Daily Devotion: Prayer to God in Time of Trouble - Psalm 43

In my study bible, Psalm 43 is titled “Prayer to God in Time of Trouble.”  Our world, our country, our every day experience on this 22^nd day of March 2020, could rightly be called a time of trouble.  The Coronavirus has entered our time and brought trouble.  Much of our life, and movement, and vocation, and recreation have changed dramatically.  Schools are closed, churches are closed, businesses are closed, and many in our country and community are restricted to life within four walls.  And of course, we mourn the loss of life due to the Coronavirus.  What are we to do in a Time of Trouble such as this?

The answer to that question is multifaceted and complex.  With such multifaceted and complex questions we of course turn to scripture for answers.  One important answer to that question is that we must:

1. Pray to God, and

2. Preach to Ourselves. 

We see these two answers in Psalm 43.

Prayer to God in Time of Trouble

1 Vindicate me, O God,
And plead my cause against an ungodly nation;

Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!

2 For You are the God of my strength;

Why do You cast me off?

Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

3 Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.

4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God.

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul?

And why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God;

For I shall yet praise Him,

The help of my countenance and my God.

Praying to God in time of trouble and Preaching to ourselves in days of challenge are both theologically sound and practically important.  We must pray to a God Who is sovereign and all-powerful. And we must preach the hope of the gospel to ourselves when our world is preaching despair and confusion.

In Psalm 43, the psalmist is lamenting a world that seems set against him. Life has become miserable. 

1 Vindicate me, O God,
And plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!

And verse 2 demonstrates that the psalmist is conflicted.  He believes in God Who is his strength, and yet he feels far from God and is therefore filled with doom and despair.

2 For You are the God of my strength;
Why do You cast me off?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

How true this is for us.  We find ourselves stating our faith in God, but then for the next hour our minds race with thoughts of despair, unbelief, and worry.  Soon we are mired down in the 1,000 things that could go wrong in our lives.  This is a situation we would all agree that should not exist – But often it does.  We are masters of worry, that is not a compliment.

How should we respond?

 Prayer and Preaching.

Prayer

The Psalmist prays to be delivered.

1 Vindicate me, O God,
And plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!

We are to pray for God to deliver us, to rescue us, to save us.  Praying for God to deliver us, to rescue us, to save us is inclusive, and in our current time of trouble, it means deliver and rescue our world from the Coronavirus.  In any time of trouble, whether it is natural disaster, pandemic, war, economic crisis, it is right and worthy to take all of these situations to the Lord in prayer.

But the Psalmist goes beyond deliverance and rescue.  He speaks to God directly about the ultimate thing.  We need deliverance from negative things in our lives, but most importantly, we need to be led to God Himself.  The psalmist’s primary prayer in this psalm is to see more of Him, to feel more of Him, and to experience God as our exceeding joy no matter the circumstance.

3 Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.

4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God.

We live in a dark world of sin.  We need light.  We need the light of salvation. We need the light of God’s guidance.  We need our spiritual blindness taken away by the sovereign power of God.  We need to see.  And we need to see something very important, God’s Truth.  Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!  An avalanche of information, beliefs, and perspectives bombards us.  We need truth.  God’s Word, illuminated by His Spirit, gives us that truth.  That greatest Truth is that we are one with God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son.  We therefore have hope.  This world must always be put in perspective by the eternal hope we have in Jesus Christ.  The New Testament states this so wonderfully: Ephesians 1:17-18, ^“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,”

We need Spiritual Light to see Spiritual Truth so that we may see and understand the wonder, the beauty, and the glory of God in all things.

This light to see and truth to understand causes us in all situations to grasp the reality of our own sinfulness and causes us to approach the altar of God for daily forgiveness of sin.  

3 Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.

4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
The altar of God is where sins were atoned for, where sins were forgiven by the offering of blood shed from an innocent substitutionary animal.  This side of Calvary we know this points to Jesus Christ shedding His blood for the forgiveness of our sin.  Jesus Christ took our place; He died that we might live forever.  We must keep this truth before us always, especially in times of trouble.  God gives us light to see the truth that He provided salvation from sin and ever encouraging forgiveness.

All of that culminates in God as our Exceeding Joy.

4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God.

We must keep the main thing, the main thing.  The main thing, the most important thing, is that we have our sins forgiven, that we are children of God, which we are born again to New Life, through the forgiven of sins by Jesus Christ and Christ alone.  This should fill us with joy, great joy, exceeding joy.  God is our Exceeding Joy and that should fill us in this Time of Trouble.  This is an Exceeding Joy NOT dependent on circumstances, but dependent on God and God alone.  The ultimate joy in life is the joy of salvation and the joy of the God of our salvation in us and with us.

Let us sing that joy this day, in your home, with your spouse, with your children, with someone over the phone.

4 Then I will go to the altar of God,

To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God.

Let us praise God this day.  The God Who is our Exceeding Joy.  Sing your praises to God, your God.

Preaching

This attitude of praise and singing leads us to the final exhortation from God’s Word this day.  The psalmist speaks to his own soul.  He reiterates the earlier despair he had experienced, but quickly moves to proclaiming truth and praise.  In other words, the psalmist preaches to himself.  I know most all of you talk to yourselves.  Yes, I have even heard a few of you engage in that delightful pastime.  Good self-talk can be very helpful.  But here we move from talking to ourselves to Preaching to Ourselves.  You need to preach the gospel.  First preach the gospel to yourself.  Especially in Times of Trouble, preach the gospel to yourself.

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.

Preach the gospel to yourself.  Praise Him for the forgiveness of your sins, through which you are made a new creature in Christ and you are adopted into God’s family where you call upon God as “my God.”  Preach the gospel as revealed in scripture over and over again.

First Corinthians 15:1-8, “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.  After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.”

In these Times of Trouble,

let us Pray to God and Preach to Ourselves. 

May the Lord bless you this Lord’s Day.

In Christ’s Love,

Pastor Campbell