not good when He has sworn that He is good to us, what do we do? You have to learn to preach truth to yourself in spite of what you feel in the moment. That's what he's getting us to see. Have you hidden God's word in your heart?
Have you committed scripture to memory? Do you have a group of people that you're open and honest with? Or Man, do you just hide it and put on a good front and come in here and pretend like everything's okay when silently you're just struggling and dying on your own? That's how a lot of people are here today. I understand.
I grew up in a family like that. I'm raising my kids to be like that in some ways. I grew up in a, if you scrape your knee, rub some dirt on a family. You know, we don't whine over little things. You know, my dad was big on being tough and we're not going to be the kid that, you know, you're constantly coddled.
You've met those people as adults. They're Cowboys fans. You get it. But you've met those people who weren't raised that way. And we're trying to raise our kids that way.
Went to the pool yesterday. Daughter bloodied her knees. She's crying. I'm like, get back in the pool. She's a little blood.
It won't hurt anybody else, hopefully. But, you know, you just kind of, that's kind of how you raise your kids. And that's good. I think it's really good. I think most people here at Mercy Hill, I think is why, you know, one of the reasons I like most of the people at the church here is because you're like, man, we're not going to complain.
We're not whiners. We're not going to act like everything's somebody else's fault. We're going to toughen up. The problem is. It doesn't stop at bicycles.
It doesn't stop at scraped knees. It doesn't stop at hurt feelings. It bleeds into your spiritual life. You're raised that way, then you go to the Bible and you're like, well, if I feel anything's bad towards God, I just gotta fight it and just get through it. And I just gotta thug it out a little bit.
Like, I gotta be tough. But God does not need your toughness. It is not when I am tough, God makes me tougher. It's when I am weak, he is strong. You have got to learn to take those things to him.
And you have got to learn to not just try to pick yourself up by your spiritual bootstraps and take yourself to God. You've got to go to Him and say, God, I don't understand how this circumstance is in any way correlated with who you have revealed yourself to be in scripture, who you've revealed yourself to be to me. It doesn't make any sense, but in spite of what I feel, I'm going to align myself because I understand, God, you do not want me to simply get through hard times, you want me to grow through hard times. He does not want you just to survive these things. He wants you to be different.
The only way a bad circumstance in your life is objectively bad is if you're the same person on the other side of it. If you are the same person, if you understand God, if you experience God, if you feel the attributes of God and the exact same on the other side, you missed it. God might not be the author of every horrible thing in your life, but He will not waste all of those things. He wants to use it to mold you. What the enemy means for evil, God means it for good.
The problem is sometimes we side with the enemy. You're like, you're right, it is evil. When God is like, no, let me use it. Let me work this season of your life to shape you and mold you. But we like to be like, God, I'm good.
Some of you here today, you have on a brave face, and dude, you are suffering. But you won't tell a soul because you just want to dust your knees off again. It reminds me, you know, I broke my arm in high school and I didn't get it fixed for a while because, again, my dad was like, you know. Tough it out. That's kind of what he was.
One time I broke my finger and it was this way. My dad told me it was jammed for two weeks. And my mom finally told me to get me to the doctor. And the doctor was like, definitely not jammed. Put a pin in there, popped it back in, and off we went.
But my arm, it didn't get fixed for a while. And now I'm like my mom. My mom used to always be like, well, it's about to rain. My knee, I can feel it. You know, that's how I am.
My arm starts hurting. The weather's gonna change. I'm old. I get it. Um But the problem is if you could look at my arm It it's shaped.
The wrong way. It is misshapen.
Some of you, if you've ever had a muscle that you don't work out, if people have injuries, it can atrophy. If I had spiritual glasses on in this room and all of our campus, I would imagine I'd see a lot of souls that are atrophy in Zamarius. that you just don't want to take it to the physician. And you don't want to give it to him and let him grow you. You're like, I'd rather pretend it's all okay.
I just hide my injury. And he's like... And come to me, all you who are tired and heavy laden, I will give you rest for your soul. But man, we're letting pride get in the way of what God wants us to do. He wants us to grow.
But what's different? Here's how I'm going to apply it. What's different? What advantage do we have over the psalmist? And we've heard that It gives us a clear view of what our soul desires.
We've heard that God wants us to be grateful over the times we've had good moments with him, and even in the hard times, the truths about him. That God uses a hard time to teach us to preach truth to ourselves when we don't feel it. But what is different? If that's true for the psalmist, what's different for us? The psalmist is looking.
From where he is. to how God might save. I mean, we're on this side of the cross looking back to how he has saved. Cause maybe you're like me. And you understand the gospel?
And you understand when you actually think about it for yourself. Man, I kind of lean this when bad things happen in my life, I'm like, man, God, I deserve it. I deserve this hard time. I deserve this thing. And the truth is, for the psalmist, he deserves to not be in God's presence.
He deserves to be cast out of the city. Because his sins should separate him from God. Your sin should separate you from God. It should cast you out. But the truth is, we have a greater David, who though he deserved to be in the city, was taken outside to the mountain, outside the walls.
And when the enemies of the psalmist said, Where is your God? Why has He forsaken you? Our God, Christ Savior, went outside and said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why did He do that? Because the one who was meant to be near to God was taken outside so that the outcast could be brought near.
And if you don't know, You were meant to be the outcast. Your sin has separated you from holy God. You should not lead processions in to praise God. You should not be able to commune with him, but he offers you new life in Christ. And in that, In that.
This does not have to be the end of our story. That we can say, my soul, hope in God again, because we will praise Him.
So the application is simple. It's probably what you heard in third grade Sunday school if you grew up going to church. is that preach the gospel to yourself daily. What's the answer? Jesus.
You know, you know the church answer. What does that mean though? What's the difference? Why do I have to say this? Why is this the application if we all know it?
Because apparently, if we're like that very theological Christian movie, Fifty First Dates. Adam Sandler. You wake up every morning and you just dang forget it. You just forget it every day. If you don't know the movie, she's got amnesia, she forgets every day.
It's a big spoiler. But man, so many of us. God has been so kind to us and we will wake up in the morning and forget it. I mean, what we have to remember is that the truth of the gospel is this: for every single time we have felt like God is far and he wasn't, Christ actually separated himself from the father and took the punishment for our sin and died and rose on the third day and said, You never have to be far from God again if you will put your faith in me. And that truth should shape our lives.
That truth should change us. God is not far, he is near, so I don't know where you are today. If you feel like God is far. If you feel like you're in one of those times of great gratitude, If you're in a horrible time, you're coming out of a horrible time. Maybe you've never, ever even prayed anything like that.
Maybe you need to come to the altar with your Bible and read Psalm 42 and say, God, it's for me. Man, what I want to challenge you to do. It's for the first time, take your Questions to God and say, God. Help reshape these in light of who you are. Help reshape these in light of the gospel.
Help me bring my circumstance to you and say, God, what are you trying to show me now? Because the problem is, we get so focused on the now that we miss what God is trying to do next. We miss it. But I think that God has something for you in your current circumstance, whether you think it's good or bad, or whatever it is. Take it to him.
Let him deal with it and learn to live your life throwing everything at his feet. Let's pray. God. I asked it. You would remind us of the gospel.
That as the psalmist questioned why he was Away from your presence, and while he was thrown out. Of the temple of God, God, we understand. That the wages of sin for us is death, it's separation from you. That there is none righteous, no, not one. But unlike the psalmists, we understand this: that You demonstrated your love, not in just fixing a physical distance from you.
but in a spiritual one. And that while we're sinners, Christ died for us, and that if we would confess with our mouth and believe in our heart. That we would be saved. And God, that truth is not just for the moment of salvation, it's for every day of our lives. That we do not grow beyond the gospel, we just grow deeper into it.
And so, Lord, I pray that as we take communion, I pray that as we fellowship with other believers here. That Lord, we would not feel like we have to put on this front, like things are all good and all together. That God, we can be okay saying, like, my desires have been hidden, that my inmost being, my desire for you, has been. Shrouded by some things in this world, and God is using my circumstance to get rid of it.
So, Lord, I ask. That, whether it's through prayer, whether it's through communion, and maybe people need to say, God, I believe this is true, I don't feel. Very close to these elements right now. That I understand your body was broken for me. I understand your blood was poured out, but God, it feels like you're a million miles away.
And I long to feel near to you again. God, I pray for an honest church. I pray for an honest people. God, do what only you can do. crash name.
Amen.
