Sermon Quotes: "When It Feels Like No One Cares"

“David’s pathway-and the privilege of possessing his autobiographical psalms-ought to alert us to the foundational truth that ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord’ (Isa. 55:8). How I wish that we might learn this lesson-for every unexpected, unwanted, even seemingly meaningless, hurtful and destructive experience that takes us by surprise come under the same heading. No, it’s not pointless. It is all part of a plan devised by a higher wisdom than we can ever know. These psalms belong to a very low time indeed in David’s life-and they are in the Bible so that we might learn what the real truth is about our lowest times, and how we are to understand and handle them.” - Alec Motyer

“David knows the value of refusing to relapse into silence. That way lies despair.” - Derek Kidner

“Prayer is the way to counter personal exhaustion of spirit, solitariness, opposition and hopelessness…If we talk about our needs to ourselves, we are only indulging in self-pity, but telling God is step one towards the solution.” - Alec Motyer

O Love that will wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not in vain
The morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
- George Matheson

“David’s life anticipates the life of the Lord Jesus…Psalm 142 prepares its audience for the coming of the man of sorrows, the one acquainted with grief, from whom men would hide their faces. Like David before him, Jesus would make his Father his refuge and portion, his only hope in the land of the living, entrusting himself to God in the days of his suffering. The righteous by faith do indeed gather to the son of David, with whom the Father has indeed dealt bountifully.” - James Hamilton