The Psalms: Book 2 - Hope for a Future Saviour

24 Jun

Opening Prayer:

Lord God,

In those times when hope has disappeared, remind us that nothing lies beyond Your reach and nothing can separate us from Your grace.
Help us uncover the hope that You have guaranteed us in Jesus, even in the darkest of hours, for Your miracles are boundless and Your love is always with us.
We thank You for Your faithfulness, Your unfailing love, and the hope it brings.
In the name of Jesus, our hope,

Amen.

Key Scriptures:

For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah.

1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
    as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
    under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
    among the festive throng.

5 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.

6 My soul is downcast within me;
    therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
    the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
    in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
    have swept over me.

8 By day the Lord directs his love,
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 must I go about mourning,
    oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
    as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”

11 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.

Psalm 42

Sermon Summary

This week is week two of our series on the Book of Psalms. Below is a summary of this week’s sermon from Jo Robertson:

The Psalms are the songbook, the prayerbook of God’s people, containing prayers and cries from all sorts of different situations and circumstances. No matter where we are or how we are feeling, we can find something in the Psalms that expresses those same feelings and describes our experiences. Psalm 42 is no different.

Psalmists are honest. This psalm is full of sadness and despair. The psalmist is depressed and confused about life – and straight out says so. We can be honest with God in our prayers. We don’t need to say the right words or have our prayers all nice and politely and neatly thought out ahead of time. We don’t need to be calm when we pray – most psalms were not composed by people who were calm! They were angry or upset or distressed. But they were honest because they knew – as we need to know – that God was listening to them. He hears us, He hears our cries, He sees our pain. We matter to God no matter what state we’re in.

Psalmists remember. In this psalm the psalmist remembers past times of meeting and experiencing God. They remember times when "God was with me." We are also to remember when God was with us, to look back and remember those previous times when God seemed especially near. It is also good to remember that we are part of the larger family of God, a long history of God’s people in the world, and that we can lean into the stories and songs and prayers that speak of God’s past faithfulness.

Psalmists hope. In the middle of our pain, like the psalmist, we still hope. We hope that God will act again as He has in the past. The Israelites hoped for the coming of the Messiah, God’s anointed one, who would rescue them from oppression and injustice.

Yet when He did come, it was not in the way expected. Jesus came, not as a conquering King but as a servant King; a loving, kind, humble Saviour who laid down His life for us. He became a victim of the same violence He was standing against, but He rose again to show that God’s power is stronger than all these systems of violence, oppression and injustice. They do not have the final say: the sacrificial love of God does instead.

Love will reign. There is a better system that will ultimately triumph over all that is evil, destructive, and corrupt. There is hope, and that hope lies in Jesus. Our world needs us to be people of hope, people who bring hope to the world by embodying and sharing the love of Jesus with others.

Questions to Consider:

What do you hope for? What are you longing for God to do?
What questions do you have for God?
How are you openly honest with God? What helps you to remember to be honest with Him?
Does the psalmist resolve their feelings of disappointment? if so, how?
How easy or hard do you find it to praise God in times of pain and difficulty? Why?
How does looking back help us in our tough times? What do we learn - or re-learn - in these times?
Why is looking forward important? What does this remind us about God?
How is Jesus our hope both now and for the future? Where do you long to see God move in our world?
“These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God” (verse 4). What specific things do you remember in tough times? How do they help you?

Practice to Consider:

Journaling
Write a prayer or journal entry expressing your soul’s current state, following the Psalmist’s pattern:
- Honest Emotion: Name your emotional or spiritual struggles.
- Remembrance: Recall a time when you felt close to God.
- Hope: End with a declaration of hope or trust in God, even if faint.
Example Prompt:

“Today, my soul feels ____. I long for Your presence like ____. Remind me of Your faithfulness in ____. I will yet praise You…”

Prayer Prompts:

Pray for hope in a world, desperately in need of it.

Additional Resources:

Find the full sermon recording here
For a printable version of this guide click here
If you are interested in going deeper the bible project have a helpful guide to the book of Psalms, you can find it here

Hayley Lotter