Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,
a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg.
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sermon. God Bless. Lord, we ask that you would
illumine our hearts, you'd open our eyes, that
we would receive this word, a word that is a
Psalm that's not very well known, a part of your
church's history that's not terribly well known
or understood well. God, I pray that having spent
this time, we would understand your kindness
to us, even in discipline. that we would have
a greater hope that you will make the world right,
that you will make good on your promises, that
our faith would grow. God, now may the words
of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts
be pleasing in your sight, the Lord, our rock
and our Redeemer. Amen. All right, I know because
I know many of your stories that many of you
have experienced great calamities in this life.
My guess is that many of you have experienced
disasters that have really kind of changed how
you understand the world, maybe changed the course
of your life. I know I have a good friend who,
when he was in college, his house burned down,
the house he was living in. And he said, you
know, most of the stuff that he lost were relatively
speaking, maybe trivial things. but they were
also significant because some of them were like
family photos and a guitar and things like that.
Things that may be in the grand scheme of things
may be sort of diminished by many of us, but
he's learned even through that experience to
cherish kind of things that we might consider
small. Some of you have gone through marital
separations and divorce. You've tasted something
that is joyful and lovely and life -giving that
became a reason for weeping. For sorrow for questioning
your decisions, right and your judgment judgment
And maybe also invited you to consider How you
contributed to the mess of it all? Some of us
have sat down with doctors to receive the outcomes
of biopsy Cancer is so prevalent, right? And
sometimes we've we've heard it going into remission
Partial or complete. And sometimes, actually
even in the life of our church, it was sort of
a spontaneous remission. Miraculous, but not
always. Sometimes it comes back. Of course, I
shared about our dear sister Donna. If you are
not familiar with her story, this time last year
she was regularly going to the Y for water aerobics
a few times a week right down there on Front
Street. The last 10 months, she has been in and
out of hospitals and rehabs and care facilities
and back to care facilities and hospitals. And
it's been a long journey. The fact is, is that
life is often tragedy to tragedy. Just presents
itself that way. So two falls ago, if you can
remember back then. We looked at the first 11
chapters of the book of Genesis. And in many
ways, we took that instead of kind of going through
the whole thing in part because those chapters
are an introduction to the Bible. Where's this
beginning and what's going on here? It's a good
place to start. And then there we saw what we
were made for. We were made to live into the
goodness of God, to life within His creation
and life with Him, to walk with Him, to talk
with Him. depend on Him for our provision and
our protection, to delight in His presence with
us. But of course the story, we don't get a lot
of that there. Very quickly we learn of our rebellion,
deciding that we know how to do life better,
now that we have a better sense of what this
life should look like, and we lived into this
rebellious way. And if you can think back on
those sermons, or maybe you can just think back
on those chapters, many of you probably know
them. What you'll remember is that this rebellion
results in death, in family division, in the
destruction of creation itself, in the elevation
of the self over against God and His place. but
also it has this rippling effect into creation
and a devaluation of creation and of human life.
What those 11 chapters that introduce the Bible
show us is that the world is badly, badly in
need of grace and of redemption. That's kind
of the setting up of the rest of scripture. In
a way, you get to the end of those 11 chapters
wondering Will this God who made this world and
declared it good and walked with his creation,
will he make good on some of the promises that
he made his world? Will he continue with it?
And we have glimpses that he will, Genesis 3
.15. Sometimes it's called the proto -aewongelion,
if you want to sound like a theologian to use
words like that. It just means the first good
news, the first gospel, the beginning. where
we heard that the seed of the woman would crush
the head of the serpent, right? That one day
all of this tragedy and all this rebellion would
be put to death. We also get a glimpse of that,
sort of a little look into this promise of God
for his world in the covenant of Noah. Oh, it's
echoing creation all over the place in that story.
But the story of rebellion continues. It just
seems to keep continuing in that. And so, So
as those first chapters come to an end, we're
introduced to Abraham, right? Abraham, and we
have this blessing of God to Abraham, that God
would bless Abraham and the whole Abrahamic family.
And through that blessing of Abraham, the blessing
of the world would actually come. So you're supposed
to get to that and you're like, oh, God is utterly
committed to this creation. He looks upon it
and he knows how rebellious it is. And yet he
is committed to its wellbeing. A particular blessing
to Abraham, but a blessing for the whole world,
a commitment of God to his creation. So we continue
the story and we get to the end of Genesis and
the beginning of Exodus, but then that very family
that is supposed to be the blessing to the world
is in slavery, right? So God saves them and he
brings them to Mount Sinai. We've been looking
at the 10 commandments. And the same commandments
were to be given to this kingdom of priests,
this holy nation, as Exodus 19 tells us. What
were they to do? They were to live with God in
such a way that the world, they would be reflecting
God to the world, a kingdom of priests saying,
look at the Lord. And if we kept continuing after
the commandments, we would learn about how the
tabernacle was built and where it was placed
was placed right in the midst of the community.
And it was furnished with things that would evoke
Eden, this place, this perfect place where God
dwells with his people as things were meant to
be, right? The tabernacle right there in the
community, and it would follow them along as
they journeyed to the promised land. And for
those first hundred years, they were in the promised
land, that while there, God said, I'm going to
be with you. And that initial sort of creation
promise, those early covenants, those early promises
to his people would come to fruition. And so
then we have the temple built under Solomon there
in the city of Jerusalem. But all of this, this
is what I want you to understand, all of this
was because God was committed to his world. In
the context of rebellion, God was saying, I am
committed to grace. to restoration, to the goodness
of what I made, even in its rebellious state.
Here's the thing, there's an ecstasy and an agony
all throughout the Old Testament. And to be honest,
they're the New Testament and in our own time.
The ecstasy is that the world would be redeemed
and God is acting. That God would dwell with
us, right? I mean, that's part of the thing.
God, in the midst of His people, there in the
tabernacle, He establishes His home there in
Jerusalem, His temple. And all that was saying,
one day God will make it all right. What's the
agony? The agony is that the dark, tragic fact
of all of it. that the people that were called
to be this sort of rescue mission for the blessing
of the world are themselves the one that are
in sore need of rescuing. And they're the ones
that are so often living the life of rebellion
and rejection of God, and so often Israel lived
the way of the world. Rejection of God. So far
from being a sign of God to the world, kingdom
of priests, they were the sign of rebellion,
of rejection, of living however they wanted to
live. And so the story seemed to continue again
and again throughout the Old Testament, time
and time again, they would rebel, they would
reject God, the very people who were to be priests
to the world, very people that needed saving.
So the culmination of this, I know this is sort
of a long introduction, but the fact is that
you can't really understand Some texts of scripture
without having all this. The culmination of this
rejection and the culmination of God's discipline
happens when the Babylonian empire comes and
it ransacks Jerusalem. This happened in 586 BC.
It came and it raised not only the city, but
the very place where God made his home, the temple.
The place that said to... Israel as a nation,
to the people of God, I am utterly committed.
I know your rebellion and yet I am here and I'm
going to make it good. That place, the temple,
was razed to the ground. They rejected him by
persisting in their idolatry and their social
injustice and their constant rejection of the
prophet's warnings. And so the place where God's
promise in some ways was most clearly seen was
itself taken apart, stone by stone, right at
the ground. This is the backstory of Psalm 79.
This is why actually, even to this day, every
Friday afternoon, this Psalm is said aloud at
the Wailing Wall. That wall, which is the second
temple wall, right? In Jerusalem there. It's
also why this psalm can be found in the Jewish
liturgy that commemorates the very day of the
destruction of Jerusalem. This is what's going
on in this psalm. It's the psalm of Asaph. I
don't always read the little title thing, but
I wanted you to hear that, and partly why I wanted
you to hear that, because the last few psalms
have been psalms of Asaph. And actually, if we
went back to Psalm 74, which was last summer,
We'd see, actually that Psalm is very similar
to this Psalm, but that Psalm kind of walks you
through, actually, it's more Asaph walking God
through the city. And listen to some of what
Asaph says there. In Psalm 74, direct your steps
to the perpetual ruins. The enemy has destroyed
everything in the sanctuary. Your foes have roared
in the midst of your meeting place. They set
up their own signs for signs. meaning they put
up idols in the midst of the temple. They were
like those who swing axes in a forest of trees,
just cutting everything down. And all it's carved
wood, they broke down with hatchets and hammers.
They set your sanctuary on fire. They profane
the dwelling place of your name, bringing it
down to the ground. They said to themselves,
we will utterly subdue them. They burned all
the meeting places of God in the land. That's
what Asaph is crying out. He's sort of walking
through the streets with God saying, look. Look
at how they wield the axe. Look at how they destroyed
it. Look at how they took even your temple, your
sanctuary down to the ground. Look at it all.
Look at the destruction of this place, which
was to be this picture of your commitment to
the world. The blessing of your people for the
life of the world. All right, the background.
Let's turn to Psalm 79. Still have it open. I
don't, so I'm gonna turn there. Psalm 79. When
we turn to Psalm 79, we're told, I think the
big thing we're told is what we're to do in this
kind of perplexity. And what do you do with this
kind of scenario? The very hope that we kind
of long for, that the blessing of God to the
world seems to be utterly taken away. What do
we do in the confusion of destruction in the
midst of a loss of hope? And I want to just suggest
to you two things today that this passage is
pointing us towards, what to do with it. And
the first one is literally just bring it to the
Lord and then hang on to God. Okay, bring it
to the Lord and then hang on to God. So the first
four verses, actually, yeah, I'm going to read
All four, I'll kind of break it down into two
sections. Oh God, the nations have come into
your inheritance. They have defiled your holy
temple. They have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They've
given the bodies of your servants to the birds
of the heavens for food, the flesh of your faithful
to the beasts of the earth. They've poured out
their blood like water all around Jerusalem and
there was no one to bury them. We've become a
taunt to our neighbors mocked and derided. by
those around us. First, here's what I want you
to hear, okay? In the midst of this awful scenario,
what is Asaph doing? He's saying, Lord, look
what's happened. He is bringing it to God. That's
what he's doing. He's not just kind of saying,
forget it. He's saying, Lord, look at what happened.
He's bringing it to the Lord. And he does this
sort of in two ways. First, he cries out for
the honor of God. These are those first two verses
there. And I think most likely, hopefully because
of how I read it too, did you hear the repetition
of your? The first thing he's doing is saying,
this is about your honor, Lord. It's your inheritance,
he said, it's your temple, it's your saints,
it's the flesh of your faithful. Which is to
say, this is not just tragedy that's happened,
it's sacrilege. And that's part of what he's
doing. He's saying, God, this is your thing.
In some ways, this is your honor that's being
taken away. This is your promise that you made
that through this people, you'd bless the world.
He's bringing it to God, but he's also pleading
the very honor of God in this Psalm, these first
couple of verses. Second thing is he expresses
the extent of the pain. He's not hiding anything
back, right? Verses three and four. They're pretty
intense. They've poured out their blood like
water all around you. He's showing God the horrible
extent of this devastation. And there's no one
to bury them. We've become a taunt to our neighbors.
They lie unburied in humiliation. And he says,
God, you need to see this. He's bringing it to
the Lord. The extent of the tragedy of it all.
Being left unburied was sort of the great humiliation
in the Old Testament. To be buried was to be
honored, to have your body, even in death, be
treated with honor. And this was to be treated
as less than human, sort of less than an animal
even. The animals are the ones that are devouring
it there. It's to be disposable. The very people
of God are being treated as though they are disposable.
And he is crying out to the Lord with this. And
he says that they've actually become a ruin and
have been mocked. I'm going to get into this
a little bit, but what you have to understand
is passages like the Jeremiah 10 passage. Because
part of what has happened is because the shepherds
of Israel have rejected the Lord. that this is
actually the people of God who have been unfaithful
to the Lord. And this destruction has happened
and they've become a mock to the nations. They
have been raised to the ground, but they've also
been a laughing stock to the world. So let me
tell you a couple of accounts, little anecdotes
from church history and how the church has rejected
the ways of God and has become a laughing stock.
Most common folk in the 14th century thought
the church was rather a joke. It was a place
of perversion and wickedness. It's probably one
of the high points of the wickedness of the church.
Gone were there even the semblances of holiness
among the leaders, sacramental integrity, a commitment
to the scriptures. It was out the window. At
various times, you know, probably there were
two popes. For a little while, there were at
least three and one account that I heard said
that there were as many as seven at one point
that had their own kind of College of Cardinals
saying, I should be the one in power. Probably
many of you have learned about the Great Western
Schism when there was a papal throne in Avignon
in the south of France, and then there was the
one in Rome. Maybe you know that from actually
1409 to 1415, there was a third one in Pisa.
I mean, there was just all this vying for power.
Of course, why was one in France and why was
one in Italy? Well, it was the politics of the
day. We want our own French pope. We want our
own Italian pope. There's this vying for the
ways of this world. I learned actually when I
was kind of reading about some of this this week
that even as recently as the mid 20th century,
there were significant debates within the Catholic
Church about what is actually the proper papal
line of the line of Peter because of the mess
of it all. One thing I heard in a lecture was
that at one point the King of England and his
regent, which was John of Gaunt, largely because
they were sort of harboring John Wycliffe. the
great Bible translator and early reformer. They
received nine letters of excommunication in one
month. And part of it was because there were
just multiple people sending them. Listen to
this. I think this actually illustrates what's
going on. Just the mess of it all. This is Dante,
who was himself a devout Catholic. And he wrote
pretty famously against the corruptions of one
of the most corrupt popes ever, Pope Boniface
VIII. This is his Canto 27th in his Paradisio.
And it's the Apostle Peter that's speaking here,
which you will know likely was, according to
Catholics, the first pope. So this is what he
says. He who on earth usurps my place, my place,
my place that in the sight of God's own son is
vacant now. He said, it's so corrupt, it's empty.
Has made my burial ground a sewer of blood. a
sewer of stench, so that the perverse one who
fell from heaven here above can find contentment
there below. He's saying that Rome, the throne
of the papacy, was a sewer of blood and a sewer
of stench. He's saying that Satan, who fell from
heaven, that's the image there, can find contentment
in the church. That's Dante sort of walking through
the ruins of the very place where God's blessing
was to rest in such a way that it went for the
blessing of the world and saying, look at the
destruction. Look at what happens when the people
of God just want to rebel and live for themselves,
live the life of the world about them. More recently,
and I'll be honest, I don't have all the details
of this, but more recently, in fact, this summer,
the Presbyterian Church in the United States
of America had an overture brought to their General
Assembly by a Presbyterian in New Mexico. And
that overture was recommending something which
seems very reasonable. That overture was recommending
that ministers live only in monogamous relationships.
It was an overture for ministers against polygamy.
That overture was deemed administratively out
of order. And they set up a study committee to
study whether or not they should recommend such
an overture. Now, let me say, again, I don't
know exactly why it was deemed out of order.
Probably could have read up on that a little
bit more. But the fact that they decided we ought
to study whether ministers should not enter into
polygamous relationships is a blight on the church.
And that body as a whole, you may know, was in
1983 at 3 .1 million members and today is barely
over a million members. But what is happening
is, look Lord, the very body that is to be your
blessing to the world, that is to present you
to the world, is in destruction, it's in ruins.
Look, bring it to the Lord. In the perplexity
in life, in the perplexity of the state of God's
people, which we could, of course, go into so
many stories of the church itself not acting
for God and actually receiving His just discipline.
We could go into so many stories, but in the
perplexity in life, in this kind of a state of
God's people, in this reality that we are so
often the problem, part of what this psalm is
saying is bring it to the Lord. Plead His honor.
Speak to Him the extent of the destruction. But
the second thing I think, the second big thing
I think this text is telling us is speak to the
Lord and hang on to God. Hang on to Him. And
I think this is kind of, the rest of this is
sort of this appeal. So verse five says, how
long, O Lord? We're just saying that, didn't
we? Say, how long? And that cry, how long is
found throughout the Psalms, is found throughout
much of scripture. But that is a cry truly of
saying, Lord, where are you? But it is a cry
directed Godward and as if to say, I am holding
on, right? Hang on to God. It's a cry of faith.
How long is a cry of faith? It's a cry of perplexity.
It's a cry of wonder. It's a cry of saying, Lord,
where are you? But it's a cry of faith. So a
few things that I think Asaph does as he hangs
on to God, a few things that are kind of mentioned
here on to God. One thing that Asaph does, and
again, this is reiterated for us a ton in the
prophets, particularly Jeremiah, who's experiencing
this utter destruction. One thing that Asaph
does, he understands that God's discipline is
always just. He asks how long But he doesn't
say that the discipline isn't warranted, right?
So how long, the Lord, will you be angry forever?
Will your jealousy burn like fire? Jealousy in
the scripture is what God is jealous for what
is rightly His, right? It's rightly His. So His
discipline, which is coming out of His just anger
and His just jealousy, is something that is right.
God has a holy jealousy, and sometimes this text
even says that holy jealousy burns like fire.
Which is to say that Asaph knew that they had
been rebellious, that they had turned from the
ways of the Lord, that they had not sought Him,
that they had not been the blessing to the world
that they were called to be. He knows that God
had been merciful to them, even in His judgment.
He knows that they have suffered in a way even
less than they deserve. He understands that God's
judgment is just, that is part of hanging on.
The other second thing, he does ask that God
would punish those who hurt him, hurt them. So
this, okay, verse six, pour out your anger on
the nations that do not know you, on the kingdoms
that do not call upon your name, for they've
devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation.
I won't pretend that these are easy words. These
are not easy words, are they? I mean, they're
not. They're words that come up in Scripture
here and there, but they're not easy for us.
They can be hard to hear. After all, we are told
to forgive our enemies, right? To pray for those
who persecute us, to bless and do not curse.
But we also need to be careful to not be too
easy on those who do evil. This is how I wrote
it out, because I wanted to be careful here.
We can be lazy in forgiveness, which we often
aren't, right? We're not eager or quick to forgive.
We can also be lazy for justice, to call out
wrongdoing and ask God to act and to stop it
and to put it to an end. And the Bible doesn't
have a hard time saying both of those things.
And he says, as you hold on to God, do this.
What Asaph didn't know though, is that justice
would come and it would be God who brought it.
God's the one that brings justice. He's the one
who properly brings justice here. Third thing
he does is that he asks for forgiveness. Verse
eight, do not remember against us our former
iniquities. Let your compassion come speedily
to meet us, for we are brought very low." I think
about this, the people are experiencing this
utter devastation of their whole civilization.
Economics are gone, right? Socially, many people
have been taken out from Jerusalem. Think of
Daniel and his buddies. They were taken to Babylon,
right? Jeremiah will, of course, write to the
exiles in Babylon later on. So socially, it's
all messed up. Religiously, the temple itself
has been razed to the ground. But he is saying
there is an aspect in which we are complicit
in the sin that brought this about. He's not
just wanting to throw it off on someone else,
but he's actually willing to say, Lord, how have
I contributed? And can you have mercy on me?
Which is to say, Asaph does not excuse sin away,
which is something that we are so tempted to
do. He doesn't brush it off. Rather, he acknowledges
their own complicity and the rejection of God
and need for His forgiveness. The fourth thing
is that he asks for the glory of God. Verse nine,
listen to this. Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory of your name. Deliver us and atone
for our sins. for your name's sake." Verse 10,
why should the nations say, where's their God?
Let the avenger of the outpoured blood of your
servants known among the nations before our eyes.
What he's ultimately doing, he's asking God to
work in their midst and in the midst of their
perplexity for the sake of his name in the world.
He's saying, Lord, if this has happened to your
place and to your people, won't you become a
laughing stock? Why is it the case that the church
seems to run so often to the world? Lord, make
the church holy. Help us to be repentant people.
Help us to be a people that seek justice and
love mercy for your name's sake. That's what
he keeps going back to. God's discipline is just.
He brings justice to those who do wrong. He forgives
sin. And all of it, all of this is for the sake
of the Holy name of God. So in some ways, what
I've done is share with you the story of the
Bible. I began with the beginning. We kind of
slow, we walked rather quickly actually for the
first, through the first couple of books. And
then we got to this crazy story of the destruction
of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire. But what
I kind of wanted to show you through that small
snippet, like that quote from Dante, and even
this small snippet of this overture that came
before this other denomination this summer, was
that in some ways, this is the story. That we're
living in this kind of perplexed place of saying,
God, what's happening in the world? Why does
your church seem to ebb and flow and faithless?
Why is it sometimes good in a way for you to
say, I need to bring my discipline to the church.
They need to learn repentance. And why do we
need to cry out, Lord, bring honor to your name?
People are looking at the church, Lord, and saying,
what a joke sometimes. God, listen. God, hear.
So I begin with the beginning of the Bible, and
just as a way of ending, I want to point us to
the end of the Bible. So the first book in the
Bible is Genesis, which means the book of beginning,
and the last book of the Bible is the book of
Revelation. You probably know that Revelation
is notoriously difficult to understand at points.
There in Revelation chapter six, There are the
Four Horsemen. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,
which has sort of become like, it's just part
of our cultural language now, the Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse. Some of you may know that
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are a reference
to four football players from Notre Dame who
beat the army in 1924. I doubt it, may know that
it's the name of a restaurant in Brooklyn. Some
of you may know that the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse are also four things that will predict,
likely predict, a marital divorce, according
to Gottman. In Revelation, the Four Horsemen
refers to conquest, war, famine, and death. Conquest,
war, famine and death. And that was the experience
of the people of this song. And often it has
been the experience of Christians throughout
time living in this world where it seems as though
conquest of the church, destruction of the church,
the death of the church, war within the church
is what is so prevalent. The experience of God's
people, the experience of the world over. Some
probably of the experience of this Psalm may
be your experience, maybe in a communal life,
maybe in a personal life, I hope not much. But
no doubt you've had these sorrows upon sorrows,
these tragedies upon tragedies that have caused
you to question, God, what's happening? What's
going on? No doubt you've had times that you
brought to the Lord in anguish, recounting all
the destruction. I hope you've had times of hanging
on to God in the midst of a world that feels
so much in upheaval, crying out for justice,
maybe crying out for forgiveness, maybe crying
out for the glory of His name. My guess is that
if you've been a Christian for a while, you've
looked at the state of the church and you've
said, God, bring honor to your name. Bring honor
to your name. Why do the nations mock and laugh?
Well they're in Revelation. We don't only just
find the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The
main character in Revelation is the lamb who
was slain. The main character is the one who
experiences to agree this conquest and this war
and this famine and even death. The main character
is the lame of God who takes away the sin of
the world. And there in that book we find in
some ways the culmination of the promises made
there in chapter three of Genesis, culmination
of what is promised there in Genesis chapter
nine, the culmination of what is found there
at the covenant in Exodus 20 and all throughout.
That God always makes good on his promises. That
in the midst of a world that feels like the Psalm
79, God, what is happening? Is the blessing of
the world that you've promised, will it come
about? And the message there is that it will.
That there will be a day when our cries for justice,
when our cries for forgiveness, when our cries
for a new life will be heard fully and completely.
They will be answered. There will be a day when
death is no more. There will be a day when crying
and tears and pain are no more. There will be
a day when the anguish of crying out, how long
will be met with now? And all of it will be because
Jesus himself came into this very world. That
Jesus himself received the pain of this world
into himself. that Jesus himself went to the
cross through death to the empty tomb for the
sake of this world that has so constantly been
in rebellion and rejection of him. In a way you
could say it is all because Jesus himself went
through conquest and war and famine and death
for us. So what do we do? What do we do when
we're in this kind of scenario? Truth be told,
we are not in the exact kind of scenario. Similar
things that cause us to question, to wonder,
what do we do with the perplexities of our experiences?
What the psalmist is saying is, bring it to the
Lord. Cry out for His honor. Lord, I am your
child, whom you love, whom Jesus died for. Meet
me in this pain. Why do you seem to stand far
off? Cry out the Lord's honor. What else should
you do? Bring it all before the Lord. Bring the
stuff that you want to hide away. Think of how
gruesome this was. Blood strewn throughout the
city of Jerusalem. Get it all to God. And bring
it to Him and remember. Remember the blessing
of God to the world. Remember His promises of
God to the world. And remember most of all that
Jesus Jesus is the great picture of God's love
for us. It is his utter commitment for us that
the fact that God did not spare his own son,
but gave him up for us all. How will he not,
at least at some point, give us all things? Let
me pray for us. Lord, we have a Psalm that is
foreign to us and a history that few know well.
and actually a history that is so unsettling
in a way. The texts are unsettling, the extent
of destruction is unsettling, and yet we live
in a world, we live in a world that is so utterly
unsettling, so perplexing. We go through trials,
tragedies, that are so great they test our faith,
they make us wonder what you are up to. And yet,
Lord, here again, we're called to cry to you,
to bring it to you, to hang on to you, to cling
to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our
faith. Gotta pray that we would be those who
in the midst of trial, in the midst of tragedy,
who might give these kinds of psalms to our lips
to cry out to you, to plead for you to act. to
plead for you to forgive us when we need that,
to plead to you to bring your justice, to plead
with you to defend your honor for the glory of
your name. God, when we look at the church and
we have so many reasons to wonder why it's the
church, not the beacon of light that it is called
to be the source of your blessing to the world.
These kinds of times, Lord. Would we look to
these psalms? And more than anything, would we
look to Jesus? I pray this all in His name. Amen.