Loneliness
Download MP3Good morning. If you guys are new around Redeemer, I have good news for you, so am I. If you need a reminder, my name is Joel Busby, and I'm the one of the newest additions to our pastoral team here at Redeemer. My title here is that of planting pastor. I don't know if you knew you had a planting pastor, but you do.
Speaker 1:Which is a fancy way of saying that that lord willing, a group of us will be gathered to go across town to see a new congregation formed, hopefully at the beginning of next year. And I appreciate your prayers in that, but in the meantime, I'm here with you, and it's been such a joy. And my wife and I are thankful for the opportunity to have been here at Redeemer. It's a good time to also let you know that I'm battling a little bit of a cold this week, so if I start coughing uncontrollably, there are medical professionals very close, and Jeff Hine is right here in case he has to step in. So that was supposed to be a joke.
Speaker 1:Would you guys turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 22, please? Psalm 22. How's your soul? And that's the question we've been asking together all summer long. And we're working our way through a summer sermon series in the Psalms that we're calling the anatomy of the soul.
Speaker 1:It's been our conviction this summer that all of our life is to be lived before God's presence. And that all the things that a person can think, and feel, and experience is brought into expression before God in the Psalms. The Psalms are the text that give us the words and help us know how to do that, how to bring all of who we are before all of who God is. So this morning we're going to look at Psalm 22, kind of wrap up this sermon series. Joel Brooks will be back next week to preach Psalm 119.
Speaker 1:So we're just looking forward to that. But here's Psalm 22, I'm gonna read the first 21 verses. Listen to these words carefully. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?
Speaker 1:Oh, my God. I cry by day, but you do not answer. And by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you, our fathers trusted.
Speaker 1:They trusted and you delivered them. To you, they cried and were rescued. In you, they trusted and were not put to shame. But I'm a worm and not a man. Scorned by mankind and despised by the people, all who see me mock me.
Speaker 1:They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him for he delights in him.
Speaker 1:Yet you are he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breast. On you was I cast from birth, and from my mother's womb, you have been my god. Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help. Many bulls encompass me.
Speaker 1:Strong bulls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast.
Speaker 1:My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet.
Speaker 1:I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing, they cast lots. But you, oh lord, do not be far off. Oh you, my help, come quickly to my aid.
Speaker 1:Deliver my soul from the sword, my life, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion. Let's pray together. Lord, our prayer is that now in this moment, you would do what only you can do, that you take the words in your word. You take the words that I've prepared.
Speaker 1:Lord, you'd use them to do your shaping work in our hearts and in our lives. Lord, we ask that you would do this, that you accomplish this by the power of your spirit even now. Pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. So I came across an article recently, a newspaper article that I actually can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1:It's an article from the London Evening Standard. If you've been to London, this is the afternoon newspaper they hand you when you're trying to get on the tube. And here's what the headline read. Italian police cook pasta for lonely elderly couple after neighbors heard them crying. Here's the lead sentence.
Speaker 1:Kindly police officers came to the aid of an elderly Italian couple after neighbors called emergency services when they were heard crying in their their apartment because they were so lonely. Officers rushed into the flat in this area of Rome after nearby residents heard shouting and crying coming from the inside. There, they found 84 year old Jolay and her 94 year old husband, Michel. The couple said they had not been victims of any crime but were overcome by emotion after watching sad stories on the news. The pair, who'd been married for 70 years, said that they had not had visitors for a long time and were very lonely.
Speaker 1:While they were waiting for an ambulance to arrive to check the couple over, the officers prepared a hot meal. Then they sat down to have a chat with the elderly couple while they ate spaghetti with butter and Parmesan that they had prepared. The police force said on its Facebook page, especially when the city empties and neighbors are away on holiday, sometimes loneliness dissolves into tears. It can happen at this time that someone screams so loud from despair that eventually someone calls the state police. There is not a crime.
Speaker 1:Jolay and Michel are not victims of scams, and no thief entered the house, and there is no one to save. This time, for the officers, there was the much more daunting task, 2 lonely souls who needed reassuring. 2 lonely souls that needed reassuring. You and I live in a culture of lonely souls who need reassuring. Loneliness is an epidemic in our society.
Speaker 1:Trust me. I've been reading about it on the Internet for 3 weeks. In fact, many researchers are beginning to say that it is the public health crisis of the future. But see, loneliness is a strange thing. It has almost nothing to do with being proximate to people.
Speaker 1:We all know the feeling of being in a room full of people, but feeling totally lonely. See, loneliness is different. It's the absence of intimacy of human connection, even though there may be people everywhere. And it's considered to be the public health crisis of the future because it increases the risk of a heart attack and stroke by almost 30%. Increases stress and anxiety, it weakens the immune system.
Speaker 1:Loneliness is a leading cause of depression. Just 2 weeks ago, I had an opportunity to spend some time with some pastors in London and they reported that loneliness in this busy city life is actually one of the pastoral care issues in their ministries. They told us of the story of a random young woman who would ride an escalator in an office tower all day long, with the hope of a random conversation with somebody, with anyone. And the great irony is that you and I also live in a culture that boasts of our connectivity. But see, these are pseudo connections.
Speaker 1:In fact, studies show that social media usage actually increases loneliness. It exacerbates the problem. It makes it worse. There's a good chance that many in this room know exactly what I'm talking about. And as interesting as it would be to explore the, kind of, psychological and sociological phenomenon of loneliness in the late modern world, and to go into these things in-depth, our goal is actually to explore Psalm 22.
Speaker 1:In Psalm 22, if you heard me read it, talks about loneliness. It takes the theme of loneliness as its point of departure, but it's a very particular kind of loneliness. It's a unique form of loneliness. It's an acute form of loneliness. It's a kind of loneliness that emerges not just from being alone, but from having been abandoned.
Speaker 1:Odds are that there's maybe a few in this room that know exactly what I'm talking about. And it's such an intense form of abandonment that the psalmist uses a very strong word, the word, forsaken. It's one thing to be alone, it's another thing to be abandoned, but it's a whole another thing to be forsaken. And to ratchet the intensity up one more notch, the psalmist feels this intense feeling of being alone and abandoned and forsaken, but he feels all that from God, from the Lord himself. See, that's the real problem here.
Speaker 1:There may be a few of you in the room that know exactly what I'm talking about. Lonely souls who need reassuring. What we've seen all summer long, and I hope you see this morning, is that our Psalm this morning gives us language. It gives words. It gives us expression to what we felt, what we're feeling, or what we might feel in the future.
Speaker 1:So let's take a look. Psalm 22. First, you need to know that Psalm 22 is a classic Psalm of Lament. And there's a movement in modern Psalm scholarship to divide the Psalms according to genre. Okay?
Speaker 1:In this line of thinking, certain Psalms are praise Psalms, certain Psalms are Thanksgiving Psalms, certain Psalms are wisdom Psalms, certain Psalms are royal Psalms. And then there's the Laments. These are Psalms that express frustration, bitterness, fear, confusion, anger, doubt, loneliness, depression. And these Psalms take those feelings, and they bring them into expression before God. And in this scheme, this genre scheme, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Check this out. Proportionally speaking, more psalms are psalms of lament than any other kind. Almost 40% of the psalms are psalms of lament. Now, that should tell us that the greeting card style, happy clappy spirituality that we sometimes assume we should be experiencing, might not be the true authentic spirituality of the life of faith, according to the Psalms and the rest of the Bible for that matter. No.
Speaker 1:The life of faith is much harder and better than that. And I really want us to listen carefully to the words of the psalmist here, and see if we can relate. C. S. Lewis was famous for saying one time that true friendship is born when we hear someone say something that we were thinking, but we thought we were the only ones who thought it.
Speaker 1:And if that's true, then then the psalmist here it's the psalmist David, by the way, is our friend. And and the psalmist will go back and forth here, oscillating between what seems to be the case in his life, what feels to be true, versus what he's struggling to believe is really true. And it's kind of a powerful back and forth. Here's how it goes, verses 1 and 2. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Speaker 1:The Psalms are brilliant on a literary level, and the irony here is palpable. My God, my God. What's so strange is that the psalmist feels forsaken, but he feels forsaken from the one he considers to be his God. My God. My God.
Speaker 1:Why have you forsaken me? Forsaken is an emphatic word, it's a powerful word. Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? The the Psalmist feels like the Lord's presence is actually withdrawn from him. He has these round the clock prayers that he's offering up before God and all he gets is silence.
Speaker 1:He's got this sleepless night prayers that he's offering up before God and he's getting nothing. We get the sense that the psalmist will take anything over nothing, but nothing's all he hears. My god, I cry by day. You do not answer him by night. I find no rest.
Speaker 1:The distress here is emphatic. But on this end, verse 3, yet you are holy. You're enthroned on the praises of Israel. The psalmist is struggling, but but I I feel like that, but but I know you're holy. The idea of the Lord's holiness, the idea that God is distinct and unique, completely different than anyone else.
Speaker 1:See see, the Psalms will always be proud of the fact that the Lord is holy. He's not like the other gods who are aloof and unconcerned. You're holy, so I know you're different. I know you're attuned to my cries. You're enthroned in the praises of Israel.
Speaker 1:In other words, we've got other Psalms that speak of great rejoicing and praise for the things that you've done. He goes on to say in verse 4, in you our fathers trusted. They trusted and you delivered. To you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame.
Speaker 1:He's talking about the Lord's track record, his historic faithfulness to his people corporately for all of history. But it only makes the problem worse for the psalmist. If you've done that all those times for all those people, for the fathers, if they trusted you and were delivered, then why am I not feeling that? How come I can't get in on some of that deliverance that they've sung about? Again, he feels in verse 6, but I'm a worm, and I'm not a man.
Speaker 1:I'm scorned by mankind, and I'm despised by people. He doesn't even feel human. And rightfully so. See, the way the Bible's gonna understand what it means to be human, what it means to be human, according to the Bible, is to be living in relation to God, in the blessing of God, in relational connection to God. And he's feeling none of that.
Speaker 1:He doesn't feel human. He's a worm. He's not a man. And look at the strong words, scorned, despised. He's being mocked.
Speaker 1:We get a taste in verses 6, 7, and 8 that he's got enemies, and they're trash talking, sarcastic enemies. Listen to what they say. He who trusts in the Lord, let him deliver him. Let him rescue him. For he delights in him.
Speaker 1:He says, everyone mocks him. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. They mock him saying, oh, this is the guy who trusts in the Lord. Let this Lord save him.
Speaker 1:This is what feels to be the case for the psalmist. But then, over here, he's trying to remind himself of what seems to be true. Verse 9. Yet you are he who took me from the mother's womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breast.
Speaker 1:On you I was cast from our birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my god. Here he's appealing to, sort of, the historic faithfulness personally. His whole life, the Lord has been there, has guarded him, has watched over him. And if that's true, then why? Why is he not feeling it now?
Speaker 1:It only exacerbates the problem. And this idea of of in you the father's trusted and and I've trusted you my whole life, I can't help but think of grandmother's stories. You know, our grandmothers always have these stories of God's great faithfulness to them. And as a youngest church, k, as a youngest church, we miss out on a lot of those stories often. The great stories of God's faithfulness to his people, but the problem here is the psalmist has seen that.
Speaker 1:He's heard that. He even sees it in his own life, historically, but he is not feeling it right now. He's not feeling it right now. He's not experiencing right now. It doesn't seem to be the case.
Speaker 1:Listen to how much darker and and much more of a struggle it becomes. Verse 12. Many bulls encompass me. Strong bulls of Bashan surround me. This area was known for its its breeding of bulls, these very strong bulls.
Speaker 1:And the psalmist uses a picture of these enemies, these dangerous enemies surrounding and closing upon them. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. The psalmist feels like he's going to be eaten, literally. Verse 14, I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint.
Speaker 1:My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like the potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs encompass me.
Speaker 1:In the ancient world, the dogs were kind of the symbol that that game was over. In our movies and our TV shows, when the vulture circle, we know it's kind of done. In their world, when the dogs come around, we're done here. They're surrounding them, they're all over them. Listen to what happens back of verse 16.
Speaker 1:They've pierced my hands and their feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. The idea of being able to count all the bones means that he's emaciated from starvation where his bones can be pointed out. He's this shriveled up struggling person.
Speaker 1:They divide his garments, humiliation. They cast lots for his clothing, shame, humiliation. But he continues to crowd, but you, oh Lord, do not be far off. Oh, you my help come quickly to my aid. He's still calling out for the Lord's deliverance.
Speaker 1:The psalmist here feels like he's in this complete desperate and dark and alone and forsaken place. And what are we gonna do with this language of the enemies? I think it's hard for us sometimes. Is he talking about literal enemies? Is he talking about figurative or metaphorical enemies?
Speaker 1:I think the answer is yes. Both. In you and I's world, we don't necessarily think about having a whole lot of literal enemies. Now some of us might. But if we were reading this text in other parts of the world, it's so absolutely, literally real for the people of God in other places.
Speaker 1:Terrible place. One scholar said that his situation is lamentable. His situation is worthy of crying out in despair. But because the Lord has withdrawn His presence, it's not just lamentable, it is unbearable. It's unbearable.
Speaker 1:The humiliation, the shame, the enemies, and on top of all of it, hearing nothing from the Lord. As I have spent time in this passage over the last couple weeks, at this point, after reading it and thinking on it, and reading it again, and studying the images and metaphor, I just wanna scream and I wanna shout, and I wanna say something like, okay, Lord. Then what gives? When will you actually answer? Are you really gonna leave him there to sit like that?
Speaker 1:Or when are you gonna do something from for him? I mean, come on. Are you gonna leave him? Are you gonna leave your people in this God forsaken place forever? When are you gonna do something?
Speaker 1:He's actually not gonna leave him in godforsaken place forever. Listen to these words from Matthew chapter 27 verse 33. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. Listen to verse 35. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.
Speaker 1:Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him which read, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Just listen to this. Then 2 robbers were crucified with him, 1 on the right and 1 on the left. And those who passed by him derided him, wagging their heads and saying, you who destroy the temple and rebuild it in 3 days, save yourself.
Speaker 1:If you are the son of God, come down from the cross. So also the chief priest with the scribes and elders mocked him saying, he saved others and he cannot save himself. He's the king of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God.
Speaker 1:Let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, I am the son of God. Verse 44, and the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him reviled him in the same way. Now, from the 6th hour, there was darkness all over the land until the 9th hour. And about the 9th hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Speaker 1:And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah. But the others said, wait. Let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. What does this mean?
Speaker 1:In a word, everything. Everything. And it's something that I hope you've heard from us all summer long, and it goes like this. We've seen all summer long that the lord is king, that he is sovereign over our experiences, that he knows in the sense of nothing ever escaping his watch. And for that, we praise him.
Speaker 1:What we've also seen this summer is that the Lord just doesn't know in the information, sovereign, kingly sense, but that he knows in the sense that he knows what it's like to be you, that he has embodied every part of the human experience fully, that he has felt our thoughts, he's acquainted with our grief, and that he's our sympathetic high priest able to sympathize with us, the book of Hebrews tells us, in all our weaknesses. Our Jesus on the cross has the prayers of Psalm 22 hidden in his heart and on his lips on the cross. So he knows. He knows experientially, and all that is fine and good and glorious and helpful. But for real, when is he going to do something to actually act?
Speaker 1:Well, he has. My friends, he has. There's a cross that's a shadow over all of our journeys through our human experiences. Jesus, to to connect it to Psalm 22, he endured the insults and the shame and the humiliation and the mocking. The Bible tells us so that our shame could actually be removed.
Speaker 1:When the evil doers surrounded him, beating him and whipping him, the Bible will teach us that by his stripes we can be healed. That he experienced and felt the sting of evil and death and sin. Why? The Bible teaches it so that he could defeat it, to the point where Paul in 1st Corinthians can talk his own kind of trash and say, oh death, where is your stink? As so often has been said before, he experiences feeling alone and abandoned and forsaken in a Psalm 22 way, so that you and I would never have to be.
Speaker 1:So much so that he can even promise that I'll never leave you or forsake you. If you were to read Psalm 22, you would find that the rest of the Psalm is a catalog of blessing. David apparently experienced some sort of deliverance and the rest of the Psalm actually is a great Psalm of celebration. We find out that the Lord eventually answers, that ultimate abandonment is actually not the case. We find that God's kingship would one day extend to all the nations.
Speaker 1:There would be this great rescue that happened universally for God and for God's people. And generations will one day come to know the blessings to the end that God would be glorified and treasured above all things. In other words, our Jesus experience the front half of Psalm 22, so that you and I can rest on the promises of the second half. And listen to me, and look at me. This is objectively true and accomplished for you.
Speaker 1:Here's the catch. Whether it actually feels like it or not, he actually won these blessings. I heard a pastor say one time, it is a finished atonement that you are invited to share in. The great redemption is actually complete. If you notice throughout this sermon, I was careful to use words like, it seems, or the psalmist feels.
Speaker 1:See, what Psalm 22 teaches us, and what the Christian faith will remind us again, over and over again, is that things are not always what they seem. And that the way it feels is decidedly sometimes not the way it actually is. So please don't hear me say, so just suck it up and believe harder. No. What I'm trying to say is that such a work has accomplished been accomplished objectively for you.
Speaker 1:So use the Psalms to process these feelings of the human experience before the Lord's presence, but follow the Psalms logic to our Lord and King who is risen, ruling over all things, knows what it like it's like to be us and having one great accomplishments for us. This will not make your situation easier. You and I will still walk through things that are lamentable, but they can be bearable. And there's a big difference. There's a big difference.
Speaker 1:Jesus' road was a road that went to the cross. Our roads will go there as well. Through many dangers and toils and snares, we will go. We will walk through lamentable things, but they will be bearable. You need to hear this this morning.
Speaker 1:You have to believe it, especially when it's not immediately apparent. You have to learn to continue until there's relief, and whether that relief comes in this life or the next. Revelation tells us that we will see his face. We're never finally and fully abandoned if we're gonna see his face. We are called, as a congregation, as a body, as a family, to cling tightly to these promises, and to hold on together, come what may.
Speaker 1:Lonely souls who need reassuring, be assured there is no other grounds of assurance. The objective work of Jesus on your behalf is quite literally and gloriously all we've got. Lonely souls who need reassurance, you've come to the right place. Drink it deep. Grip it tight.
Speaker 1:Hold fast. Let's pray together. Lord, we ask that your spirit would do the work of applying these words, lord, in the exact right ways that we need them. Lord, we thank you that you are king over all things, that you know that you sovereignly guide the world that you've made. You love the creatures that you've made.
Speaker 1:Lord, we thank you that you've done even better, that you have entered into our situation to feel the things that we feel. To experience the things that we experience. Lord, that the anatomy of your soul look very similar to the anatomy of ours. Lord, you walk through it. You know.
Speaker 1:You know. Lord, we thank you that you have done, That you have walked through Psalm 22. And you brought it to its logical fulfillment and conclusion that this work has been accomplished for us, that things are not always as they seem. Lord, may it teach us actually to lament in all the right ways. May it teach us that we are free to express these things before you.
Speaker 1:Lord, but we have a foundation, a rock on which we can stand, which is the work that you've done on our behalf. Thank you that you have not left us alone fully and finally, that one day we'll actually see your face. These are big promises, lord. And we give it just a few minutes to settle into our hearts in silence now. Shape us, Lord.
Speaker 1:Pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our lord. Abandoned, forsaken for us. It's in His name we pray. Amen.
