Video of Vespers is here. The sermon begins around the 18:00 mark.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the things we can be sure of in this life is that trouble will come to us. Trouble is a Biblical word. So is affliction. What do we do when we face troubles of various kinds? What is your response to affliction? Obviously, there are many human responses to trouble and difficulty. Anger, bitterness, fear, retaliation, blame. Some of those responses are sinful, and some of them are simply the responses of those who face things over which they have no control. We are all human, and we are all sinners, so we often have those responses as well. But more specifically, what is the response of the Christian, of the one who believes God when He speaks, who has spoken in His Son, Jesus?

One of the responses of Christians throughout history is something called theodicy. It literally means a defense, or a justification, of God. You’ve heard people use theodicies, even if you’ve never heard the word itself. Maybe you’ve used them. They are used when bad things happen, when evil is in the world, when tragedy strikes. It usually goes something like this: people ask, where is God in this bad thing? Why didn’t God prevent it? Why doesn’t He stop it? What is He doing about it? And the theodicy follows: well, God didn’t have anything to do with it. It was people, or it was a natural disaster. Or, it might be: well, God is still righteous, because the people to whom this bad thing happened are bad themselves. So God is justified in what happens: He didn’t cause it, or if He did, He was right to cause it. There are a thousand variations, and you’ve probably heard many of them.

But maybe we should ask the question: does God need to be justified, or defended? And does He need to be justified or defended by us? If you think that He does, you might want to read the responses of Job’s friends to Job’s suffering. Spoiler: except for Elihu, they’re doing theodicies, and they’re not the good guys. God doesn’t need us to justify His ways, and more often than not, we’re the ones who undermine His ways. We neither uphold His Law, nor do we extend His forgiveness and love to those who are in need of it. Part of the reason we feel the need to do theodicy is because we, just like those asking the questions, have trouble seeing how God is acting, or that He is acting. We think that God ought to be acting in a certain sort of way, and He is not. So we set ourselves up as His defense attorneys. So that’s one response: we could try to defend God, as if He can’t speak for Himself—as if He hasn’t spoken for Himself.

But there is another response, and it is the faithful response, despite our discomfort. That is to name our sadness, our trouble, our anger, our helplessness, and to do it to God. The atheist talks about God in the midst of trouble and affliction and evil; the believer talks to God. In Psalm 22, David is a believer. So he talks to God, and he starts with familiar words: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Why have You abandoned me? Why don’t you speak to me? Why is there no answer? David affirms that God is holy and that his ancestors called on God and were answered. God saved them. But now David is surrounded by enemies, and they know that God is not delivering him. They say things like, “He trusts in Yahweh. Let [Yahweh] deliver him! Let [Yahweh] rescue him, since he delights in [Yahweh]!” David says, You have been my God since birth. But here is trouble all around, and if you do not save me, God, there is no one else. Do not be far away from me.

The believer is not afraid to speak this way to God, because this God is his God. You don’t talk this way to God if you’re afraid that He might not be your God. Affliction and trouble and sin surround us, and we have contributed our fair share by our own sin and stupid decisions. We are helpless and we have no control over what is happening. Where is God? Where are You, God? When will You act? When will You hear and answer?

Where we started praying the psalm tonight, in verse 23, there is an abrupt shift from David’s cry for help to praising God for help that He has granted. Except, if David is in the midst of the affliction, it probably wasn’t in the middle of the psalm that God helped him. Instead, David has such confidence in Yahweh that he can pray as if God has already acted, because God’s salvation is that certain. The prophets often do this, where they speak in the past tense about things that are still to come. God will not fail; He is faithful. He will do what He said, even if death comes first.

This praise is what the afflicted one gives to God in the midst of the great congregation of God’s people. All the other believers in Yahweh gather to celebrate God’s deliverance of His afflicted one. All those who fear Yahweh, all those who seek Him, all the descendants of Jacob and Israel—in fact, all the ends of the earth, all the families of the nations, all the strong and prosperous, as well as the weak and even the dying; they will all praise the God who answers His afflicted one.

This is a psalm of David as the voice of all Israel, but Jesus identifies Himself as afflicted Israel on the cross when He cries out, in the first words of this psalm in Aramaic, Eloi eloi, lama sabacthani! My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? There is only suffering, mockery, darkness; there is only wood, nails, and thorns. There is only the bitter wine of affliction. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief…he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). There is only one defense, one justification, of God, and it is the one that He offers here in the crucified Jesus. He will be justified in His words and pure in His judgments (Psalm 51:4). Here is His righteous one, and He is also the afflicted one, afflicted with your afflictions, and troubled with your troubles. He is not far from you. He wears your flesh and suffers your suffering. But He does not only do that. His love for you is not just sympathy, or even empathy. God has not despised the affliction of the afflicted one on the cross. He has, it turns out, not hidden His face from Him, but has heard, when He cried to Him (Psalm 22:24). “In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence” (Hebrews 5:7). “It was the will of Yahweh to crush Him; He has put Him to grief. But when His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring; He shall prolong His days; the will of Yahweh shall prosper in His hand. Out of the anguish of His soul he shall see and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:10-11).

He heard when His afflicted One cried to Him, and He answered by raising Him from the dead. His days are lengthened in resurrection; thus, He sees all the offspring of His eternal life. “Being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all those hearing and obeying Him” (Hebrews 5:9). It is in His faithful, afflicted, and resurrected Son that He answers the afflicted of all times and all places. It is in Him that He answers you in your affliction; in Him that He forgives your sins; in Him that He gives you eternal life. And it is to Him that you can cry out. It is to you, the dear child of God, that He gives new life in Christ. So you are the ones who gather around Jesus to praise God, to bow down and worship, to eat and be satisfied. David could not see how God would answer his affliction, but He trusted that God would do it. We have seen the answer in the afflicted and crucified and resurrected One in whom we trust. It is of God’s righteous one that we have been told. They proclaimed Him to us, and we proclaim Him to the next generation, even to those who have not been born. God has done it! Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, is the answer He gives you in your affliction. He has saved you from sin, death, and the devil, the enemies that surround you. He prepares the meal of salvation in the midst of your enemies. Eat and be satisfied! He will certainly bring your salvation to its completion.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 2/27/24