I was a country pastor during some very severe years of drought in the early 1990s
and I learnt a lot coming out of the city.
I learnt to appreciate rain.
I learnt not to stick my head out the window on another cold, cloudy, overcast, rainy day
and say, lousy weather.
I lived among people whose faces lit up when it was wet.
People would come into town, they'd have time for a talk and a cuppa.
They would compare their rain gauge readings with joy, excitement, competitiveness
and sometimes with great thankfulness to God.
Drought brings deathly despair.
Day after day of endless blue sky.
Crops come out of the ground and they wither and die.
Animals expire in the paddock.
A lamb is not worth much but cattle are.
And you see their carcasses withered and dead in the paddock
and you know that something terrible is quietly going on.
Hope dies.
Uncertainty prevails.
And despair grows.
Now as the drought grew longer I called a prayer meeting out towards Walcott in the community of Burren Junction
and I advertised it as praying for people in drought.
And nearly a hundred people came in from farms out around the community
and I wanted them to hear one another's stories and to pray for one another.
Clearly everybody wanted it to rain but I thought it was important to support one another through the despair.
The meeting began.
We heard some pretty torrid stories from people about how the drought was impacting them.
And then a very prominent man in the community, a shire counsellor who wasn't a Christian man,
rose to his feet and aggressively and impatiently said,
So when are we going to pray for rain?
That's what we've come for.
Now unbeknown to me, he got on ABC radio that morning and told people that we were going to pray for rain.
And I said we have come to pray for people and we will ask God for rain.
My vision was to support people and to urge them to trust in God even if it never rained.
Run to God, not run from God.
The shire counsellor wanted God to fix the mess, to meet his needs.
God, get me out of this time so that I can get on with my life without you.
A lot of people are really happy to look to God in a difficult time.
They want him to fix things.
Somebody dies.
Something terrible happens.
Everybody says I'm praying for you.
We want stuff from God but we don't want him.
True people of faith are different.
We want God.
We want him much more than we want the things that he gives to us.
And Psalm 42, this wonderful psalm, is a song which is written by a person who is hungry for God.
And I discovered that as I prepared that you can't preach this psalm properly without preaching Psalm 43 as well.
The two go together and in some of the ancient Hebrew manuscripts they are one song.
And you'll see as I speak what it is that links them.
And so it begins.
So this psalmist, this songwriter, he longs to be in God's presence.
He wants to meet with him.
Some of my favourite verses in all the Bible are verses which express a longing for God.
So you go into Philippians 3, verses 10 and 11.
The sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus said,
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.
The invitational language of Jesus,
Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.
Pascal famously said,
There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing,
but only by God the Creator made known through Jesus Christ.
And he's saying something that I think we all know,
that people long for something or someone who is bigger than us.
And as life goes on, we realise that life is not all that it's cracked up to be.
We're told that we're the centre of our world and we learn from a tsunami or an earthquake or a death or a job loss or an illness
that we actually control very little.
What makes you feel a long way from God and lonely for him?
Sin does it for me.
The guilt, the unworthy feelings, sometimes even self-loathing.
Personal criticism does it as well.
Somebody points out your failures and they'll always qualify it by saying they're just trying to be constructive.
But oftentimes it's given or it's received in a way that is destructive of self-image and eroding of confidence.
Personal failure can be a terrifying moment as well.
The moment when you've done something at work that's going to cost a lot of money or time to fix.
You've made a mistake.
There's no hiding it.
It will be seen.
I am the engineer who designed a water pumping station down the south coast.
And I got a call when I was on my next job while it was being built saying,
who's the idiot engineer who specified rising spindles on the valves under the car park?
They were putting them in and they realised that they were going to have steel rods projecting through the car park
for everyone to trip on and drive over.
It wasn't my most glorious moment.
And all I could say was, it was me.
Which was a really good thing to say.
But I would still have liked a very big rock to hide under.
The songwriter's oppression and his feelings of loneliness from God is not coming from his own failures.
It's coming from external oppression.
His enemies see his circumstances, whatever they are, and we're not really sure what they are.
They know about his faith, but they're putting the boot in.
And they taunt him.
And you see it in verse 3 and you see it again in verse 10.
Where's your God?
You're the preacher.
Where's your God?
Now we've preached this series of messages from the book of Job over the last few weeks
and we saw that when Job suffered at God's hand,
his friends were the ones who became his oppressors.
People who claimed faith in God made it even harder for their brother.
But in Psalm 42 and 43, the oppressors are unbelievers, people who are outside the faith.
They don't believe in God at all.
And they're taunting the psalmist and he is hurting.
And he's saying things like,
My tears have been my food day and night,
while people are saying to me all day long,
Where is your God?
Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taught me,
saying to me all day long,
Where is your God?
And so his experience, life for him,
is tears and mourning and suffering to the very bone.
And the enemies look at his situation
and they effectively say,
So much for your faith in God.
Seems to be absent.
Doesn't seem to be listening.
Because for them it's a world where God doesn't seem to make his presence known.
He doesn't seem to have anything to say.
Our world.
Christian believers and what we stand for,
more and more marginalised.
Pushed to the edges of society.
We are not even listened to in,
sometimes for good reason,
but other times for poor reason.
We're not even listened to
in some of the big picture public debates
about marriage.
As soon as you open your mouth
and you say that you are a Christian,
it is enough for people to ridicule you
without a word being heard.
So when people say,
where is your God?
It's an expression of unbelief.
How stupid to say that there is a God
who is both creator and redeemer.
How foolish to think that a God exists
who is intricately involved in our lives.
How ridiculous that God
superintends the events of our world.
These people think that they are accountable
to no one.
They mock,
where is your God?
The world can be a lonely place for a believer
and Jesus knows it.
And he says in John 15,
if the world hates you,
keep in mind that it hated me first.
I was talking to a minister the other day
who was in South Sudan earlier this year
and he was taken to a bombed out building
where 19 Arab men
were studying the scriptures.
They'd come to Christ
and they were encouraging each other as pastors
and they were preparing to go back
into the Arab North
and covertly plant churches
they were passionate for Jesus
even though it would cost them,
it could cost them their lives.
They treasure Jesus
even though their world taunts them with
where is your God?
I don't think the songwriter's looking for everything
to be right with the world
but he is hungry for God.
He wants God present in his life.
He wants to be in submission to God's purposes.
As the deer pants for streams of water
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
Where can I go and meet with God?
So his experience is loneliness,
God seems silent,
his enemies are delighting that there is no God.
And verse 6 tells us that he is a long way from home.
My soul is downcast within me,
therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon from Mount Mizar.
He's up north in the mountains near the source of the Jordan River.
He's a long way from Jerusalem,
the place of God's presence.
He can't get to church to worship with God's people.
When I'm away from church,
I miss it.
I don't miss the building,
it's inconsequential.
I miss you, the people of God.
I miss our believing staff team
and the fellowship that we have with one another.
I miss my community groups
and the place of belonging and stability
that they bring to my life.
I miss our church
because you remind me that God is near
and that he is real.
I experience Christ with you.
And so he engages in a sort of self-talk.
Verse 5 and verse 11.
Why are you downcast, my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
He's low, he's discouraged.
He tries to lift his eyes up to God.
Put your hope in God.
I'll praise him, my saviour, my God.
It's sort of like self-effort
to get out of this low.
And he tries to use memory
to take him to another place.
So in verse 4,
I remember as I pour out my soul
how I used to go with the multitude
leading the procession to the house of God
with songs of joy and thanksgiving
amongst the festive throng.
And verse 6,
my soul is downcast,
but I will remember you.
He remembers great services
at church in the past
and what a joy and a delight they were.
I can remember gathering
with 90,000 believers
at Randwick Racecourse in April 1979.
And we heard Billy Graham preach Acts 17,
Paul at the Areopagus,
and he was saying,
for God has set a day
when he will judge the world with justice
by the man he has appointed
and he has given proof of this
to all people
by raising him from the dead.
So for me,
memory takes me back
to a place of joy
and delight
and wonder.
Memory is particularly important
for believers.
When Jesus came,
Jews celebrated the Passover festival
with a memorial meal.
It was a once-a-year meal.
It took them back
nearly 1,400 years
to the moment
when God rescued them
from their enemies
and saved them out of Egypt.
It was an annual reminder
of the centre of their faith.
And so Jesus,
on the night before he died,
he celebrated the meal
with his disciples.
It was the last thing
that he would do with them
before he died.
And he gave it a new meaning.
This bread is my body
which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
This cup is the new covenant
in my blood
which is poured out for you.
So this ancient memorial meal,
this great tradition
of the previous 1,400 years,
this annual reminder,
is completely reinterpreted
by the Lord Jesus Christ.
His body broken,
his blood shed
would become the great act
of God's salvation
that Christ achieved.
And belief in it,
it defines us
as the people of God.
We remember him
and what he's done.
So when we come
to the Lord's Supper
or Holy Communion,
which we aren't doing
this morning,
it's not a magic ritual.
It's a memorial meal
which continually takes us
to the centre of our faith.
And through memory,
we draw near to Christ our God.
We remember his perfect life.
We remember his wicked death.
We remember how God
powerfully raised him
from the dead.
And we remember
how God saved us
by overcoming both our sin
and death forever.
So memory is one tool
in the songwriter's kit.
The other is in Psalm 43
and it's prayer.
There's a huge shift.
He moves from self-talk
to God-talk.
He stops talking to himself
and he starts talking to God.
Verse 1.
Vindicate me, O God.
Plead my cause
against an ungodly nation.
Rescue me
from deceitful and wicked men.
Verse 3.
Send forth your light
and your truth.
Let them guide me.
Let them bring me
to your holy mountain
to the place
where you dwell.
Can you see what happens
when he prays?
He moves from this place
of feeling distant from God
and as though God
is a long way off.
A really lonely place.
And prayer is what actually
brings him
into the presence of God.
So it doesn't matter
how far he is
from Jerusalem
or from church.
Prayer allows him
to come right
into the throne room
of the king
and get an immediate audience.
The psalm's great
because we really don't know
the details
of his circumstances
but we know
that he feels oppressed.
He does have
mocking enemies.
He feels a long way
from the immediate
presence of God.
And the remarkable thing
is that as soon
as he prays
the distance is gone.
Many times
I have felt lonely.
I've felt oppressed.
I've felt like
I was doing it tough.
I've experienced
hope dying.
Everything seems dark
and hopeless
and God does not
seem to be
all that close.
and finally
I think
to open my mouth
to pray.
And I bring
my loaded heart
or diary
or plans
to God
and suddenly
they are not
mine anymore
they are his.
and many times
God changes
my mood
and my sense
of hopelessness
when I bow
my knee
and ask him
to take hold
of and intervene
in my circumstances.
That's faith.
wonderful verse
in 1 Peter
chapter 5
verse 7
which we taught
all our kids
from a very early age
and when you teach
your kids a verse
you learn it yourself.
It's 1 Peter 5
verse 7
casting all our cares
on Jesus
because he cares
for you.
Casting all our cares
on Jesus
because he cares
for you.
And we take
God's wonderful
invitation
we step
into his throne
room
we open
our mouths
and we pour
out our hearts
to our heavenly
father
and he restores
hope
he rules
he knows
he cares
he is
trustworthy.
See the taunt?
Where is your
God?
And the answer
he is as near
as a bended
knee
and a humble
heart.
I don't know
what sort of a heart
you have brought
to church this
morning
but maybe you
have come here
with a very
heavy heart
lonely
oppressed
a long way
from God
and maybe God
does not feel
that real
in your life.
But the
psalmist
is saying
he is as
near
as your
bended
knee
and your
humbled
heart.
And he
finishes
his song
in chapter
43
verse 5
with the
same chorus
that he
sang twice
in Psalm
42
but I
think
even
though
it's
the
same
words
this
time
it
sounds
different.
It's
full of
hope.
It's not
a response
to self
talk.
It's a
response
to having
stood in
the presence
of God
and walked
out again
full of
hope.
Why are
you
downcast
O my
soul?
Why so
disturbed
within me?
Put your
hope in
God
for I
will yet
praise
him
my
saviour
and my
God.
Amen.