When Theology and Experience Collide with Ian Hamilton

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder, and this week we have a special speaker for you, Ian Hamilton. Ian is from Scotland. Perhaps you're not familiar with the name. He has spent his life pastoring, educating ministers.

He is an author. We've had a number of his books that we've given away here at the church. And he is also one of the board of directors for the Banner of Truth Trust. Ian has just finished filming a mini-study with us here on the true nature of discipleship.

And while he was here, we asked him if he would preach, and so he preached Sunday morning for us from Psalm 44, When Theology and Experience Collide. Or another title he gave us as an option was, When All Around My Soul Gives Way.

So, it really was such an encouraging sermon for the people in New Albany, Mississippi, that we thought it would be nice for you to be able to hear it. I hope that you find it to be as strengthening as we did.

If you have a Bible with you, then please turn to the book of Psalms, Psalm 44. Let me, first of all, say how grateful I am to your pastor and his fellow elders for the kind invitation to minister here in New Albany.

It's a privilege for me to be here. Let me secondly apologize for my voice. I don't always sound like this. I was saying to the men last night that I was preaching near Seattle a while back, and a little boy turned to his mother and asked her if I was from China, which I thought was a little harsh, but then I thought it could have been a lot worse.

He could have asked if I had come from England. And from that, you will gather that I'm a somewhat proud Scot. Our nation somewhat gave birth to your nation. You probably all know, or at least you should certainly know, that a Scottish Presbyterian minister signed the Declaration of Independence.

He was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration. How many of you know his name? One. Two. Shameful beyond words. Shameful beyond words. He was the president of the College of New Jersey that became Princeton.

His name was John Witherspoon. Do not forget it. Psalm 44 is a psalm that doesn't tell us the historical circumstances that gave birth to the psalm. Most probably, as you read the psalm, it appears to have been written and composed in the wake of a great defeat for God's covenant people, Israel, his old covenant church.

And they are bewildered by God's ways with them. They cannot reconcile their experience with their theology. Their theology tells them that the Lord God, Yahweh, is the sovereign Lord of the heavens and the earth.

He is the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords. He is the God who has entered into covenant relationship with his people, but now they are languishing. They are overwhelmed by the tragedy that has befallen them, and they are bewildered with God.

They cannot reconcile what has happened to them with what they know about God. So the psalm addresses this fundamental reality that believers in every age face. What are we to do when our theology contradicts our experience and when our experience appears to contradict our theology?

What are we to do when God appears to have abandoned us? O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old. You with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted.

You afflicted the peoples, but them you set free. For not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them. But your right hand and your arm and the light of your face, for you delighted in them.

You are my King, O God, ordain salvation for Jacob. Through you we push down our foes. Through your name we tread down those who rise up against us. For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.

But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah. But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies.

You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoil. You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us among the nations. You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.

You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us. You have made us a byword, better a laughingstock among the nations and among the peoples. All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way. Yet you have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death.

If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign God, would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust, our belly clings to the ground.

Rise up! Come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your covenant love. Let us pray for a moment together. Lord, as we together ponder the riches of your grace stored in your word, we pray that the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Speak, Lord. Cause your truth to live not only within our hearing, but within our hearts. Meet with us, we pray. Glorify your Son, our only and blessed Saviour, Jesus Christ. And we ask it in his name.

Amen. Reading the Bible is deeply unsettling. It's richly encouraging, but also it's deeply unsettling. There is an honesty in the Bible that sometimes is hard to take to heart. And in the book of Psalms, 150 Psalms, of those 150, 59 of them are laments, songs where God's people pour out their bewilderments, their frustrations, their angers at God.

If we didn't have the book of Psalms, I fear that the Christian religion would be impoverished. What are we to sing when all around our soul gives way? What are we to sing when God's ways with us overwhelm us and our past finding out?

What are we to sing when we find ourselves in the utter depths and all the lights go out? The book of Psalms is there to help us express in the midst of our bewilderments with God how the child of God should cry out to him when all around their soul is giving way.

There's an honesty in the book of Psalms that is deeply unsettling. And that's what Psalm 44 is about. It's a congregational lament. The background, as I said, seems to be that Israel has suffered a calamitous defeat.

Its enemies are mocking them. If you look down at verses 15 following, you have made us a taunt for our neighbors, a derision and scorn for those around us. We've become a laughingstock among the peoples.

Here is a man expressing the bewilderment of the people of God with God himself. I want to notice four things with you in this 44th Psalm. First of all, in verses 1 through 8, notice the aggravation caused by genuine faith.

The aggravation caused by genuine faith. As I said a few moments ago, these opening verses, O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us what deeds you performed in their days and the days of old.

With your own hand you drove out nations, but them you planted. You are my king, O God, verse 4, ordain salvation for Jacob. The psalmist here is expressing bewilderment. He's not reciting great and glorious truths except to express his bewilderment with God.

These opening verses are part of the lament. He's saying, we have heard. We have heard of the great and mighty deeds that you have performed in the past on behalf of your people. And they delight us, they rejoice our hearts.

But what about now? Why are you not acting like this now? You see, genuine faith can be aggravated by looking to the past and reading about and hearing about the mighty deeds of God. And then you look around yourself and you say, but Lord, what about today?

Where are you today? If you acted on behalf of your people way back then, why are you not acting on behalf of your people now? Indeed, why do you appear, as later we'll see in the psalm, to be asleep?

Why do you appear to have either neglected us or even rejected us? You read about the mighty deeds of God, for example, in the days of the Reformation or the days of the great Puritan revival in England and New England and Scotland, the great awakening in the 1740s, the crowds who thronged to hear Charles Haddon's Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, the crowds that thronged to hear Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel.

What about today? What about now? This is a man of genuine faith leading the congregation of God's people in a lament because they cannot square theology with experience. The life of faith is portrayed to us in all its variegatedness in the Bible.

The life of faith is never even and unhindered. The life of faith is punctuated with bewilderments, with trials and troubles and tribulations, and the Bible is exceedingly honest, unsettlingly honest, in saying to us, there will be seasons in the life of the people of God when experience appears to contradict your theology.

God is sovereign, majestic, glorious, omnipotent. He reigns above the heavens and the earth. He ordains all things according to the counsel of His own will. He brings to pass that which He purposes, executes that which He pleases, and the blood-bought people of God languish and suffer.

How are we to reconcile experience with theology? Although, secondly, in verses 9 to 22, and really, the main focus will be in the closing verses of the psalm, we've noticed a little of the aggravation caused by genuine faith, but in 9 to 22, we see the deep perplexity provoked by genuine faith.

You see, the opening eight verses are really lulling us into a false sense. And suddenly, verse 9 changes everything. But you have rejected us, you, the God who in days past went out with our armies, blessed your covenant people, protected them, cared for them, rescued them, delivered them.

But you now, in my day and in our day, you've rejected us and disgraced us. You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoil. He's saying to the Lord, I cannot understand you.

Your ways are not my ways. Why is this happening to us in our day when it didn't happen to them in their day? He continues, you have made us like sheep for slaughter. You've scattered us among the nations.

You've sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them. He knows that the Lord God omnipotent reigns. He knows that God isn't a bystander in the affairs of men. He knows that God ordains all things according to the counsel of his will.

Life is not simply unfolding according to the mere decisions and decrees of men and women, but all things are superintended, governed, ordained, planned, and purposed by the high and holy one who inhabits eternity and who is Yahweh, the covenant God of his own people.

You have made us a taunt for our neighbors. You have made us a laughingstock among the peoples. All day long, my disgrace is before me. All day long. He's bewildered with God. Maybe some of you here this morning understand that only too well.

The Lord God, who is your God, who has made you his, and by his grace you have made him yours, but his ways with you have left you bewildered, perplexed. You cannot reconcile the theology that you believe and that is rooted and grounded in God's written revelation.

You cannot reconcile that or square that with your experience. Well, you're just like the psalmist here, and this psalmist here to remind us that faith is variegated, that genuine faith, true faith, God-honoring faith, God-glorifying faith can be a faith that is punctuated with bewilderments and uncertainties and sadnesses and fears.

The psalmist is utterly perplexed with God. There's a text in the 45th chapter of Isaiah that I often reflect on where the prophet says to God, Truly, you are a God who hides himself. Martin Luther translated it, Deus absconditus.

You are a God who's absconded. Your ways are not my ways. Your thoughts are not my thoughts. Lord, I cannot make sense of you. And here the psalmist, a man of genuine faith, has experienced the aggravation caused by genuine faith and has experienced the deep perplexity provoked by genuine faith.

But then, strikingly, he expresses the familial boldness inspired by genuine faith. Verses 21 to 24, he says, If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, would God not discover this?

For he knows the secrets of the heart. Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. He's saying, Lord, we understand that there are times when our sins bring down upon our heads your righteous judgments.

We understand that. Your word tells us. But we have not acted unfaithfully. Now, he's not saying we've been sinless, but he's saying we've been faithful to you and to your covenant. And the tragedies that have overwhelmed us have come upon us not because of our disobediences, not because we have been rebellious, not because we've been covenant breakers.

And that's why he then says this, Awake. Why are you sleeping? Four times in these closing verses, he uses imperative verbs. He commands God. He says, Awake. Rouse yourself. Then in verse 26, Rise up.

Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love or your covenant love. Four times. And the first three of these Hebrew verbs have what's called suffixal intensifiers. There's a little two-letter addition to the verb that expresses the intensity of the psalmist's command to God.

Awake, God, he's saying. Awake. Rouse yourself. Rise up. What's wrong with you? Are you asleep? Now, the psalmist knows, does he not? The 121st Psalm. He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

You can't read this passage, I think, without being reminded of the Lord Jesus Christ with his disciples in the boat. They're crossing the Sea of Galilee. I've done the journey. He falls asleep, and the disciples are bewildered.

They're saying, Lord, do you not care that we perish? Do you not care that we perish? Here is familial boldness. Here is a child of God commanding the sovereign Lord of the universe to wake up. If it wasn't in the Bible, you wouldn't believe it.

You would think, how dare he do that? How dare he command God? Who does he think he is? He is a bewildered child of God. Who longs for the glory of God, for the blessedness of the people of God, and who will not let God go until he bless.

But then, fourthly, and this really is the burden of what I want to say this morning. Notice the supportive theology that undergirds genuine faith. We've noticed briefly the aggravation caused by genuine faith, verses 1 through 8.

Then, verses 9 to 22, the deep perplexity provoked by genuine faith. And then, thirdly, verses 22 to 24, the familial boldness inspired by genuine faith. But then, fourthly, notice the supportive theology that undergirds genuine faith.

You see, the psalmist wrote more than he understood. Look what he says in verse 22. For your sake, we are killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Now, of course, you know that Paul quotes these words in Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8, verses 35 to 36. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword, as it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long?

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. You see, what the psalmist thought was God abandoning his people was actually the very reverse. The sufferings they were undergoing were actually battle scars fought for your sake.

They were not scars of God's displeasure. They were the battle scars of faith and love. For your sake, we are killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. And Paul can take those words and place them in the fuller light of the new covenant and say that this experience goes hand in hand with that of who shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Shall tribulation, distress, trial, trouble, nakedness, danger, sword, just what the psalmist was experiencing, no, because it's for your sake. The Lord Jesus Christ never hid from people the costs that would inevitably be theirs if they embraced him as the Savior given by God for the life of the world.

It almost seems at times in the Gospels that Jesus is pushing people away. Actually, he's holding out his hands all the day long, but he wants people to know that if you're going to be mine, for my sake, you're going to be killed all the day long.

You will be regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Now, we may be here this morning remote from the extremity of that, but our brothers and sisters in Nigeria or not, in Eritrea or not, in Afghanistan or not, in Pakistan or not, what God's people were experiencing was not the sign of his displeasure, but the battle scars that belong to the people of God.

Let no man trouble me, Paul could write, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, you have this great theological underpinning. For your sake, we're being killed all the day long because of our union with God in Jesus Christ.

We cannot escape the cost of living for truth and righteousness in a world of lies and godless unbelief. We may have been shielded for generations here in this land and in my own land, but maybe increasingly the cost will begin to bear upon us, and we will begin to experience what brothers and sisters in Christ have experienced for generations throughout the world.

But there's a second theological underpinning here, and it's seen in the very last word, actually, in the Hebrew text, in verse 26. Redeem us for the sake of your chesed, your covenant love. You see, the psalmist is not willing to let go that the God who perplexes him, who bewilders him, whose ways are not his ways, his thoughts are not his thoughts, is a God of covenant love, a God of covenant faithfulness.

I've been thinking recently of the words we read in Jeremiah 31, verse 3, where God says to his people, as they approach the devastation of the exile, I have loved you with an everlasting love. God is saying to the remnant of faith within the covenant people, hold on to this.

As your world falls apart around you, as the unthinkable happens, and you're uprooted from the land, and the temple is destroyed, hold on to this. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Johannes Gerhardus Vos, what a name, wrote the reason God will never stop loving you is because he never began.

He will never stop loving you because he never began. I have loved you with an everlasting love. And that's where the psalmist, in his bewilderment and perplexity, casts his anchor. Redeem us for the sake of your covenant, steadfast love.

And that's how the psalm ends. Some of the psalms end like that. There's no apparent resolution. But that's the reality of the life of faith, and supremely and preeminently we see it in our Lord Jesus Christ.

As our Saviour hung on the cross, he cried, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There was no answer from heaven. There was silence. He was left to wrestle with the incongruity of his experience and his theology.

He never let go the personal pronoun, my God. I've been thinking a lot about that over the Christmas season. You know, we sung and wonderfully sung about Emmanuel, God with us. But my friends, we need more than God with us.

If we only have God with us, that leaves me asking this question, but is he for me? That's why we need more than Emmanuel. We need Elie, my God. My God, my God, my God, why? Silence. There we see faith at his purest and brightest and most glorious, as the holy wrath of God is poured out on the holy Son of God, dying the just for the unjust to bring us to God.

He never lets go his theology. When your theology appears to contradict your experience, hold fast to your theology. I believe God. John Calvin has a fabulous passage. If you have Calvin's commentaries, I think it's Romans 4, verse 20, against hope, Abraham believed in hope.

And Calvin writes, if I remember, he says, what are we to do when all the promises of God contradict our experience? He says he is propitious towards us, but outward signs threaten his wrath. He says he accounts us just, but we are covered with sins.

He says we have a glorious hope that every step we take in this life is marred by failure and defeat. What then are we to do? And Calvin says we are to disregard ourselves and believe that God is true.

That's what our Savior was doing on the cross. My God. My God, why? My, my. Can you say that this morning? He is mine, my. The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. Yes, he died for his elect. He died for all who believe in him.

He died for that great innumerable company that no man can number, but he died particularly and individually. He didn't die for sins in the lump. He died bearing the judgment of particular sins, and he died for particular people.

You think, well, did he die for me? Run to him, and he will receive you. So Psalm 44, bewilderment with God because his ways are higher than our weights. Sometimes people ask me, what do you think will be the first thing you'll say when you breathe your last breath in this life and breathe your first breath in that better life?

Well, who knows? I like to think I'll say this, you did all things well. You did all things well. May the Lord give us the grace to trust him in our perplexities and to look to Christ to say with him, my God, my God.

May God bless to us his word.