Psalm 119 VI: A Prayer for Dark Seasons

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder and we are returning again to Psalm 119.

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And one of the benefits of Psalm 119 is the fact that there are some things that we're not exactly sure of, and that might kind of sound surprising.

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Many of the old commentators on the psalm, the Puritans, Spurgeon, Bridges, they treat the psalm as if it is definitely written by David, but we're not exactly sure it could have been.

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We don't know exactly who wrote it. We don't know exactly when it was written, except we do know that it came when man is sinful.

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It wasn't written in the Garden of Eden. So it is written by a sinner who is being saved by the grace of God, who now loves the

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Word of God, and we're allowed to go into his prayer closet and 172 verses out of the 176 in this chapter, we are allowed to listen in to eavesdrop on a believer and the response of their soul to God.

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And the wonderful thing that I mentioned at the beginning is that we don't know when this happened.

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So what we have in the psalm is we have 176 verses that really cover every aspect of the

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Christian life, every circumstance, whether it's the heartbreaking questions or leaping for joy, whether it's the

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Christian springtime or the winter. I like the old writers because they are very honest about the different seasons of the

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Christian life. They talk about springtimes, and so we might describe those as times where everything spiritual in the soul seems to just grow and grow at an amazing pace.

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And if you're a Christian, you can probably look back over your Christian life and see many periods of this kind of springtime where it seems that there is no cloud between your heart and God.

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It's as if you can almost see the realities of Christ. It's not just faith.

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It's like I can almost see them. They are so real and so apparent to me.

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But then there are also winters in the Christian life where it looks like when you look out over your soul, everything that looks so lush and green and vibrant in those wonderful seasons, it seems like this terrible winter has come and struck it all down, and it looks like everything's dead.

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And you ask yourself, you ask God, was anything back in those pleasant times?

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Was anything real? Does anything still exist? And there is. It's just not as much as we thought there was.

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Maybe all there are are a few saplings there, these little trees, and all the green leaves and things are gone.

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We do see the real work of God, but it's not quite what we had thought it was.

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Sometimes there are times where it's like we are living the Christian life and it's noonday clarity.

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The sun is there and everything is so clear. I know what to do.

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I know what God is saying to me through His Word. I know. And sometimes it feels like there is a starless night and we look around and we don't know what to do next.

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And it's hard. We ask for help from God and it seems like He's silent.

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But in both of these situations, I find that the most difficult aspect is the taunts or the mocking questions of an enemy.

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And so there seems to be, in my own experience, there seems to be a kind of a whisper in the background when things are particularly difficult.

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Not at the beginning, but when they continue, when sorrow upon sorrow comes to the

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Christian. So this is not always, but there are dark valleys that a Christian passes through. And as those valleys seem to extend longer and longer, then the taunting becomes more pronounced.

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And so it sounds something like this. How long will you hope in God? How long will you quote this book and tell other people that God is really worth trusting?

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How long will you say that Christ is enough? You pray. You cry out.

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There's no answer. You cry out more. There's no answer. Do you think that God actually hears prayers? Does He hear your prayer?

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And ultimately, of course, the question is, is God good? Is God at all? Does He exist?

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I find that at the beginning of really difficult seasons, the answer to those questions, which there are answers, the biblical and right answer to those questions comes easily.

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So I feel that temptation to believe that lie. And immediately I say, no, no,

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God, You are what You say You are. And You have proven Yourself through the centuries.

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And You have proven Yourself to me. But as it goes on, the right answers, still right, are harder to say.

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And there are times in the Christian life where I have, I guess, kind of reached the end of my rope. And I feel like I, if you think of it as a battlefield and a soldier,

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I feel like I am face down in the mud. And the mocking, taunting lies have laid me low.

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And I am crying out to God and my heart is tempted to just despair.

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And, you know, my sword, Amy Carmichael describes it as a time when your sword is snapped and your shield is riven or is, you know, is dented.

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And you wonder, God, are You still there? And He is. I know that we can read writers other than the

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Bible. We can read, you know, biographies of people that we admire. And when they go through hard times, they explain how they made it through.

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And that's very helpful. I love Samuel Rutherford for that reason. He talks about how he laid hold by faith upon Christ even in the darkest times.

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Rutherford said that grace grows best in winter. Rutherford said to one parishioner when he wrote letters from prison that even though it is a dark night at this moment in your life, you can still gather gold by moonlight.

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You can still find the treasures of Christ even if it's dark. Those are wonderful statements.

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And those are good to remember. But there are times when life is so difficult and the difficulties have gone on for so long that I don't find those enough.

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I need something from Scripture, something that I can risk everything on. And I can't do that on Samuel Rutherford, but I can on the

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Scripture. And that brings us to our verses today. Psalm 119, verse 41 and 42, which in, you know, those springtime seasons may not be so precious to you.

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But in the wintry times, in the dark times, I find these verses ought to be written in gold.

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Listen to what the psalmist says. 41 and 42, so basically there's a request and then there is a reason given.

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So the request is that the lovingkindnesses of the Lord, of the covenant keeping, I am, would come to the psalmist.

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And then he renames those, your lovingkindnesses, your salvation, according to your word.

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And then there is a reason given. There's a motivation for this particular prayer. And verse 41 really means so much more to us.

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It is just, it's enlarged as we look at it, if we keep it connected to the reason that it's given.

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And that's verse 42. So again, the second half, verse 42. As I mentioned, there are those times where it's so difficult that we feel that there's a taunting.

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And the word reproach here in the New American Standard is a translation of a Hebrew word, which means a taunt.

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It is a mocking, ongoing taunt. God, I am going through a season where there is this continual taunting of the enemy.

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All my hope in you is being mocked. All my claims to be a

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Christian, to be born again, to be adopted into the family of God, when you look at the circumstances of my life, everything seems to mock my hope.

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I need an answer for the reproach. I need an answer for the taunts.

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I need an answer for the mocking questions that are in my own mind and that are coming from without.

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Do you have an answer for that? And God does. This drives Him to the

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Lord and to ask for what He asks for in verse 41. Let me ask you, what is the great answer to the taunting of an enemy who is accusing your

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God to you? Well, we would say we have the Word of God. And like the great believers throughout the

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Old and New Testament, Hebrews chapter 11, of course, comes to mind. Year after year, like Abraham or a

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Noah or a Moses, year after year, they hold to what God has said, even if that is all they have.

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And that, Christian, is enough. You can risk everything on what

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God says. So, if in the darkest times of your Christian life, all you have is the words from the pages of this book, and you can hold on to them, that is sufficient to get through everything.

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But I want to say, and I don't want to be misunderstood, but I want to say that there is a higher, sweeter, more effective answer.

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And that is what the psalmist asks for here. It is, in a sense, in addition to the

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Word. We have the Word. We hold to the Word. He says, in verse 42, he says,

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Give me an answer for the one that reproaches me, for I trust in your Word. God, I'm already holding on to your Word, okay?

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I'm not asking for something outside of the Word of God. I'm not asking for you to jump through certain hoops and prove that you're still there.

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According to your Word, because I trust in this written, objective revelation of God, I am asking for something.

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I am asking for God to come and to give what the

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Word promises. So I have the Word. I hold on to the Word. I don't let go of it.

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But as I'm holding on to it, it is appropriate to say to God, Would you please give me the very things that are promised here?

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Would you let me experience them? And not just grab hold of them by faith, but really, in a sense, taste them, see them, feel them, have them.

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Can I just have a foretaste? Can I just see a little bit of what's there?

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Can I have some evidence of the realities of these in the present moment?

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And God does give that. One of the sweetest and most effective answers to the mocking, taunting lies of the enemy when we go through a dark season is that God's loving kindnesses come to me.

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His salvation is given to me. In other words, the realities that are explained in the

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New Covenant go from being wonderful realities on a page to experienced things in the life.

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God, who spoke these things and revealed these things and preserved these things in the

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Bible for me, has now, in a sense, arrived and given me these things.

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And it is when our hope in God, based on His Word, it is when it has that wonderful added element of God showing up and doing what

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He says He will do, it is when that happens that the taunts of the enemy are just silenced and the mocking mouth is shut.

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And so we pray for that. But we want to be very careful because you can pray for that in a wrong way.

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So we want to be biblical. Again, verse 41, May Your loving kindnesses also come to me,

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O Lord, Your salvation according to Your Word. The expectations of the believer, the requests of the believer in the darkest seasons of our life, it has to be guided by the

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Word of God. I'm expecting the loving kindnesses. I'm expecting the salvation that God has promised.

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But I have to guide my expectations by the Scripture. What has Christ promised to give and what has

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Christ not promised to give? For example, we are never told that when we embrace

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King Jesus and we are brought from a realm of death into the realm of life, from darkness to light, from the condemnation of the law to the wonderful rule of Christ's undeserved love, the rule of grace, we are never told that that will take us out of this sinful world with all of its heartbreaking realities.

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Romans 8 says the entire creation, not just Earth, every galaxy, groans under the curse, under the weight of humanity's sin.

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If we could personify planet Earth, we would say this, Planet Earth, every day since Adam and Eve chose sin, planet

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Earth has groaned out a request to the Creator. How long will we suffer under the horrid effects of sin?

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When will you make all things right? And the believer also groans and longs for the day when

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Christ is glorified in front of all creation, the church is glorified with Christ and the believer is made complete and all of these things that we struggle with now and the sad environment and the battlefield and the mocking lies are forever gone.

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Until that time, what's promised now? Make sure that when you pray, that like the psalmist, you are very clear.

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I'm asking you for the salvation that was promised in Christ. I'm asking you for every new covenant gift that is appropriate to ask for here and now in the way that you have said you would give it and I am not expecting something that you have not said.

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Are your expectations guided by a careful study of the small print of the contract of love between God and you through His Son, the new covenant?

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Charles Bridges says this, General notions of mercy without a distinct apprehension of salvation, of what

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God promised, they have their origin in presumption and not in faith.

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So to come to God and say, oh God, you promised to be a good God and so you kind of put forward a list of requests.

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If they are not based in what God has said, it is presumption, it is not faith.

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Faith believes what God has revealed and lives on it. Presumption brings a list to God and says,

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I think this would be a good idea for you and since you say you're my heavenly Father, you owe it to me. We cannot come to God and complain that He seems silent and unresponsive to our prayers when we are broken hearted if our requests are ignoring what

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He has given us in the Word. Think of it this way, when things are real, there are words that describe them.

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So marriage, children, beauty, color, smell, sights, these are things that are real and we have words that we try to kind of capture those realities.

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So you know the beauty of a garden and it's a real thing and maybe if you're trying to describe something to someone who's never seen the beauty of this particular thing, you gather together words and I know that the words fall short but the words are an attempt to capture something of the reality.

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So real things are real and the words that describe them are true and we value the words but we are not satisfied with just words.

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If it's something that's real, we want words and we want the substance. If someone describes the happiness of marriage or of having a child, we want something more than a marriage license.

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We want to look our spouse in the eye. We want to sit by them. We want to grow old with them.

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We want to have the reality that the words describe. When it comes to real things, spiritually, we are happy for the beautiful words and the honest words on the pages of the

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Bible but the Christian, like the psalmist here in verse 41 and 42, is driven by the belief that these are real to ask

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God for more than just words. God, like the end of Ephesians 1 and 3,

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I pray like Paul, give me the experiential reality, the experiential knowledge of the wonderful object of truths

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I'm reading. Now think of it in another way. Things that are fictional might be described with beautiful words.

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So you might have a favorite author, someone like J .R. Tolkien, whose books are full of these long sections describing the scenery.

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When I was a kid and I read Tolkien, I disliked those. I wanted to get to the battle scenes. Now that I'm older, the descriptions of life in Hobbiton, that's what

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I think is so interesting. I can read that and I can appreciate Tolkien's ability to create an imaginary world and he spells it out so beautifully, it almost seems real.

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But you know, I don't get bitter at J .R. Tolkien because it's not real. I know it's fiction. I appreciate the words.

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I don't expect the reality. Is that the way you approach Christianity? I want us to kind of pull our talk together with that one question.

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Are you a believer or not? A believer believes that these things in the

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Scripture are real. And because he or she believes that, we are driven to ask

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God, let those aspects of salvation, those loving -kindnesses actually come to me.

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I want to experience them and shut the mouth of the taunting world and the nagging doubt.

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But the unbeliever shows up in church. They may be a church member. They may teach. They may be a pastor.

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And they have these beautiful words. But they're never agonizing in prayer over the fact that they aren't experiencing the words because if you were to really get to the heart of the issue, they feel that this is wonderful myth.

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This is beautiful fiction. These are wonderful concepts to kind of get you through life.

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But they are not the realities that I expect to live upon. And so I appreciate the words.

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I don't expect the reality. Which are we? In Psalm 119, we find what it looks like when we really believe.

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And we go through a hard time. May your loving -kindnesses also come to me, O Lord.

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Your salvation according to Your Word. So I will have an answer for him who reproaches, taunts me.