Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and as you might know, this first week of Advent is represented by the hope candle. If you are unfamiliar with Advent, this is the name given to the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day. Advent, which simply means arrival, is a time of preparing for the arrival of Christmas, which of course, is the celebration of the birth of Jesus.
I like Advent because I enjoy taking time each year to intentionally reflect on the events surrounding Jesus’ birth. It’s easy to get caught up in the material trappings of American Christmas, and I’ve found that taking part in Advent helps keep the focus on what Christmas is really all about. Part of this means that we think about the people who were alive at the time of Jesus’ birth, and try to get into their mindset, so we can better understand the Bible’s narrative of Jesus’ birth.
During the time of Jesus’ birth, people were actively looking for the promised Messiah. They knew that a savior, the Messiah, was going to come. They were feeling burdened by the rule of the Romans, and they wanted the Messiah to arrive and get rid of the Roman government and establish His kingdom, because the government was harsh and cruel.
To see an example of this cruelty, all we need to do is read the Christmas story. Matthew 2:1-2 starts off by saying, “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’” Herod gets worried the Messiah has been born, so he tries to trick the wise men into leading him to Jesus, but the wise men are warned not to return to Herod, and skipping ahead to Matthew 2:16, it tells us, “Then Herod, when he realized that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage. He gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, in keeping with the time he had learned from the wise men.” This horrible event is just one small picture of the cruelty of the Roman government. We can see why the people wanted the Messiah to come and rescue them. They were anxiously looking and waiting for their savior to arrive, because they needed help from their trouble.
Just the other day, in my morning prayer time, I was speaking to the Lord about something that was troubling me, because something that I thought would happen had not happened yet. I was beginning to wonder if it might never happen. As I was thinking about all this in my quiet time with the Lord, I resolved that it was okay if it never happened, but then I found myself telling myself, “Why don’t you wait and see? Wait and see what the Lord will do. Wait on the Lord.” And as I told myself that, a Bible verse came to mind, which is Psalm 42:11, which says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
I had told myself to wait on the Lord, but the Lord showed me through that Bible verse that really, what I needed was hope. Rather than just waiting to see what happens, I should have hope in Him as I wait. Waiting and hope go hand in hand, don’t they? For if we wait expectantly for something to happen, then we are hoping. If we don’t have hope, then we’ve given up waiting, for hope leaves when disappointment arrives. If I have hope,that means there is still a possibility of something happening. Even if it’s a slim chance, there is still hope that it’s possible. Whereas, if it’s over and there is no possibility of something happening, then hope has gone. So, hope is found in the waiting; in the time when we don’t know what will happen or how things will turn out. Some people respond to the time of waiting with fear and anxiety. They expect the worst and so they don’t have hope; they have dread. Others deal with waiting by trying to escape it. Distracting their minds, they hope they can keep too busy to notice the time still ticking by.
The people in Jesus’ day, they were waiting, and they had hope. Then, at the arrival of John the Baptist, we see the first mention of this hope growing. Luke 3:15 says, “Now the people were waiting expectantly, and all of them were questioning in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah.” In the Good News Translation, this verse begins by saying, “People’s hopes began to rise,” and I really like how that is worded, for it shows us the first glimpse of the people’s hope growing.
I want us to look closer at what it means to hope in the Lord as we wait for Him, so let’s look at the rest of Psalm 42. If we read through this psalm, we see that the psalmist is wanting the same thing I wanted, and the same thing the people who were waiting for the Messiah wanted, and what we all ultimately want: we all want the Lord to arrive and rescue us from whatever troubles us. Let’s read it.
Psalm 42 (ESV)
To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah.
1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night,while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul:how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of Godwith glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation 6 and my God.
My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember youfrom the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.7 Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls;all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.8 By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.9 I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me?Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”10 As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me,while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
Before we get into the message of this psalm, I want to mention a note about its author. Barnes’ Notes on the Bible says, “It is not absolutely certain who composed this psalm. If it was written by David, as seems most probable, it was with some reference to the ‘sons of Korah;’ that is, to those who presided over the music of the sanctuary.” Until researching this psalm, I had always assumed it was written by David; it seems like his writing to me. But since it doesn’t expressly say it was him, I will simply refer to the author of it as the “psalmist.”
Just like this psalmist told himself to hope in the Lord, and like I did in my morning prayer time, oftentimes we need to remind ourselves to hope in God. In the daily Bible my family and I are reading this year, it includes a daily devotional from Selwyn Hughes. He wrote about doing this very thing and he quotes from Dr. Martyn Llyod-Jones who, in his book Spiritual Depression said, “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So, he stands up and says, ‘Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.’”
I’ve been thinking a lot about what he wrote, and I really agree with him. I think, too, that it’s possible for us to have words and encouragement in plenty for other people when they are waiting for the Lord to arrive in an area of their lives, but in our own lives we just hear all the worries and doubts that our minds bring up to us. Instead of listening to all the doubt and fear, what if we spoke words of encouragement to ourselves instead?
I want to issue a caveat to this idea of speaking to ourselves: this only works if you speak gently and encouraging to yourself. Maybe some of you reading this won’t relate to this, but in my own experiences, I tend to be harsh on myself when I talk to myself. I have said things to myself that I would never say to anyone else. The Lord is working on me, getting me to get rid of this habit, so please note, the Psalmist didn’t say, “you idiot, why don’t you just trust the Lord?” Although, to be fair, sometimes we probably deserve harsh correction, wouldn’t you agree? But the psalmist, he spoke kindly to himself, and so should we.
Let’s look at how this psalm begins. He expresses his heart. Verses 1&2 say, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” The psalmist is longing for God in the same way someone who is parched and thirsty longs for water. He’s thirsting for God’s presence, and so he wants to go and “appear before God” in the temple sanctuary.
Why does he want to meet with God? In verse 3, he tells us, “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” It’s clear that something is troubling him for he is literally weeping. He is distraught to the point that he is not eating. And people who don’t have faith in God are taunting him.
As we learn later in the psalm, he hasn’t been able to lead the people in the procession to the sanctuary because he is far from home, and he really wants to be able to do this. He says in verse 4, “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.”
Despite not being able to do this at this moment, he doesn’t give in and surrender to his sorrow and depression. He encourages himself by telling himself to hope. In verses 5-6, he says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.”
He tells himself to have hope because, even though he’s far away from home and cannot go into the sanctuary and praise God, he’s hopeful that in the future he will be able to again. But he is also honest with how he’s feeling at this moment. He’s feeling cast down. His heart is heavy. He’s being honest with God and telling Him how he really feels. There is a balance here that we would do well to imitate. We should be honest with God and express our sorrow and worry to Him, yet at the same time, we should not surrender to the despair. We should not abandon our hope in God and His ability to help us. We should not give up on Him while we wait for His arrival to help us.
The next verses are poetic. He says in verses 7-8, “Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”
I take this to mean that deep water calls to more deep water to crash over him, threatening to drown him. In other words, affliction seems to bring more affliction, adding to his trouble. But despite that, “the Lord commands his steadfast love,” meaning the Lord has the ultimate say, and He is with him, giving him a song in the night which becomes his prayer.
He has spoken hope, even in the middle of this trouble. And now he speaks directly to God. He says in verse 9, “I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?’”
The people who were alive when Jesus was born, do you think they were asking this question, too? Has God forgotten us? Has He forgotten to send us the Messiah? This is the real question of our soul, isn’t it? Has God forgotten me? Isn’t this our greatest fear? What if God forgets about me? What if He doesn’t have time for me? What if He isn’t listening to my prayer or answering me? Is there anything worse than being cut off from the living God? No, there isn’t anything worse. For this is what hell will be. Those in hell are cut off from God. I think that’s why it is rightfully such a deep fear for all of us.
But God has not forgotten us. Isaiah 49:15 promises us, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” Unlike people, the Lord will never forget us. But the devil uses this fear to cause us to doubt God’s love for us. The devil taunts us, trying to get us to lose our hope in God.
The psalmist says the same thing in verse 10. He says, “As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” Sometimes the adversary is the devil, or another person, or even our own self. Where is your God? Why hasn’t He come through yet? How long have I been waiting?
To combat these adversaries, we should do what the psalmist does. Twice, this psalm tells us the solution we are looking for. In verse 5 and, now again in 11, he says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
This is the profoundly simply solution to all our troubles: hope in God. When we are overwhelmed and tired of waiting, we should speak to ourselves and remind ourselves to shake off the turmoil and anxiety and hope in God. The best way to accomplish this is also shown to us in that same verse. Instead of worrying, we should praise the Lord.
It’s not easy to praise the Lord when we are waiting for His help, but this is exactly what is needed for our soul. As we praise the Lord, He responds by filling our hearts with hope and faith. We will find as we praise Him that He has not left us nor abandoned us: He is right there with us.
The psalmist didn’t have the Holy Spirit living inside of him, but we do! The people who were waiting for the Messiah to arrive, they were still in that spiritual darkness that hadn’t been punctured by the light of Jesus’ birth. We are the blessed ones who are on this side of Jesus’ arrival. As surely as we know that the Messiah has already come and answered our prayers for salvation, we should rejoice in the fact that Jesus will eventually arrive in our lives to help us in whatever trouble we face today. He will be faithful to arrive, and He will show up at exactly the right time.
This is what happened when the Messiah arrived. Galatians 4:4-5 says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” God sent Jesus at exactly the right time to come and save the world. So, too, will Jesus return at exactly the right time. The reason Jesus is waiting to return is because He wants all people to hear the Gospel message. It says in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” He is waiting for the right time. So, too, will Jesus arrive to help us with all the troubles we face. He will answer the cries of our heart and show up to help us at exactly the right time. All we must do is wait, expectingly, full of hope, for His arrival. Let us not abandon hope. Let us remind ourselves and each other to hope in the Lord. His time is always perfect.
As we wait for Christmas Day to arrive, let us be reminded of the perfect timing of the Lord. He arrived as Messiah at exactly the right time, and He will arrive to help us in our lives at exactly the right time. Do not give up hope. Wait for the Lord. He is faithful to help us because He loves us. When the doubts and worry creep into your mind, tell yourself, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
Pray: Heavenly Father, we thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus, to earth as a little baby precisely at the right time. Help us wait patiently for Your help in our lives, holding on to hope as we wait for You. As this Christmas season begins, please help us keep our focus on You as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, our Messiah, Savior, and friend. In His name we pray, amen.
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