Know Where You Came From
first broadcast on November 10, 2006
Transcript
Paul David Tripp: It's only when you accept reality that you can truly become a person of hope. Hope is never found in denying reality. Hope is never found in minimizing how bad it actually is.
Kate Crowley: From Paul Tripp Ministries, this is Right Here, Right Now, connecting the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. Here, now, is Paul Tripp.
PDT: I was watching a movie a few years ago. It was a great movie. It had just this very interesting, twisting plot. It had such a colorful cast of characters. I loved the background music that was playing in scene after scene. I was watching this movie, and I was hooked. I thought that I understood it, but then all of a sudden, something shocking happened, and I knew I didn't understand what this movie was about at all.
I couldn’t wait for the film to be over so I could go back and watch it again.
Sometimes that's what reading the Bible is like. You think you get it; you think you understand; you think you know exactly what it’s talking about, and then you’ll hit a spot in the Bible, and you’ll think, “What in the world is this about?”
If someone asked you what the darkest, saddest passage in the Bible is, what would you answer? Have you ever been reading the Bible, and all of a sudden, you're shocked and embarrassed or confused by something that you're reading? What shocks you as you read God's Word? I want to look with you at one of the most shocking places in all of the Bible.
Music: “Everything is Broken”, words by Bob Dylan
Broken lines broken strings
Broken threads broken springs
Broken idols broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken.
KC: You are listening to Right Here, Right Now with Paul Tripp. Coming up, Paul will share more from Psalm 88 and Survival Skill #2, “Learn to Accept Reality.” Tell your friends to join Paul Tripp Ministries, Monday through Friday, at 11 A.M., right here on WFIL. The purpose of this program is to remind you every day that there really is help in Jesus Christ, right here, right now.
Later on, more details about an exciting new book that Paul has written entitled, Lost In The Middle. You can check it out on our website right now with paultrippministries.org, and while you're there, you'll also find many other resources that will be helpful to you. That's paultrippministries.org, and now, Right Here, Right Now continues with Paul Tripp.
PDT: Are you ever afraid of a friend or family member discovering a problem you are struggling with or a situation you’ve gotten yourself into? Perhaps you’re in debt, and you find it so embarrassing; or maybe you struggle with your thoughts, and you don't want anyone to know; or maybe you’re a parent, and one of your children is simply out of control; or maybe you even doubt God. Yet you’re afraid of what your Christian friends would think if they knew you struggled with believing in God. Be honest, is there some place in life where you're living in the hiding?
Did you know that one of the most comforting messages in all of the Bible is that, in all of our sin, in all of our weakness, in all of our failure, in all of our mistakes, in all of our self-imposed difficulty, in all of the places where you and I mess up, or act foolishly, or don't know what to do, in all of the moments where you and I struggle in private, glad that no one knows, we can rest assured that we do not have to hide from God? God will never respond to you and me in shock or disgust.
In fact, if the Bible does anything, the Bible welcomes me out of my self-imposed prison of fear and shame. The Bible welcomes me to step out of the darkness into the light and to face reality honestly and with hope. The message of the Bible is that we don't need to hide anymore, that there's a God whose grace is so big, and so large, and so awesome, and so faithful, that that grace is bigger and more powerful than anything we could ever face, than any of our brokenness and our failures.
And so as you read the Bible, you don't read stories of noble characters who always did the right thing. No, you actually read the stories of deeply flawed people who struggled with life just as we do. The pages of the Bible are stained with the reality of real life. The story of the Bible is messy and often confusing and sometimes even shocking, because the message of the Bible is meant to be spoken into the realities of a real world with real people and all the struggle and disappointment and darkness that that actually entails.
You see, I don't have to hide; I don't have to run; I don't have to shrink away in shame. The honesty of the Bible is a welcome for me to be that honest. And so, what I want to do with you today is take you to what I think is one of most shocking passages in the Bible and to ask the question, “Why is this passage in the Bible? Why is it there?”
Music: “Everything is Broken”, Words by Bob Dylan
Broken bottles broken plates
Broken switches broken gates
Broken dishes broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken.
Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties broken vows
Broken pipes broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken.
PDT: We have been thinking about, “Survival Skills for the Fallen World,” and the first skill was to go back to the beginning. You’ll only ever understand what you're dealing with now, when you look at it from the vantage point of what it was meant to be in the beginning. You need origins to understand the here and now.
The second skill is to accept reality. This dark passage, this shocking passage that I want to read to you is shocking because it forces you to face reality. It's Psalm 88, listen as I read:
O LORD, the God who saves me; day and night do I cry out before you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry! For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength; I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care. You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I called you, O LORD, every day; I spread my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness and destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? But I cry out to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth, I've been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long, they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. (Now hear the end of this Psalm.) You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.
Now why, why would God ever put this ugly, depressive, utterly hopeless Psalm in the Bible? This Psalm is like no other Psalm, because this Psalm doesn't end in a note of hope. This Psalm actually ends in deep, personal despair. What is it like to look around and say, “I've got a friend, and his name is darkness? Darkness is my closest friend.”
You see, this Psalm is actually an invitation to face reality in its darkest form because it’s only when you accept reality that you can truly become a person of hope. Hope is never found in denying reality, hope is never found in minimizing how bad it actually is. The fact of the matter is, that this darkest of all Psalms is in the Bible because it is, at once, a Psalm of tremendous hope. I'll say it this way, “I think this Psalm is hopeful precisely because it has no hope in it.”
You begin to understand this Psalm when you look at the title of the Psalm and the directions that are there. It's says, “A SONG, A PSALM OF THE SONS OF KORAH (For the Director of the Choir) TO THE CHOIRMASTER.” (ESV)
Now, who were the sons of Korah? The sons of Korah were the helpers of all the sacrifices and ceremonies at the tabernacle and the temple. And the sons of Korah would lead the people of Israel as they would walk their way to times of worship and sacrifice. And as they did that, the sons of Korah would lead them in singing songs--God authored hymns. And one of the songs that they were supposed to sing was Psalm 88. God actually wanted His followers to sing this dark Psalm.
Now this is not a Psalm that's made it on the top 10 list of contemporary Christian music. You know, “Darkness is my closest friend, darkness is my closest friend.” Why?...because, we tend not to want to look or consider the world from this vantage point.
What was God trying to do as He ordained this Psalm to be written and then to be sung as the children of Israel were going up to worship? Here's what God is doing. He's placing the harshest and darkest of human experiences right next to worship! Why is He doing that? He’s saying, “You don’t have to deny reality; you don’t have to clean yourself up; you don't have to paint your story with different colors in order to be acceptable to Me. You can come to Me exactly as you are with all of the fear, and all of the hopelessness, and all of the discouragement, and all of the despondency.”
You see, it's only when I realize that Psalm 88 exists in the Bible as a loving welcome to be as honest as I need to be about the realities in my life, it's only then that I begin to understand how hopeful I can be. Because I am in relationship with a God who will never turn His back in disgust. He will never get tired and walk away. He doesn't demand me to play games in order to achieve His acceptance. He welcomes me to be so deeply and personally honest that I have the courage to say to Him, “I don't know where you are God. I don't know what you're doing. I don't know what all of this means. I'm so lost, and I'm so confused that it feels like my closest friend in life is darkness.” You see, there is no human experience that is too dark and too shocking, too difficult or confusing, for God to wrap His arms of grace around. And so this dark, dark Psalm with no hope in it is in the Bible precisely to give us hope to tell us we can be this honest with God.
Music: “Gloria” by Red Rocks
This is Gloria Get up, up, all up When I try to sing this song I try to stand up but I can't find my feet I try, I try to speak up but only in you I'm complete Gloria in te domine Gloria exultate Gloria Gloria Oh, Lord, loosen my lips Loosen them When I try to sing this song I try to get in but I can't find the door The door is open, you're standing there, you let me in
Gloria in te domine Gloria exultate Oh, Lord, if I had anything, anything at all I'd give it to you I, well I'd give it to you
PDT: Maybe, right now, you're looking at your marriage, or maybe you're considering your life with your children, or your relationships to your neighbors, or places of silent or secret struggle. And maybe you're tempted to believe that honesty and hope can't exist together, and maybe because of that, you deny, you avoid, you seek to escape, you work real hard at denying reality, because you can't think that it could be possible for you to be very honest about what is in your life and be hopeful at the same time.
If there's a powerful message, if there's an encouraging message in the Word of God, it is this, that honesty and hope can exist together. That dishonesty is never a pathway to hope. It is the message that God's love is so huge and so magnificent, so far beyond my understanding, that there's nothing that I could ever bring to Him that would be too large for that love and that grace to embrace. You see, you know you're not facing reality when honesty and hope are not able to stand together in your life.
Think right now, where is your faith too small to allow you to look reality honestly in the face? Maybe you're a man, and you’re growingly absorbed in a world of lust. It’s beginning to eat you up, but you don't believe that you can be honest about that, and so you live your life in the hiding.
Maybe you're a young mother, and you’re growingly frustrated and angry. You're saying and doing things with your children that you shouldn’t say and you shouldn’t do, but you're convinced you can't be honest about that.
Maybe you're a worker, and you’ve actually cheated on your records to make yourself look good in the eyes of your boss, and it's become such a pattern, you don't know what to do about it. But you are actually persuaded you can't be honest about that. You see, the message of the Bible blows that away, because what the Bible does is it puts that darkness of the darkest of human experiences next to the light of hope and allows them to exist together because the arms of God are big enough and strong enough to wrap themselves around every human experience.
(Music Interlude)
PDT: You see what we've been talking about today is this welcome to honesty. Real hope of real change always begins with accepting reality. It always begins by a willingness to humbly face what is actually going on in my life. Isn’t it nice to know as you stand before God, you can stand before Him in complete honesty? Isn't it nice to know that God never looks down on you with disgust; that He’s never turned off or turned away by the reality of your struggles; that He is never embarrassed by your failure? Isn’t it wonderful to know that He not only welcomes you to be honest, but He commits Himself to be your helper, not just today, but forever?
You see, God looks at you, and He's not fooled. He knows you exactly as you are. He knows all of those embarrassing things in your life that you would want to hide. And rather than condemning you, rather than turning His back on you, He wraps arms of grace around you, and He works by that grace to change you at the core of who you are as a human being. And so, you can look at the darkness, and you can still have hope, because in that darkness, you are not alone. God is with you. He's for you. He accepts you, and He has everything that you need.
KC: God, the true light bringing hope in the midst of darkness. Thanks, Paul, for reminding us that we can have hope in Jesus Christ. And, Paul will continue his series, “Survival Skills for a Fallen World”, Monday.
Now, maybe you feel like you can't survive; you’re ready to give up. But, wait, there is hope. In his new book, Lost In The Middle, Paul Tripp tells us how moments of pain can also be moments of God's grace. That’s Lost In The Middle, available at our website, paultrippministries.org. That’s all one word, paultripp, spelled T-R-I-P-P, paultrippministries.org.
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If you’d like to hear Paul in person, he’ll be speaking at the “Hope for Broken Relationships” Conference, starting today, November 10 through Sunday, November 12, at the Valley Forge Convention Center. For more information, call 215-884-7676. Call right away, 215-884-7676.
On Monday, Paul reemphasizes Survival Skill #2: “Learn to Accept Reality” from Psalm 88, and his new series, “Survival Skills for a Fallen World.” Now, for Paul Tripp and all of us at Paul Tripp Ministries, I’m Kate Crowley, reminding you that, in Jesus Christ, there really is help, right here, right now.