October 17, 2023 -- Psalm 44:17-26 -- The Psalm Series: Lamentation as Prayer

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17 All this has come upon us,
    though we have not forgotten you,
    and we have not been false to your covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
    nor have our steps departed from your way;
19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals
    and covered us with the shadow of death.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
    or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
21 would not God discover this?
    For he knows the secrets of the heart.
22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
    Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
24 Why do you hide your face?
    Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
    our belly clings to the ground.
26 Rise up; come to our help!
    Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!

Psalm 44:17-26 ESV

This is a lament. In his grief and bewilderment, the believer lays his heart bare before the LORD his God. In earlier verses he speaks of his own faithfulness and contrasts this with the faithlessness of his enemies and pursuers, but now there is a much bleaker turn. It seems as if God Himself is against the psalmist. It seems the Lord his God has forgotten him, broken him, and covered him with the shadow of death.

It is good to know that the Bible helps us to give expression to the hardest spiritual emotions and the deepest struggles of our soul. There are many psalms of lamentation (crying out in hurt and pain) in the Bible. This matches with out human experience: wars, sickness, betrayal, standing at the grave of a loved one, misunderstandings, the consequences of our own sins, poverty, injustice, the break-up of family and so many other things break like pounding waves across the beaches of our lives. We are overwhelmed.

It is good to know this is a prayer. He prays it on the basis of God’s steadfast love. That is, the covenant love of God, by which the Father in heaven has chosen, from before the foundation of the world, to redeem His people in Jesus the Beloved. The prayer-warrior is expressing his pain and his grief, his sorrow and fears to God Who has chosen to help His people. He believers it, even when he can’t see it. He holds tightly to God, when all the storms around him rage. This is the way of many saints. Job’s wife, after they’d lost their children and all their possessions, called out for Job to curse God and die. Job held fast to his faith in God. You can cite example after example in the Bible—Jeremiah the weeping prophet, Paul beaten for Jesus and imprisoned, Peter who suffered greatly.

Why do we suffer?

  • The world is blind to the level of its own sinfulness and pushes hard against anyone who professes faith in the Living God.

  • Believers are unaware how much of their own life is tainted with lingering sin and wickedness of heart. This must be purged from us.

  • The righteousness that believers have is imputed, given from the storehouse of Jesus’ right standing before God, and credited to believers. As long as believers live here on earth they are sinners, shielded by the goodness of Jesus.

  • Suffering teaches the believer to lament his sin and long for more of God and more confident hope in knowing Him which isn’t based on life’s circumstances but is based on the steadfast love of God

  • Suffering teaches the believer to long for eternity in the New Heavens and New Earth where sin and pain and death shall be no more and God will be all in all.

Our Father in heaven hallowed be Your Name. Thank You for the salvation You have poured out on believers in Jesus Christ. Thank You for Your steadfast love which took on flesh and suffered, Jesus our Redeemer. Spirit of God, help us in our lamentation and sorrows to turn to Jesus and trust in all the Father’s promises assuring us of our salvation. Purify us by this suffering so that Jesus will fill our vision, our longings and thereby build up our ever-growing anticipation of the glories of heaven in His presence. Amen.

https://youtu.be/Optrm7lF16s?si=hxwOpAvHl3xhVzTy “Be Thou My Vision”

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