Weekly Worship 8/09/20

Call to Worship: Devotional (By Pastor Dan Loch)

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
³ My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
⁴ These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go along with the throng 
and lead them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

⁵ Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
⁶ O my God, my soul is in despair within me;
Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan
And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.
⁸ The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I will say to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
¹⁰ As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
¹¹ Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.

Psalm 42:1-11 (NASB)

About one third of the Psalms are either laments or they include a cry of distress. Given that the Psalms are meant to be sung together, it is remarkable that God has dedicated such a large portion of His people’s songbook to the themes of grief, distress, anger, and even despair. Instead of telling His people “take your despair and work it out at home before coming together to worship” He says “here are 50 Psalms for you all to sing together. When you are hurting, come together and sing. When you are doubting, come together and sing. When you feel that I am not near, come together and sing. When you feel hopeless, like the world is crumbling around you and there is no way out of your present circumstances, then come together and sing”

This Sunday, we gather together as a people who have sinned, doubted, despaired, and even raged against God and man, whom He has made in His image. We come together not as perfect people but as people in desperate need of a savior. Then while we wait for His glorious return, we sing God’s word back to Him, letting the cries of the Psalms, like Psalm 42, lead us to shouts of greatest praise. For we worship a holy God who will wipe away every tear and make all things new (Rev 21:4-5). May all praise, glory, and honor be to Him who accepts us in our brokenness and mends us through His Son so that His glory and love may be known throughout all of creation.