00:00:00:36 – 00:00:33:03
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for closing out the week with us as we continue into the Book of Psalms. Just jumping around a little bit by category, we’ve been looking at praise and thanksgiving psalms, and today we take a pretty hard turn. Though a category of Psalm that I think Michael is surprisingly represented. I think if, if you approach the Psalms kind of neutrally, not sure of what’s in there, I think the average person might be surprised how often these come up.

00:00:33:03 – 00:01:29:52
Clint Loveall
And I’m talking about Psalms. Technically, the category is lament. We could also call it complaint or maybe even, plea for help Psalms that cry out to God either because things are hard or things are bad, or because God seems distant and and unhelpful and, I have, I have a little bit of a checkered relationship with these Psalms because I think as a human, everybody spend some time here, and it is certainly comforting to know that in the Psalter, we have the voices of people who have struggled and who have wrestled with, the seeming absence of God also, who have fallen to their base or selves and said, I wish

00:01:29:52 – 00:01:55:52
Clint Loveall
you, you know, I wish you would do bad things to other people. Which is connected to these it’s just own category, but I think often flows out of complaint. But I these aren’t my favorite psalms. If I’m honest. I there are so many of them that it’s a little overwhelming. It there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say whining.

00:01:55:57 – 00:02:07:00
Clint Loveall
There’s a lot of this voice in the Psalms. Having said that, I appreciate that the Psalter makes room for that. That component of human experience.

00:02:07:04 – 00:02:27:25
Michael Gewecke
It’s, it’s interesting you frame it that way. I, I was going to say it differently, but I think land in the same place. So one way I think to start this conversation is when we started Psalms, I’d be curious what your response was. If you heard, oh, we’re going to look at the Psalms. That’s great. I love that idea.

00:02:27:30 – 00:03:16:46
Michael Gewecke
Then I wonder if maybe the Psalms that would come immediately to my might have been Psalms like Psalm 23, maybe Psalm 146, maybe some of these Psalms that rise to the top. I suspect if your response was, oh, really? We’re doing the Psalms. I suspect that even if you might not have named the genre it, there could be one other that we’re going to cover here in a couple days that also stands out to you, but these are some of the more difficult psalms to read, I think, especially if you’re reading the Psalms devotional, because if you’re in a good place and if you’re grateful and reflecting the praise and thanksgiving that we were just

00:03:16:46 – 00:03:50:19
Michael Gewecke
talking about yesterday, then these psalms hit pretty hard. I mean, they just like being slapped in the face and at their lowest by the lowest. I mean, the most difficult to read them. I do think there is a whining tone that can be read into them. So if you had a negative response, I my point is they’re to say, I wonder if these Psalms are not some of the ones that maybe are in the back of your mind on the flip side of it, Clint, push back on me if you think this is not true.

00:03:50:24 – 00:04:29:19
Michael Gewecke
But I have found that lots of Protestants, lots of Presbyterians, really don’t have a good sense of the breadth of the Psalms that are in the Psalms. And I think if you if you’ve not read the Psalms all the way through, I suspect you would be shocked by some of the content that is in them. And when I say content, I really mean the comfort level with which the psalmist and the writers have to express discontent, to express doubt, to express frustration, to express even anger directly to God is.

00:04:29:23 – 00:04:50:49
Michael Gewecke
There’s not really many places in the Bible in which it is so purely encapsulated. So in this book, and I think that’s why Psalms swings wildly. Some people might think of it positively, others might truly struggle to read it because it has all of it crammed in there. And the lament is particularly pointed. If you’ve read it, you know what we’re talking about.

00:04:50:54 – 00:05:11:01
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think this is a huge component of the Psalter, also a huge component of the faith life. And I again, I am glad that these are here. I, I think they’re good in small doses. I think a lot of them get kind of overwhelming. They get repetitive. But let’s dive into a couple and see if we can tell you what we’re talking about.

00:05:11:06 – 00:05:29:55
Clint Loveall
Probably the best place to start is Psalm 22. This is one of the Psalms that you may not know you know, but you certainly know some of it. If you’ve been a church person for a while, this is quoted by Jesus from the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me?

00:05:30:00 – 00:05:57:27
Clint Loveall
From the words of my groaning, my God, everyday I cry to you, but you do not answer. And by night I find no rest. The the. If we go back to this idea that Psalms are part of our language of prayer, this is a stunning prayer. Why have you forsaken me? I’m. Why aren’t you helping me? Why do you stand far off?

00:05:57:27 – 00:06:23:06
Clint Loveall
I can find no rest. This is, this this is a, a soul laid bare before God when things are not going well. And, again, I think there’s a wonderful lesson in that. I think sometimes we get the idea that we have to, you know, treat God with kid gloves and can’t be honest. Well, you don’t get more honest than where do you go?

00:06:23:11 – 00:06:50:49
Clint Loveall
You’re not here. Where? What are you doing? And, before we talk about the turn that this Psalm takes, I think that it’s wise to just sit with that for a moment, that this is this is this is very honest, very open. And I think it’s instructive that the Psalms feel that kind of freedom to voice these things to God.

00:06:50:54 – 00:07:13:49
Michael Gewecke
When you’re talking about the cosmic God, the Creator God, when you’re talking about the God that made all things that we know and see, the majestic God, I think it would be really easy to depersonalize God’s presence in our lives. And what these Psalms do in a very pointed way, can be seen at the beginning of this text.

00:07:13:49 – 00:08:06:00
Michael Gewecke
Clement, why have you forsaken me, right? Not not even us. It’s not plural. Me. There’s a direct address to God. This is, as we’ve talked about the Psalms previous in this conversation. This is both giving words to Christians, especially in very particular seasons of life. It’s also teaching a kind of breadth of discourse that we can have with a God who knows and loves us, and it also is a way of making clear to people of faith that God does have specific care for the individual, that that God cares about your life, that God has your hairs number, that God knows you by name.

00:08:06:05 – 00:08:40:37
Michael Gewecke
It’s not just a cosmic story though. It is that, and that’s what makes it miraculous. And that’s part of the turn here in verse three. But verses one and two make it abundantly clear that God cares for the individual. And when the individual reaches out to God with real personal, individual, unique concern that that is a fair, that is an invited, that is a welcome to a scriptural way of addressing God, and that that’s a meaningful lesson, I think, for people of faith.

00:08:40:37 – 00:08:41:08
Michael Gewecke
Clint.

00:08:41:13 – 00:09:05:25
Clint Loveall
This Psalm obviously comes out of a hard season. If you look here, verse 14 and poured out like water, my bones are out of joint. My heart melts like wax within my breast. My mouth is dry, my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust. And and again, that experience that there is a loneliness to suffering.

00:09:05:31 – 00:09:30:51
Clint Loveall
And the psalmist here cries out to God, who feels absent, who feels uninvolved. And this is characteristic of this kind of psalm, whether it in whether it’s singular, first person or plural, or on behalf of Israel all together, which we’ll see in a moment. That is the sense here that something is wrong and that God has not been responsive.

00:09:30:55 – 00:10:04:25
Clint Loveall
And then this Psalm continues, and this is where for Christians, it has become very important language. A company of evildoers encircle me. My hand feet have shriveled. They count my bones, they gloat. They divide my clothes among them, my clothing. They cast lots. They deliver my soul. Thy life is the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion.

00:10:04:30 – 00:10:37:39
Clint Loveall
And there is here this, imagery of the cross in the background that we have read into this psalm. Now, that’s not where it started, but certainly in the aftermath of the the stories of Jesus on the cross, particularly given that Jesus quotes this psalm from the cross, these opening words Jesus says literally while he is dying. And along those lines, I think it’s significant that this Psalm does take a turn.

00:10:37:49 – 00:11:05:36
Clint Loveall
It ends with confidence. I will praise you in the midst of the congregation. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to you. To him indeed shall all who sleep in the earth bow down before him, all bowed down. Posterity will serve him. Future generations will be told about the Lord and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

00:11:05:36 – 00:11:34:19
Clint Loveall
So even in the midst of this complaint, there is an affirmation of confidence that God will do good work in the end. And and I think, Michael, that ultimately should be important again to Christians because anybody walking by the cross that day, when Jesus says this word, any practicing Jewish person would have not just heard the words, they would know the psalm.

00:11:34:24 – 00:12:00:42
Clint Loveall
And so they would not only know the opening words, they would know the ending words. And not to take that experience from Jesus. Jesus is forsaken in that moment. But I think it’s it’s shallow not to realize that Jesus in that moment is not also proclaiming the hope with which the Psalm ends. And I think that’s this is a very powerful Psalm in that context.

00:12:00:46 – 00:12:26:31
Michael Gewecke
I think one of the things that can make the Psalms like comfortable for us is they can sometimes, specifically the Psalms of lament, they can sound disrespectful. How in the world could you say that to God? Is the question that undergirds that. And I think if we take a step back, we can also see that differently. Instead of asking the question, is this disrespectful?

00:12:26:31 – 00:13:10:12
Michael Gewecke
You can look at that and see how much confidence is there in God. And God’s faithfulness. Because the lament, the pushback, the confidence to say, why have you forsaken me? It’s built upon the foundation of trust that God will always be there, that God is trustworthy, that God never leaves us or forsakes us. So there’s a way in which that shortcut that is much like a child who is confidently pushing back against their parents, is doing so with the trust, whether they know whether or not that the parent is going to be there and can hold up under the pushing and, and will ultimately be working for their good even in the midst of

00:13:10:12 – 00:13:30:12
Michael Gewecke
it. That’s the kind of spirit I think you have behind these laments. And then I just want let’s make sure that we see this. You end 31. We have some of those words there that were full of lament. They turned to this kind of confidence. Then we just yesterday we’re talking about Psalm 23. Notice the way that this book is constructed.

00:13:30:27 – 00:13:52:46
Michael Gewecke
One flow, one type flows to the other type seamlessly. You will go from a lament to a psalm of of thanksgiving and praise and a note of confidence and trust in God who goes with us. So you go from the darkest valley in Psalm 23, I kind of confidence, I know that you are with me there in chapter 22.

00:13:53:00 – 00:14:04:21
Michael Gewecke
It starts with, why have you forsaken me, left me alone, that that’s the way that the Psalms have been constructed. Said those things are knit together and they hold each other in tension.

00:14:04:30 – 00:14:29:00
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Let’s jump on to a next on Psalm 42 here, which again, if you know the Psalms a little bit, this might be familiar to you as the deer longs for flowing streams. So my soul paints for you. Oh, God. This it may surprise you if you know this quote. If you know this as the deer paints for water, you may think of that as a praise song.

00:14:29:15 – 00:14:58:37
Clint Loveall
It has made its way into worship circles. It may surprise you that that is a psalm of lament. If we continue, then my soul is cast within me down. Therefore I remember you. Why are you cast down my soul? Why are you disquieted? My tears have been my food day and night. While people say continually to me, where is your God?

00:14:58:42 – 00:15:25:12
Clint Loveall
And then there is this interesting thing that happens. I say to my God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk mournfully? Because the enemy oppresses me. Why are you cast down on my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him and help my help and my God.

00:15:25:17 – 00:15:46:40
Clint Loveall
I think what’s fascinating about that, Michael, is the idea that within one person, in a moment of suffering, there are those kind of two voices, the one voice expressing the suffering. I’m thirsty as as a starving deer. I can’t see God. God doesn’t. And then the other voice. Why are you disquieted? Hope in God, hang in there.

00:15:46:55 – 00:16:12:33
Clint Loveall
And this inner dialog that the psalmist seems to be having in this moment of, of difficulty, this moment of suffering. There’s something, I think very telling about that, I like the praise song. Fine. But the praise song doesn’t get to me. It doesn’t seem to get to the depths of where this Psalm is willing to go.

00:16:12:37 – 00:16:32:11
Michael Gewecke
There’s also just a natural beauty. We can’t get hung up here. We gotta get through the last one here. I just wanna, All as the thunder of your cataracts, all your waves and your billows have come over me. That’s what it feels like when tumult hits us. It doesn’t just feel like a bad day. Like you stub your toe.

00:16:32:22 – 00:17:07:31
Michael Gewecke
It feels like the waves crashing into the jagged shoreline. It. It feels like lightning striking the ground next to us and the earth shaking. The the laments combined the feeling of the soul clinched. And they do it with beautiful words and imagery and packed meaning for the very explicit purpose of communicating this thing. That’s experienced. I just think it’s not just complaining because it is invested with a kind of meaning that makes it beautiful.

00:17:07:35 – 00:17:33:14
Clint Loveall
Yeah, yeah. The next Psalm. As we move on to Psalm 137, now we find a corporate psalm. These last two have been private individual. Here we have one spoken on behalf of all the people, and the context is the exile, the destruction of Jerusalem. You may know the opening words here by the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion, when we remembered Israel on the willows.

00:17:33:14 – 00:18:01:04
Clint Loveall
There we hung up our harps, for our captors asked for songs. Our tormentors with mirth said, sing us the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? So the experience here is one of deep and profound loss. And in the midst of that newness, if you if you’ve lost a person, a loved one, in the aftermath of that, you think, how could we live again?

00:18:01:04 – 00:18:22:53
Clint Loveall
How could there be songs of joy again? How could I sing these songs of my homeland, when my homeland has been destroyed and I have been captured and taken? It feels like the end. And so they give that voice here. And this is a beautiful, deep psalm. How could we sing the Lord’s song if I forget you?

00:18:22:53 – 00:18:48:43
Clint Loveall
Jerusalem? Let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth. If I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above even my highest joy. I this is, This is really wonderful. It’s very lyrical. All the Psalms are poetry of some sort, but this is this is very much so poetic.

00:18:48:43 – 00:19:13:31
Michael Gewecke
I think I once heard a sermon on this text that I want to keep this really brief, but I think it stands as a cautionary tale, because the sermon wanted to make this a metaphor for when just things aren’t going well for you. And at the end of this text, which we’re not going to get to today, it’s so pretty.

00:19:13:31 – 00:19:20:49
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. I mean, the end of this happy shall be they who take your little ones. The oppressors, the ones who made.

00:19:20:58 – 00:19:21:32
Clint Loveall
Barriers.

00:19:21:34 – 00:19:21:59
Michael Gewecke
And in this.

00:19:21:59 – 00:19:22:29
Clint Loveall
Case, yeah.

00:19:22:37 – 00:19:48:07
Michael Gewecke
And dashed them against the rock, which is a, an astonishing statement. If you consider that this is in the Scripture, harm done to the innocent of of these people. My point here is very simply, this, that we need to be careful when we’re dealing with the stuff of oppression, the stuff of broken souls, the stuff of lives changed forever.

00:19:48:08 – 00:20:18:01
Michael Gewecke
The stuff that is unbelievably toxic to to our memories and to our lives and to our histories and to our stories. We shouldn’t play with that loosely, because the Psalms are not playing with it loosely. The vengeance that flows out of this expression is natural to how deep the wounding is, how painful this story is that this isn’t someone looking back with a sad remembrance.

00:20:18:01 – 00:20:44:09
Michael Gewecke
This is someone who’s driven to the end of themselves. Clint and I think that if you’ve ever been there in your own life, those aren’t emotions to be trifled with. Those. Those aren’t things that we should speak about as if they are. Encapsulate a bull. Because once you felt them, you know that they’re not contained it. It just rages out.

00:20:44:09 – 00:20:52:01
Michael Gewecke
And that’s expressed in the Psalms. Yes, this is beautiful. But there’s some deep earthiness in these words.

00:20:52:12 – 00:21:25:03
Clint Loveall
The tone or the tenor of this psalm is wailing. I mean, it is, a painful heart cry ripped from the people. And you know, this Psalm, obviously, verse nine, happy will they be who take your little ones and dash their heads against rocks, that this would be a if this Psalm ended a verse earlier, it would be in the running for maybe some of the most beautiful writing in the Psalter.

00:21:25:08 – 00:21:57:58
Clint Loveall
But not only does it say it, it ends there. That that is the last word of the psalm, because it again, the Psalms make room for the things, even that make us uncomfortable and flinch. And here a sense of hatred, a sense of vengeance, a sense of revenge, and the people powerless to get it themselves, envision it and and take some joy in a horrific image.

00:21:58:03 – 00:22:39:05
Clint Loveall
And ironically, Michael, I just want to point out we mentioned Psalm 136, which is give thanks. His love endures forever. Give thanks, give thanks. And if you look at the opening words of Psalm 138, I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart. And yet right sandwiched between those two is this grieving, sobbing, mournful, angry, bitter cry of the human heart on behalf of the people who have lost so much, the people who have been devastated and seek even the destruction of their own enemies.

00:22:39:05 – 00:22:51:09
Clint Loveall
And that that’s that’s the Psalms in a nutshell. It’s it. It just takes us to all the places that we go in life and and it condenses it for us.

00:22:51:14 – 00:23:16:17
Michael Gewecke
I think that if you struggle to read the Psalms because of the whiplash of that, thing to say is, remember, if that Psalm doesn’t apply to you today, it’s a prayer for someone for whom it does that. Today, there’s someone who this is their experience. And people who say you’re trying to practice your prayer life. This is where the Psalms can help you.

00:23:16:17 – 00:23:36:44
Michael Gewecke
Come to a Psalm and say, these aren’t my words today, right? Well, they are someone’s words, and you might even be able to give a name to the person for whom this is their word. And so as you read the psalm, then you can bring that person before God, and you can allow your connection to that person to be brought forward.

00:23:36:45 – 00:23:43:43
Michael Gewecke
And the Psalms then teach you how to pray for a person, even though you may not feel that prayer for yourself.

00:23:43:48 – 00:24:12:57
Clint Loveall
We would certainly hope that life does not bring this often to the end of this psalm. Having said that, I think most of us have lived some season of life in the beginning of this Psalm. The idea that the same songs, the same restaurant, the same routine has lost something that that we have lost either a loved one or a job, or that life has taken something from us.

00:24:13:12 – 00:24:38:26
Clint Loveall
And we find ourself asking, Will we ever be happy again? Will we ever have those things again? The this goes from there to, you know, the darkest place possible. But I think most of us can at least resonate with that sense of how can we be happy in this new world that we didn’t want and didn’t ask for?

00:24:38:31 – 00:24:41:08
Clint Loveall
That that’s, to me, the heart of this song.

00:24:41:13 – 00:25:10:08
Michael Gewecke
And as we come to conclude here, my only know this, these psalms tend to make us very uncomfortable. But I don’t know if this has been your experience. My, my, I think experience, my anecdotal experience has been when we’re afraid to lament, it often short changes the healing. It often makes it very hard. If we can’t express the truth of our brokenness, our sadness, our anger, our frustration, where are you, God, I feel alone.

00:25:10:22 – 00:25:35:37
Michael Gewecke
Oftentimes, it just extends the period in which we feel that thing. There is a kind of like that moment when you’re finally able to cry, and suddenly that expression enables you to, maybe come around it in a different way. I think laments do serve a part of our hearts healing in the way that God works, in that even if they can be uncomfortable places for us to live.

00:25:35:42 – 00:26:01:48
Clint Loveall
I think the wisdom of the Psalms, Michael, is that people voice that forsaking this, but they voice it to God. They’re not just saying, I feel alone. They’re saying God. I feel like you’re not with me, which is itself a prayer. They’re they’re addressing the very one whom they’re experiencing is absent. And that is that’s deeply profound.

00:26:01:53 – 00:26:08:49
Clint Loveall
Not easy. It’s not a season any of us want to be in. But it it is it is instructive.

00:26:08:49 – 00:26:22:10
Michael Gewecke
I think if you found it instructive, I give it a like not because this is easy content, but, if it helps others study it, especially if they find themselves in that difficult season. Subscribe. So you don’t miss studies like this and we will see you all first thing next week.

00:26:22:21 – 00:26:22:53
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.