Sunday Service- 2nd June 2024

Introduction: Misunderstanding and Meaning

Today we're continuing our Jubilee series through the Psalms, taken in a random numerical order. This week we come to Psalm 4:

Answer me when I call, O God of my right! You gave me room when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? But know that the Lord has set apart the faithful for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him. When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord. There are many who say, "Oh, that we might see some good!" Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord. You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound. I will both lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

My name is Steve Connelly and I've been part of Frontline since before it was Frontline. I work as a GP in Anfield — currently, because I'm thinking of branching into the music business. I don't know much about it, so I asked a guy how you buy a group of singers. He said, "You mean a choir?" I said, "Sorry, I don't understand the language — how do you acquire a group of singers?"　That's a joke about misunderstanding meanings — the speaker says one thing, and the listener hears another.

Today, as we look at Psalm 4, I'm talking about worry, anxiety, and — you'll be glad to know — peace. These are emotive subjects, and I want to say very explicitly at the start what I am not talking about: I am not talking about mental illness today. For the best part of three decades I've helped people with anxiety, depression, PTSD, phobias, and more — these things need professional help, medication, therapy, and other support, and they're beyond the scope of a simple sermon. God is with you in these things, and many in this room can testify to that. I don't want anyone with one of those conditions to feel misunderstood, patronised, or burdened by anything I say today.//

What I am talking about is the stuff of life — the worries, fears, and anxieties that come from what life throws at us, and what the Bible says about finding hope, help, and peace from God in the middle of it.

What Does the Bible Actually Say About Worry?

It's important that we don't force our modern 21st-century understanding onto ancient texts. Let's look at two familiar verses. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount:

"Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself." (Matthew 6:34)

And Paul writes:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:6–7)

Some have taken these "do nots" to mean that worry and anxiety are themselves sin — disobeying a biblical command. If you've picked up that burden of guilt every time you feel anxious, let me lift it from you today. Even in English, we can see the difference: "don't steal,” “don't kill" are moral commands. But if a child comes home upset after a bad day, and we say, "don't worry," that's not a command to stop worrying immediately — it's comfort, not command.//

The Greek Word Behind "Worry"

In the Greek New Testament, the word for worry/anxiety is merimnaō (or its derivatives) — and it's used in surprisingly varied ways:

• Paul, who tells us not to be anxious for anything, also says he faces "the daily pressure of my concern for all the churches" (2 Corinthians 11:28) — the same word.
• Of Timothy he says, "I have no one else like him who will show genuine concern for your welfare" — same word again.
• In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says we can be merimnaō — concerned — about the things of God, how we can please him.

So the word is used negatively, positively, and neutrally. Modern usage of "worry" or "anxiety" often points to the physiological and emotional response to stress — a pounding heart, a churning stomach — brought on by things like unexpected bills, illness, or a child's struggles. We would not be human if we didn't respond to hardship. Even while preparing this sermon, in the middle of moving house, I had to keep reminding myself: yes, stress — now go read your sermon again.

What the Bible steers us away from becomes clearer when we look at the negative uses of the word:

• In Matthew 6, Jesus says not to worry about tomorrow, but instead to "seek first the kingdom of God."
• In the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13), the seed among thorns represents "the cares (merimnai) of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth," which choke the word and make it unfruitful.
• Paul tells us not to be anxious, but instead to present our requests to God (Philippians 4:6).
• Peter tells us to "cast our anxieties" onto Jesus (1 Peter 5:7).

The warning, then, is against letting our cares distract us and pull us away from God. Some commentators define this negative sense of merimnaō as "a distracting care or concern that takes us away from God." Instead of running after our worries, we're called to bring them to God.

Three Perspectives on Finding Peace

The Bible doesn't give us a three-point plan to be free from worry — but it does give us three perspectives on how God helps us in our troubles. I picture them as a triangle, but flipped from how you'd normally read one: instead of climbing toward a pinnacle at the top, the bottom perspectives are actually the widest, and they form the foundation for the rest.

1. The External Perspective

This perspective focuses on the problem itself — it sees God as deliverer, taking us out of the problem. In Psalm 4:1, David recounts how God made room for him in distress and heard his prayer. Many other Psalms speak of God as our deliverer, healer, defender, and provider.

This is probably the perspective we all prefer — it's what our favourite verses and songs are about: problem solved, trouble dealt with, pain gone. Many of us can tell stories of exactly that. Years ago, my wife and I signed some financial paperwork we later regretted. We were told there was nothing we could do — until a phone call came saying there had been a fire at the sorting office. Only one sack of mail had burned... and it was the one with our forms in it. We didn't have to sign again, and God rescued us from that consequence.//　(If any of you are still expecting a letter from that sack — I'm sorry, it was years ago!)//

But this external perspective, while it sits at the "top," is actually the narrowest, because things don't always work out how we expect. In Acts, Peter is miraculously released from prison by an angel — but Stephen is stoned to death by an angry mob. I can't claim to understand why God sometimes swoops in like a superhero answering our "bat-signal" prayers, and sometimes he doesn't. Our relationship with God isn't mechanistic — push a button, get a result. It's relational, and relationships are complicated and messy, not rational and predictable.

2. The Internal Perspective

Here, God doesn't take us out of the situation — he takes us through it, like walking through "the valley of the shadow of death" in Psalm 23. Hebrews 12 talks about God disciplining us — not merely punishing us, but training us:

"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children... No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:7, 11)

In Psalm 4, David encourages the people not to sin in their need, but to "offer right sacrifices and put their trust in the Lord" — to let their need drive them back to God rather than toward lies.

I often tell the story of one of our children who, for months, woke us up crying at an impossibly early hour. We were chronically sleep-deprived, at our wits' end — we prayed, claimed promises, even cast out what we thought might be demons, and still he cried. Eventually we said, half-joking, half-desperate: "God, if you're real, shut him up." He didn't stop until, during a family trip, my wife's mother collapsed with a brain tumour, we drove through the night, and flew back transatlantic with two toddlers. Somewhere between jet lag, separation, and a serious family illness, the crying stopped.

Through that season, God taught us the difference between trusting for and trusting in. We learned to trust in his love, goodness, and wisdom before trusting for a specific outcome he may or may not have promised — and that lesson prepared us for even greater challenges since.

3. The Eternal Perspective

Sometimes we can't yet see the good God is working — the harvest may come later, or God may be working good in others through our hardship (as with Jesus himself). Sometimes it's simply too painful to see beyond the moment, or we may not see the good this side of eternity at all.

There are two aspects to this eternal perspective:

First, the hope of heaven. We have the hope of a new heaven and a new earth, where everything will be as God intended — as C.S. Lewis put it, a place "where all bad things will become undone."

"There will be no more death, no more crying, no more pain... God will wipe away our tears." (Revelation 21)

However long this life feels — and in hard seasons it feels very long — it is nothing compared to eternity.

Second, remembering God's eternal qualities. His love, mercy, wisdom, power, grace, and goodness never change, even when our circumstances do. It's easy to wonder if God is good when things go wrong. My wife and I went through one particularly difficult season that lasted years — I won't go into the details, but those who know us know what I mean. There were times when everything felt dark and hopeless, but God's love, goodness, and wisdom were like pieces of flotsam, or a life-belt, that we could cling to while our lives felt shipwrecked. At times we were just about keeping our heads above water — but God was with us. He will never leave you or forsake you, and as you cling on, he will keep you either until the rescue ship comes, or until he brings you home to the other shore.

David understood this in Psalm 4 — his gladness was not in the grain or the wine, but in God himself. The people around him were trusting for good things; David was trusting in God. His peace, his joy, his safety to "lie down and sleep in peace" were not found primarily in circumstances, but in God himself.

Two Practical Cautions

As we help others (and ourselves) through hard times, I'd offer two suggestions:

1. Never promise a specific outcome on God's behalf unless he has clearly spoken to you about it. We may say things like "God's got a better life for you" with the best intentions, but we can only have faith in what God has actually said — let's not use his name in vain.

2. Let's retire the phrase "God's got this." It tends to fix us on the external perspective — focused on the problem. A better phrase, I'd suggest, is "God's got you" — because when we cast our anxieties on Jesus, it's not because he'll necessarily fix the situation, but because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). Whether he removes the problem, walks with us through it, or simply makes his presence known within it, we can know we are held in his everlasting arms.

"Nothing in all creation... will be able to separate us from the love of God." (Romans 8)

Conclusion: Peace That Passes Understanding

Worry and anxiety are normal human responses to difficult situations, and that response is not sin. But the Bible warns us that worry and anxiety can pull us away from God, crush our faith, and lead us into sin. And yet — what glorious grace, that when we turn back to him and cast our cares on him, we find him ready to receive us.

In Psalm 4, David calls us to "offer right sacrifices" and trust in the Lord — and Jesus has already offered the right sacrifice for us. We simply come to him in faith, to our loving Father.

Many times, in the middle of stressful, difficult situations — heart racing, stomach churning, mind turning over — I've experienced something strange: as I cast those cares on Jesus and hold on to his eternal love, goodness, and wisdom, somehow there is still a sense of peace underlying it all. It doesn't make logical sense to me, but I wonder if that's the peace that passes understanding — peace in the middle of the storm.

What I do know is this: whatever hardship you're facing, God's got you — and that's the best place to be. Amen.