A Study in Psalms - Psalm 44

I want to welcome you back to Christ Community Church and our Summer of Psalms, and I think even though it's still May, summer has finally arrived, that's it Tonight, we're going to look at Psalm 44 If you want to turn there, Psalm 44, and the title of today's message, I hope you have an outline, is When Good Christians Suffer Last week, I took about three or four minutes to talk about Argentina Tonight, I want to talk about Myanmar, or as some of you old folks remember, Burma That's where Ping and I last served

We came home at the end of 2019, and the plan was for me to go back three, four times a year to teach at the Bible school there, but you know what happened? COVID happened, and then a civil war

The civil war there has really been going on for almost 80 years, but it totally exploded in 2021 because the government had allowed democracy to come in, but in 2021, the Burmese army overthrew the democratic elected government, and all the Christian tribes, Buddhist tribes, Muslim tribes revolted, and they're winning the war right now, but we haven't been able to go back, but the reason we haven't been able to go back is because there's a group of pastors that Christ Community Church committed to train with a four-year Bible school They're called the Nagas

You may have heard of the Nagas in India There's 29 Naga tribes in India that most of them have come to Christ, one of the great missionary movements of the past century, but over in Burma, there's one tribe, the Tangsha Nagas, and nobody's working with them They live in the most remote area of Burma No Wi-Fi We can't Zoom with them, so for I think six, seven times, we took them out of their area They would come sometimes on bus to Yangon We even flew them in, but they can't travel now because if they travel, they'll get conscripted by the Burmese army or the rebel army

Last time they got to the airport, and they were stopped by the rebel army, and they have letters that show their pastors, and they weren't conscripted, but both sides are so desperate for soldiers, they would force them in, so they won't travel So I don't think October I can go and teach We just have one more, three courses in one time we could do in two weeks and finish, and then we'd be done, and they could graduate, but we're waiting But some of you asked about how the situation is with the earthquake

The Bible school that I taught at is now an official Masters Academy International. I think they have about 16 TMAI academies around the world, and Myanmar is an official one now It wasn't when I was there, but the school in Yangon is safe All my friends are safe Tang Jin will be here next Sunday He's coming to study for two weeks at the Master's Seminary, so you'll see him next Sunday But everybody's safe in Yangon, but up north is Mandalay It's the second largest city in Myanmar, and it is just devastating You don't see a lot of the news Most people don't care about Myanmar

They care about Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Hamas, but the army doesn't allow reporters in there, especially Americans So yesterday I was looking at a video from Doctors Without Borders, and it was at Inle Lake, beautiful lake, and all the houses are on stilts, but virtually every house was knocked down In Mandalay, 70 to 90% of the houses are destroyed, and they don't have a lot of skyscrapers Most of the houses, three, four stories would be the height, but it's horrible there But I was thinking, because you see the temples, the monasteries, and those stupas

You know, a stupa is this large cylinder thing that they claim that there's a piece of Buddha's body in it, like a hair or a fingernail And there's millions of them, it's impossible, but they're all destroyed They're sitting on their sides And Isaiah 55.7 says, God says, I create calamity And that is the epicenter of Buddhism, not just in Burma, but almost that whole area of Asia For example, Thailand, boys will be monks for maybe two weeks To honor their family, they have to be a monk So they'll shave their head, go to the monastery for two weeks They don't want to be a monk

So over half the monks in Thailand that live full time in the monasteries are from Burma So I believe God sent a message to them that he is the one true God of the heavens and the earth, and they need to repent But the Bible school in Yangon is safe and doing well, but up north, it's terrible that people are there And I talk about Myanmar because I want to talk about the first American missionary who went to Myanmar, and I've talked about it many times here And that is Adroniram Judson

And last year, I recommended that your teenagers, or maybe you need to read, probably the most powerful missionary biography that's out there And it's called, To the Golden Shore, The Life of Adroniram Judson And when we talk about our title tonight, When Good Christians Suffer, I'm just going to give you one paragraph Adroniram Judson lived from 1788 to 1850, and he stepped onto Burmese soil Originally, he wanted to go to India, but he arrived in the year 1812, and India was at war with America, so he wasn't allowed to stay in India, so he went to Burma

But he arrived on the Burmese soil with no applause, but with anguish For seven long years, he preached without a single convert, digging into the language like a miner seeking the gold beneath stone He buried his first child in foreign soil, and watched his beloved wife, Anne, waste away from disease And then he spent two years in brutal imprisonment, chained, starved, suspended by his feet in a filthy Burmese death camp

Yet even in the darkness of the dungeon, he whispered prayers in Burmese, and hid scraps of translated scripture under his thin mat, knowing that someday, someone would read them When Judson died in 1850, he died on a ship and was buried at sea After nearly four decades of toil, there were over 7,000 baptized Burmese believers, and more than 60 churches had been planted, and a fully translated Bible in the Burmese language That Bible today is still used after 200 years His body was committed to the sea, but his legacy lives on the hearts of people who once knew nothing of Christ

Today, if you go to Kachin State, there might be two million Christians now. I would say a lot of those are nominal Christians, because it's the largest seminary there The president doesn't even believe the Bible, but there are a lot of born-again believers When Judson sowed in sorrow, heaven reaped in joy If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by an infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings Such words were not poetry, they were scars made into praise Let's read Psalm 44

Psalm 44 has a superscription that says to the choir master, a masculine of the sons of Korah, and I'll talk about that in a little bit. O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old With you, with your own hand, drove out the nations But them you planted, you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free For not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arms save them But your right hand and your arm and the light of your face, for you delighted in them

You are my king, O God, ordain salvation for Jacob Through you we push down our foes, through your name we tread down those who rise up against us For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me, but you have saved us from our foes, and have put to shame those who hate us In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever, Selah But you have rejected us, and disgraced us, and have not gone out with our armies You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoiled

You have made us like sheep for the slaughter, and have scattered us among the nations You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughing stock among the peoples All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face, at the sound of the taunter and reveler, and the sight of the enemy and the avenger All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant

Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way Yet you have broken us in the place of jackals, and covered us with the shadow of death If we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands to a foreign god, would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart Yet for your sake we are killed all day long We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever

Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust, our belly clings to the ground Rise up! Come to our help Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love Let's pray Father, tonight, perhaps in our audience, there are people who are suffering, wondering why May this psalm tonight help them to understand your sovereignty, your providence, your love, and your mercy, and sometimes we'll never know why until we get to heaven In Jesus' name, amen

James Johnston wrote that our natural instinct is to think that if we obey God and do what is right, things will go well Our church will grow, our kids will do well, my business will succeed, but God allows obedient Christians to go through deep trouble Sometimes we suffer because we're disobedient Israel was defeated at Ahi because Achan sinned He kept some of the spoil from Jericho Ananias and Sapphira died because they lied to God The writer of Hebrews 12 said God disciplines us when we sin and his purpose is to make us holy

But sometimes God allows us to go through hard times even when we are obedient and walking closely with him Job suffered precisely because he honored God, Job 1A Joseph went to prison precisely because he honored God Paul had a thorn in the flesh precisely because his ministry was so successful This can be hard to understand We understand when God disciplines us with hardships when we have disobeyed him, but why do trouble and tragedy come into our lives when we've been following God faithfully? This is the exact situation of Psalm 44 Let me talk a little bit about the type of Psalm

It's a lament, of course The author is crying out and probably half the Psalms are laments But usually Psalms are written to praise the Lord for military victories, right? But here's Psalm 44 The worship leader in the temple is crying out for some unknown military defeat We don't know when this is. I'll talk a little bit about it But whatever war battle it was, it was catastrophic The Israel army had been defeated Many were taken slaves, and the situation was terrible Sometime when you read Psalm 44, make sure you read Psalm 42, 43, and 44 together They share many of the same themes

In Psalms 42, you know, that's the as the deer pants Psalm In Psalm 43, the king feels like God has forgotten and rejected him In Psalm 44, the king speaks for a nation that feels like God has forgotten and rejected them We have a nice superscription here It just says to the choir master, a masculine. A masculine is a wise saying or some type of instruction put to music And this one is written by the sons of Korah We've looked at Psalm 5 and we've looked at Psalm 27 Both of those were written by King David Tonight, we have a different writer in Psalms

And the sons of Korah were the worship leaders in the temple So we don't know if it's one guy who wrote the 11 of them There's 11 of them or different ones The sons of Korah, though, demonstrated an awe of God's holiness and power as expressed in their service to the Lord in the temple And the style of poetry they use in their Psalms Remember, they wrote Psalms 42, 1 Remember that? As the deer pants for the streams of water, so my soul pants for you They also wrote Psalms 46, verses 1 and 2 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble

Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way They wrote Psalms 47 Clap your hands, all you peoples Shout to God with voices of triumph They wrote Psalm 48 Great is our Lord and greatly to be praised They wrote Psalm 49, verse 20, which says, Man in his pomp, yet without understanding, is like the beasts of a field And then, of course, that wonderful Psalm 84 And, you know, verse 10 says, For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked

They also wrote Psalms 87, which we'll look at probably four or five weeks from now, which says, Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God They also wrote Psalms 44, 45, 85, and 88 Eleven Psalms altogether So their poetry, their Hebrew poetry, which we've translated in English, is really beautiful Let's look at your outline tonight We have, number one, a prosperous past, verses 1 to 8 Number two, a painful present, verses 9 to 22 And a positive future, verses 23 to 26 There are some outlines in the back if you didn't pick one up Try to leave one every week

Let's start with a prosperous past, verses 1 to 8 So God is Israel's king here on the basis of past experiences You know, if you read Psalm 42 and Psalm 43, you see the words, Hope in God, hope in God, hope in God, three times The psalmist is going to do that in verses 1 to 8 here, remembering the prosperous, the glorious past that Israel had You have two sub-points there They have been planted in the land And let's look at that number one They've been planted in the land So first off, we're going to have God brought them, God built them. I think that's the only two sub-points Yeah

So let's talk about God brought them, verses 1 to 2 Okay The psalmist says, we have heard with our ears They didn't have the Bible like we do They weren't able to read the word of God, but they would tell stories Grandfathers to fathers to children would tell the stories of the exodus from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan Five times here in verses 1 to 8, it says you, you, you Actually, in my translation, 21 times in the psalms, it says you, you, you You, of course, is God God did it All of it was from God God gave the people his great victories If you'd like to turn to Joshua 24 with me

Joshua, this is the last chapter of the book of Joshua He reminds the people, the children of Israel, in the last chapter, who was responsible for the conquest of Canaan And in Joshua 24, I'll read verses 6 to 8, and then I'll jump to 10 to 13 But in Joshua 24, it says, then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea And then they cried to the Lord He put darkness between you and Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt

And you lived in the wilderness a long time Verse 8, then I brought you into the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land And I destroyed them before you Then Balak, son of Zippor, king of Moab, rose and fought against Israel And he sent and invited Balaam, son of Beor, to curse you But I would not listen to Balaam Indeed, he blessed you So I delivered you out of his hand And then if you go to verse 11, and you went over to the Jordan and came to Jericho

And the leaders of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Perzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Gergesites, the Hittites, and Jebusites And I gave them into your hand And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, two kings of the Amorites It was not by your sword or your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant Ten times there, he says, I, I, I God brought them out Subpoint 2, God built them up in verse 3

Okay? He says it was not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own armies save them, but your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face delighted them It wasn't by their own sword We just read Joshua 24 that says God did it ten times You know, one of my favorite passages in Joshua, I love the book of Joshua because it's war, and you know, if you like war movies like Saving Private Ryan, like that, like me Joshua is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible In Joshua 10, we have this battle where there's five kings led by Adonai Zedek, and he's the king of Jerusalem

And he went to attack Gibeon, and remember the Gibeonites in the previous chapter, chapter 9, had tricked Joshua Joshua didn't pray Probably the one time in the book of Joshua that Joshua didn't seek God's advice So the Gibeonites had deceived Israel, but now the Gibeonites are being attacked, and they cry out to Israel to help them And in Joshua 10, I'm sorry, Joshua 10, it says in verse 11, As they fled before the Lord while they were going down the ascent of Beth Horon, the Lord threw down large stones from heaven on them, as far as Ezek, and they died And this is what I love

There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword Time and time again, battle and battle, God won the war, not their armies And notice here in verse 3 that we have three metaphors We have the right hand of God, the arm of God, and the light of his face So he says by your right arm, okay? That is used 40 times in Psalms It signifies power It signifies the omnipotence of an almighty God Psalm 26 says, Now I know that Yahweh saves his anointed He will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand

Psalm 110, that great messianic psalm, verse 1 says, Yahweh says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet Then he just says your arm, your arm Another anthropomorphism Anthropomorphisms are when the writers of the Bible ascribe human characteristics to a God God doesn't have an arm, doesn't have eyes He's a spirit, but we have to describe him, so we use these anthropomorphisms And the second one, he just says, and your arm And Psalms 10, 12 says, Arise, O Lord, O God, lift up your hand The third is, and the light of your face

And that just means God's gracious favor When God sheds his light for his face And you look at Deuteronomy 9, you don't have to turn there, I'll read it But Deuteronomy 9, 4 to 6, God reminds the children of Israel, Do not say in your heart after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land Whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you

Not because of your righteousness or uprightness of your heart, are you going in to possess their land? But because of the wickedness of those nations, the Lord God is driving them out before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob So they had been planted in the land, they had been built, they had been brought into the land, and they had been built up in the land Let's look at sub-point number B, they had been protected in the land And here, God decrees the victories, God defeats the foes, and God delivers them

So first off, God decreed the victories, verse 4 He just says, You are my king, O God, ordain salvation for Jacob Last week we said in Psalms 27, in Psalms when you see the word salvation, it's the Old Testament, it means victory or deliverance, grant me salvation It's not the salvation of a born again Christian in the New Testament, we said last week, but it's crying out for deliverance

And Deuteronomy 4, verse 37 to 38, and it says, And because he loved your fathers, and chose their offspring after them, and brought you out of Egypt, with his own presence and great power, driving out nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give their land as an inheritance, as it is to this day So God decreed the victories Sometime, if you're reading your Old Testament, obviously you'll get it, but when you get to Joshua 12, 31 battles it says victory won. 31 times God ordained victory So God decreed the victories in verse 4 In verses 5 to 6, God defeated the foes

Now notice in verse 5, it says, Though you, through you, we push down our foes So most commentators think that the people answer the king in verse 5, saying we And then in verse 6, we'll talk about that in a second So the people answer the king in verse 5, in the plural, saying we For many years the Lord had been the invisible warrior who went before the Jewish armies and led them to victory Joshua 5, verses 13 to 14, says, When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand

And Joshua said to him, Joshua went to him and said to him, Are you for us or for our adversaries? And in verse 14, And he said, No, I am the commander of the army of the Lord Now I have come. I believe that is the pre-incarnate risen Christ So God defeated their foes And then point C there, verses 5 and 8, God delivered them So here now, the king is going to speak in plural again in verse 7 when he says you And then the people are going to answer in plural, we, in verse 8 And God delivered them. I'll talk a little bit in a minute about Psalm 60 and Psalm 44 are very closely aligned

In Psalm 60 says, O grant us help against the foe, for vain is the salvation of man With God we shall do valiantly, for it is he who will tread down our foes God delivered them Verse 8 ends with Selah, and I haven't talked a lot in the last 4 or 5 years about the Selahs There's about 73 of them in the Psalms And commentators argue about them So I'll just tell briefly that this first paragraph ends with the word Selah You'll notice the next paragraph begins with yet or but Now Selah is probably some type of music reflection where you pause, maybe it's verses 1 to 8 or one chorus in the next

Some people think it's a pause for a vocal instrument or an interlude like a flourish So what do we learn from these first 8 verses? Maybe Israel had a glorious past, right? And maybe you had a glorious past Maybe you served the Lord faithfully Maybe you attended church faithfully Maybe you've given your tithes Maybe everything's great But you've got to be careful because we come to the next point In times of trouble, believers need to rebuild their confidence in God by recalling the great deeds that He did in the past in their lifetime

That's what the psalmist did before he gets to point number 2 Let's look at point number 2, the painful present So as the psalmist is writing this, there's a sad plight of Israel at the present as he's writing it, verses 9 to 22 And you have two subpoints there Their military disaster is real and the moral dilemma is reeling So let's look at the military disaster is real Four little subpoints here They were defeated, they were deported, they were despised, and they were disgraced Defeated, departed, despised, disgraced So verses 9 to 10, they were defeated

So verses 1 to 8, we have the triumphs of the past And if it ended there, this would be a victory psalm like many of the psalms that we have But verse 9 begins with the word but And maybe I think the LSB and the NASB say yet But you notice that it changes, right? Now in verses 9 to 16, we have sadness, we have defeat Six times in verses 9 to 16, the psalmist says you, you, you My translation says 21 times in 26 verse, it says you The you is God And now it seems that God has forsaken Israel He's forsaken his people He's abandoned them

The army of Israel has been defeated and the enemy has gotten much spoil and slaves have been taken captive So they've been defeated Next, they've been deported Verses 11 to 12 Not only has the army of Israel been defeated, but God has allowed many to be killed, others scattered, and God has allowed slaves to be taken for no great price When was the defeat? Well, when most people read verse 11, they automatically say, aha, this is the Babylonian captivity that is recorded when Israel was finally destroyed and Nebuchadnezzar took back But that's not what Psalm 44 is about

Commentators, there have been other deportations If you read, we won't turn there, but if you read Amos verse 1, 6 to 9, it talks about Edomites, Edom and Moab had deported some Israelites So there have been some But turn with me to Psalm 60 And I mentioned they're very similar and I'm not going to take a lot of time tonight because we have 26 verses to cover, but Psalm 60 and Psalm 44 are like companion psalms You can see Psalm 60 verse 1, O God, you have rejected us, you've broken our defenses, you've been angry with us, you've made the land to quake

All through this psalm, it's not as long as the other psalm, 12 verses But I want you to look at the superscription Everybody see the tadaf there? This is the longest superscription of the 114 superscriptions that we have of the 150 psalms And it says there, To the choir master, according to the Shushan Edith, a mictum of David, for instruction when he strove with Aram-Naram and with Aram-Zobab, when Joab on his return struck down 12,000 of Edom in the valley of Saul So some commentators, and I would lean toward this, believe that when he says, when he strove

So it's possible that Israel had some military defeats, probably in 2 Samuel chapters 8, 9, and 10, that God has not recorded them Remember the secret things belong to God, the revealed things belong to us So if Psalms 44 and Psalm 60 are about some military defeat that God has not told us And so we just assume David won every battle David won every war, but there might have been some battles that maybe he wasn't there, that maybe Joab lost So that's what I think there, that it is

So remember that, I don't believe it's about the Babylonian captivity, but it's an unknown military defeat, possibly linking with Psalm 60 But remember, it's a reminder that the righteous can suffer Daniel was taken captive to Babylon Ezekiel was taken captive to Babylon They were made slaves there The righteous can suffer when God punishes the nation of Israel Let's look at number three, they were despised Verses 13 to 14 Not only were they defeated, not only were they deported, they were despised The enemy nations surrounding Israel were rejoicing that Israel had been humiliated

They were taunting Israel So the sons of Korah here writing, could not understand what the Lord was doing and why He was doing it Psalms 42.10 says, As a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me all day long, where is your God? Remember in this ancient times when the Philistines won the battle, they attributed it to their God So when Israel lost the war, the enemies would taunt Israel saying, where is your God? And our verses says, verse 14, He's saying, You God have made us a laughing stock among the nations It reminds us of Psalm 137

Psalm 137, remember that? By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion On the willows there we hung our harps, for our captors required us songs and our tormentors mirth saying, sing us the songs of Zion So that tells us when they were slaves on the way to Babylon, they were tortured and forced to sing songs So not only were they despised, verses 15 to 16, they were disgraced He says, All day long my disgrace is before me, shame has covered my face at the taunt of the taunter and reveler at the sight of the enemy and avenger

The psalmist was ashamed because the enemies are giving glory to their false gods and he's wondering, where is the one true God who gave us those victories before? Let's look at sub-point B, the moral dilemma is reeling And here, they were dedicated, they were defeated, and they were disillusioned So normally, whenever there was trouble in Israel, it was assumed it was because somebody sinned, right? When Israel was defeated at Ahai, 36 Israeli soldiers were killed, it was because of Achan's sin

That's the only battle that Joshua lost, right? When there was a three year famine in David's time, 2 Samuel 21, it was because Saul had slaughtered the Gibeonites and God had put this famine And then when David numbered the people of Israel in 2 Samuel 21, over 70,000 Israelites would die because of David's sin So usually, it's because there's some sin But here, the psalmist doesn't know of any sin to be confessed Here we have the problem of this psalm Israel had remained faithful

They're not claiming to be sinless now, but they don't know why God has punished them, why God has defeated their army, why God has let slaves be sold and the enemies win And he says in our psalm here, in these verses here, they had not forgotten God They had not been false to His covenant They had been loyal to God's covenant They had not turned away from God They had not departed from His way See verse 20 there They knew God's search They said, God, You search the hearts of men, and if there was any treachery, You would discover it, God

So they're saying what Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24 says, Search me, O Lord Know my heart Test me, God That's what they're saying God, test us We don't know of any evil sin that we've done We don't know why You let us lose this war One commentator says, This psalm is perhaps the clearest example of a search for some other cause of natural disaster than guilt and punishment So let's look at then defeated in verse 19 The psalmist uses darkness here He says, You have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death

Remember that shadow of death? Does that sound familiar? Psalms 23 verse 4 Quoted it last week Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil But here the psalmist uses darkness to depict desperate threatening circumstances God has crushed them and covered them with the shadow of death and they are in fear And then their disillusion in verses 20 to 22

You know, in times of suffering, people evaluate their lives in an attempt to see, is this suffering from God? Did I do some sin and God is disciplined? But the people in the psalm had done that and they found nothing warranted the calamity They go so far to say God wouldn't accuse them, you know, so far God wouldn't accuse them or send a prophet to tell them what they did wrong He says there, for he knows the secrets of the heart Their strength was based on the fact that God sees They know God's omission They know God would see

Yet verse 22, verse 22 says, yet for your sake we are killed all day long We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered Does that verse sound familiar? Paul quotes this verse in Romans chapter 8, verse 36, that great chapter in Romans 8 So Paul takes this verse, verse 22 of Psalm 44, to tell the Romans that hey, some of you may die Some of you may die You may face death in your trials You know, last week I said that God doesn't have many of us, none of us here are probably going to be martyred unless something drastically changes God just asks us to live for Him

But there are countries, there are places in the world that there are many Christian martyrs Nigeria and India and China and places like that It was in, you know, I said God doesn't ask many of us to be martyrs, but He asks for all of us to live for Him But it was on January 8, 1956, five American missionaries were killed in Ecuador They were attempting to evangelize a tribe called the War-Irani people And you probably know this story Jim Elliott, Nate Saint, Ed McCulley, Peter Fleming, Roger Yoderin were attacked and they were literally speared or bows and arrows were killed in them

And many people thought it was such a waste It looked like a terrible defeat It was on the cover of Life magazine and it was a huge story all around the world Today if a missionary dies in the world, you know, nobody's going to cover it, right? But it looked like a defeat It looked like a waste of five young men But that caused thousands of missionaries to take up the mantle to go out and spread the gospel The incident known as Operation Akua gained worldwide attention and was covered by Life magazine

The missionary's death led to a significant media coverage and fueled missionary interest and helped send missionaries all over the world God is responsible for the disaster here God was responsible for that disaster there and allowed it But remember the U 21 times in the psalm also means that God is in control He allows the disasters to happen. I quoted Isaiah 45, 7 God creates darkness and causes disasters The same God who gave Israel the victories in the past is the same God who allows suffering in the present

In times of trouble, believers must pour out their complaint to God alone because their affliction can bring reproach to them and to the faith Let's look at the last point, the positive future And here's a prayer Just a simple 23, 24, 24 verse prayer about the future Two sub points The psalmist is saying, God, rouse yourself And number two, God, redeem us And notice in verse 23, in rapid fire, the psalmist asks three questions

Awake, why are you sleeping, O Lord? Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? Well, he says, awake, why are you sleeping, O Lord? The psalmist knows God isn't sleeping, but God is just silent, right? Psalms 121 says, he will not let your foot be moved He who keeps you will not slumber Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep We all know that God doesn't sleep God doesn't tire out like us He's just been silent here But he's crying out to God to ask for help

He says, why do you hide your face? Usually, the psalmist asks God to let your face shine upon us Psalms 80, verse 3 Psalms 80, verse 7 Psalms 80, verse 19 Three times it says, restore us, O God Let your face shine upon us that we might be saved So usually, they cry out to let the face of God shine on them But here, they're not feeling the light of God's face So they're crying out to God It seems that God is sleeping God is hiding his face So the psalmist asks God, rouse yourself And no longer ignore your people, God We are crushed We are despised Help us

The third question he says, why do you forget our affliction and oppression? Of course, God doesn't forget God is silent, but he knows exactly what's going on The psalmist is saying, God, you helped us in the past You must help us now But you're not helping us Even though we have done nothing to prohibit you from helping us, so help us One commentator said, the last hope of a faithful people is the faithfulness of God So they're crying out to God to wake up to help them And then, sub point B, God redeem us The last two verses of the psalm He says that our soul is bowed down in the dust

Our belly clings to the ground They're saying, we don't have any power We don't have any strength We've been killed Some of our people have been taken captive We have no power But then he says in verse 26, rise up Because you, God, have the power You, God, need to rise up You need to come to our help You need to redeem us And he says, for the sake of your steadfast love So he's crying out, calling upon the character of God The one attribute that he says, maybe your translation says mercies, but I think the better translation is steadfast love

James Boyce says about this verse, The love of God is of such a quality, that even in terrible defeats of the precise moment, are not without a purpose, and will not, even in the worst extremity, sever the believing one from God What he's saying, and what the psalmist is doing here, he's crying out for the God be true to your character You're a God of love That's one of your greatest attributes Remember us, and for the sake of your love, come help us

Romans 8, which I mentioned earlier, Paul quotes it, and if you want to turn to Romans 8, verse 36, Paul quotes Psalm 42, verse 22, and he says, as it is written, that's Psalm 42, 22 For your sake we are being killed all day long We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered So there were some in the Roman church who were being persecuted, some who were being killed, some being jailed, some being chased out But then he says those great words that end Psalm 8 Know in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us

For I am sure that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, not powers, not height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord So some of these Israelites may die in Psalm 44, and in Romans 8 some of them died, and today in Nigeria, today in India, today in China, today in some countries around the world, God may allow some Christians, some good Christians, to die, not because of any sin in their life, but it's just part of his sovereignty, part of his providence

But nothing, not even death, will separate them from the love of God So if you're suffering, if you think God isn't answering, remember the love of God It's all right to say, Lord, I don't understand it, but I will trust you anyway It's better to say, Thank you, Lord, for letting this suffering come into my life because I know you're using it to conform me to the image of your Son and to make me more efficient and more effective servant You know, the Bible tells us that we are to receive suffering and joy with thanksgiving

Not that it's easy, right? James 1, 1 and 2 says, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness And let the steadfastness have its full effect in you, that you may be perfect, complete, lacking in nothing And one more verse, 2 Corinthians 4, 17 says, For this light momentary affliction, and you may say, Well, it's not the cancer, the divorce, or loss of job is not a light momentary affliction Yes, it is Because someday when you're in heaven, you're going to look back at that momentary affliction

And the last part of it says, That momentary light affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison Someday in heaven, you will look back at that trial that you didn't understand it will be that small So tonight, in just a few minutes we have left, when good Christians suffer, what should we do? Psalms 44 doesn't actually give us the answers, does it? But it does teach us that we just need to trust God, cry out for His love, cry out for His help So I'm going to give you seven quick things that you need to do when good Christians suffer

Okay? Number one, examine to see if you're in the faith Examine to see if you have Jesus Christ in your heart Okay? 2 Corinthians 13 verse 5 says, Examine to see if you're in the faith Is my trial, is my suffering because I'm not even a Christian? We have a president who is not a Christian And he has a false teacher named Paula White, who is his spiritual advisor And I pray every day that somehow Trump will come to the Lord, and especially that somehow Christians around America could tell him to dump that Paula White, because she is a charlatan, a false teacher

But there are millions of people in America, and even more so around the world, who follow these false teachers And they're not believers They don't know the Lord They're promised their kids will be healed, they're promised they'll get money So they're following God like a genie, and they don't know salvation through faith alone So number one, I trust everybody here tonight has Jesus Christ in their heart But examine yourself to see if you're in the faith Number two, examine yourself to see is there any sin in my life And I mentioned the Psalm 139 verses 23 to 24

The psalmist says, Search me, O Lord When you confess your sins, are you willing to say, Search me, O Lord Did I sin today? Did I do something today to my wife or get mad, or did I have a road rage? Search me, O Lord God, you know my heart Try me, because you know my thoughts And verse 24 says, See if there's any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting So ask God, Is there any sin in my life? You need to expose to me Remember in Numbers 12, Aaron and Miriam sinned against God, and God judged and gave Miriam leprosy

Remember in 1 Corinthians 11, the Corinthian believers were getting drunk, and they were not sharing the food with the poor, and God struck some of them down That was for sin And remember in 2 Chronicles 26, Uzziah went into the temple to offer incense He's not allowed to, and God struck him with leprosy So God can cause some suffering because of sin in our life Number three, chastening Chastening Hebrews 12, and I won't go there, because I don't have the time But Hebrews 12, verses 5-12, basically says, The Lord disciplines those He loves

So maybe you're not reading your Bible like you should be Maybe you're not praying like Psalm 5 God can chasten you How's your walk with the Lord? God can chasten you, which causes you to go back to Him, and we all know that sometimes divorce causes women or men to go back to the Lord when they weren't walking with the Lord So God can chasten those He loves to draw us closer to Him And similar, number four, strengthening God may permit suffering as a means of purifying or strengthening the soul in Godliness

You know, 2 Corinthians 12, verses 8, I won't do the whole story, but three times Paul pleaded with the Lord to take away, take this trial away from me, Lord, and that it should leave me But what did God say to Paul in verse 9 of 2 Corinthians 12? My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me For the sake of Christ and I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities, for I am weak and I'm strong God did not answer Paul's prayer

So Paul had to suffer, but it strengthened him, right? And number five, remember the Titans Not that football movie which I saw a couple months ago, but the Titans Who are the Titans? Job, Elijah, Paul And I could go on about Daniel, Moses, Jeremiah So if you're suffering, the last thing you cannot do is neglect reading your Bible So Job, nobody will ever suffer like Job We had a wonderful study, 30 messages by Job, and you can get the cassettes or listen to them online But remember Job, and I quoted last week, Job 23.10

Job says, but he knows the way that I take, and when he has tried me, that's God, I shall come out like gold We need to remember Job came out like gold, and you will come out like gold if you just trust the Lord, even though you don't know why and how it's happening And remember the other Titan, Elijah, in 1 Kings 19 He says, oh Lord, take my life. I'm no better than my father's. I just want to die And God doesn't really answer him He tells him, hey, you're not the only one. I have 7,000 who have not vowed to need the ball And then he doesn't really answer

He says, Elijah, I got more work for you Go do this, three things Go do this, go do this, go do this And then remember Paul In 2 Corinthians 1 verse 8, it's Paul says, for we don't want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia For we were utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. I don't know what happened, but Paul wanted to die in 2 Corinthians 1 to 8 because affliction was so great

He says in verse 9, indeed, we felt like we had received a sentence of death, whatever was going on, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who can raise the dead He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again So remember the Titans Remember Job Remember Elijah Remember Paul How God let them suffer, but God used them in a mighty way, and he will use you And number six, just real simple God is worthy of our love, even apart from the blessings he bestows That's one you need to write down, meditate upon

God is worthy of love We need to love God, not because of what he gives us That would be a genie, like giving you three wishes, right? We need to love God just simply because of who he is, okay? And not because of what he gives us, okay? There are Christians around the world who will accept Christ today and could be murdered tomorrow So God is worthy of love, even apart from the blessing he bestows And then number seven, God's thoughts and ways are moved by considerations too vast for our puny mind to understand And you know the verse, Isaiah 55, 8 and 9

This is God saying, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts We can't understand what God's doing sometimes in our world, in our lives, in our church, in our neighborhoods, in our country, what he's doing in the state of California with our politicians And sometimes we've got to just give it up to the sovereignty of God

Last week, if you were here, I finished Psalm 27, quoting a hymn by Stuart Hamlin, and a bunch of you looked it up this week But I just love that verse four says, I know not what the future holds, but I know who holds the future God's in charge He's in control So those are just seven things If you say, God, why am I suffering? Please review that

You know, when good Christians suffer, there was a British Methodist preacher named William Sangster, and I've used this illustration before, because I have this on my phone, and I read it periodically, because most of you know I have a 13-year-old daughter who has special needs And this has been one thing that's helped me in times of trouble, what this man said But this preacher found out that he had muscular atrophy, and he knew he was going to die He was not going to get well So he made four resolutions, and it says that he kept them to the end

And I wrote, I kept these in my, and I memorized them He says, number one, I will never complain. I will never complain. I'm not going to cry about it. I'm not going to complain about it Number two, I will keep the home bright And I love that, because, you know, I have a great wife, and I'm not going to sit around and complain. I'm not going to say, poor me. I know someday my daughter will sing Someday she'll run in heaven Number three, I will count my blessings Today, Ping and I went to a house of another special needs family, and their boy has cystic fibrosis And they have feeding tubes

They have to get up every two hours They, you know, Tess is pretty healthy most of the time So I count my blessings So, number one, I will never complain Number two, I'll keep the home bright And number two, I will count my blessings And number four, I will try to turn the suffering, I will try to turn it to gain. I talked to somebody this week that went through a tragedy, a horrible tragedy several years ago And this week, last week, they got to share with somebody who had a similar tragedy And those people were not believers It's the same thing

The house that I was at today, the people are Seventh Day Adventists, and we've had conversations They are not born again And so Ping and I have tried repeatedly to talk to them And this week, because I'm going to a special needs conference this week, it's called like a retreat at John MacArthur's church They're willing to go visit John MacArthur's church, even though they're Seventh Day Adventists So we're trying to win them over So, number one, I'll never complain Number two, I'll keep the home bright Number three, I will count my blessings

And number four, I will try to turn it to gain. I will try to use my daughter's special needs to see if we can reach other people for the Lord and use it for gain On the back of your outline, if you have an outline, if you don't have it, there's a chart. I did not write this This is from the Life Application Bible, popular Bible many 20 years ago And I've looked at this sometimes And I have it printed out so I can look at it And maybe it'll help you There's just some where to get help in the book of Psalms

When you feel afraid, alone, okay? When you're facing, you know, criticism, danger, or death When you want acceptance So I hope that maybe you can take this sometimes and read the Psalms that might help you through your trial, through your suffering Let's pray Father in Heaven, thank you for letting us look at this Psalm 44 And Father, I believe this Psalm, that Israel was defeated by some unknown military defeat And I believe it was not because they were sinning Not because they had broken their covenant But because you did something far beyond what they could understand

And Father, sometimes we Christians, we're loyal to you, Father We're attending church faithfully We're tithing We're serving We're using our gifts And yet, sometimes we suffer and we don't understand it Father, may this Psalm teach us that we may never understand till that great day when you call us home to be with you Or when the rapture comes But Father, help us to trust you Help us to endure the trial Help us to persevere And help us not to complain Help us to turn it to gain Help us to count the blessings that we have We ask this in Jesus' name Amen.