Saints With Complaints | Summer In The Psalms | Pastor Derick Amsler

As we continue our series, Summer in the Psalms. Summer in the Psalms. Church Fathers, the ancient church tradition teaches us that the book of Psalms is the. Is the pacemaker for the spiritual life. It keeps our heart in alignment with the heartbeat of God.

And so this is a transformational series. We're not going through the summer, we're making the most of the summer to strengthen our faith so that we can be more like him. Come on. Everybody said, have you ever. Let's just start at a moment of transparency, vulnerability, and honesty.

Have you ever been so frustrated with somebody that your first reaction was not to pray for them but to clap back at them? Come on. How many of you have the spirit of a clap back in you? I'm talking about sarcasm from the hip. I'm talking about a six shooter that has no limitations or a safety.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the real side. Over here is the Pharisees. Over here is the people that pretend they got it all together, but my people's over here. I heard you clapping.

Have you ever wrote out an email or a text response in the spirit of a clapback? And before you press send, you got checked in your heart and you're like, no, I can't send that. I can't send that. My question is, why not? Why not?

What you're articulating is true. The emotions you're expressing is true. The rage is true. The emotional aggression is true. Matter of fact, most of what you're saying is probably true too.

But there's something on the inside of you that knows whatever you're about to say that can't be in writing. That can't be in writing because they're one screenshot away from blowing up my world. Anybody? Anybody? It was less about God's sanctification.

It was more about your pr. I know what you're talking about. A while back, I. I had preached a message on what God says about national values and what the Bible says about political things. Anyways, not everybody liked it. And I wasn't home for five minutes till I got an email from a lovely saint of the Lord who.

Who wanted to express this, their response to my message. And this is funny because it starts off with a matter of fact. I'll just read it to you. I'll read it to you. And here's the way the email started.

Make this sound professional, but keep the anger. And so I was confused at first because I was like, why do they want me to edit their email? And then I kept reading only to say, derek, who do you think you are. And it went on and on and on and on in my own. I don't know what they meant, but the way I took it was they meant for this to be filtered through AI.

They wanted to soften the language. But before they copied and pasted to ChatGPT, they sent it to me. And so I did. I did what only a loving pastor would. I critiqued the email and I sent it back to them to send it back to me.

And to be honest with you, I've never seen them again. But God bless you if you're watching online.

And it made me realize something, though. One of the most surprising things about the Bible is that the Holy Spirit doesn't edit out some of the raw parts, some of the rough parts. You would think that if God is trying to manipulate people in ordering to follow him, he would airbrush some of the heroes. And yet we get the flawed individual with the faithful individual. We get the strengths and we get the weaknesses, which tells me something shocking about God, and that is God is not embarrassed regarding the humanity of people.

Matter of fact, he gets right up beside us in both pendulum swings of our life when we get it and when we don't, when we're people of faith and when our flawed humanity begins showing. The last time I preached, I spoke on the Songs of Ascent. It was when the people of God would come together and their march up to the mountain of Jerusalem for their annual festival worships. God gave the people of God a Spotify playlist, if you remember. And it was designed to just tell the story of God's faithfulness over their nation and over their communal living.

And we discovered that these Songs of Ascents are a bundle of songs within the Book of Psalms. Today, what I want to do is swing the pendulum far left and not look at the songs of worship. But what are called the. What are called the imprecatory Psalms. It comes from the Latin, which means to elicit a curse upon something or someone.

It's asking God to curse an individual. Asking God to come down and not be the Lord is my shepherd, but to be the Lord is my warrior and come and avenge me. It's some of the most shocking words and phrases and chapters in all of the Bible. This is not a song and a couplet of songs for people who are walking out of vbs. These are songs that have been deeply impacted by betrayal and abandonment, a crushed spirit.

These are songs that David wrote when he had no sanitized words left in the vocabulary of his heart. Theologians call these Group of songs. The rage chapters. When you're just mad and you have no more filter, when you just press a response and you just begin to blow it up and you press send. And what's remarkable is not David's boldness to pray these songs.

What's remarkable is in God's love. He chose to preserve these songs to teach us something about his love, about our humanity. You ready to take some notes? Ironically, instead of looking at the impurgatory psalms, I want to look at a song that is not in those categories, but give credence to why it's okay to feel those things. Psalms 13 Psalms 13.

The author is David. This is the same David. The Lord is my shepherd, but watch what he has to say. Now, it's only six verses, but as I've said before, some of the smallest doors in Scripture lead to some of the greatest ballrooms of theological truth. Psalms 13.

David says, how long, Lord? Are we still here? Are we still dealing with this again? How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?

I've been praying, I've been asking, I've been believing and yet it feels like you have forgotten about me. How long will you hide your face from me? I'm seeking you, I'm searching for you but it's almost like you don't know me Wherever I go, there you run. Are you going to forget me and hide your face forever? Then he says, how long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me? Four times in two verses, David says, how long? So this isn't somebody who's just in frustration over a particular circumstance. This is a guy who's in a season of frustrations. We're not talking about a bad day in which a good night's sleep can fix.

We're talking about a bad season in which it's been one thing after another. It's been one person after another person, one issue after another circumstance, one diagnosis on top of work, bad news on top of spousal bad news, on top of financial bad news. Has anybody ever been hit from all sides?

David says, how long must I endure? This is written by somebody who has an exhausted soul, not just a frustrated day. He's tired of waiting, he's tired of hurting. He's tired of wondering. He's tired of praying.

He's tired of worshiping to see no results. Here's what amazes me. What amazes me is that in his questioning of God, how long? Where are you? You going to keep Hiding your face.

How long? Where are you? How long do I got to keep wondering where you are? How long? In his questioning of God, I find it interesting God never interrupts him.

Because I don't know about you, but just this week my boy came after me. I don't understand why. And I was quick to interrupt him. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa there, big boy. Do you know who you're talking to?

Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's try that again with a little more respect. Let's try that again with a little bit more. What's amazing to me is that the God of the cosmos doesn't interrupt the David's humanity. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Do you know who you're talking to? Let's try that again with a little more faith. Let's try that again with a little more sanctification filter.

He preserves this prayer so that we would know or you already write this down. Faithful people can have painful questions and that's okay.

Faithful people who sincerely love God can have painful questions regarding the severity of life, and that's okay.

In other words, honest emotions are safe with God. Honest emotions are safe with God. David says, how long must I wrestle with my thoughts? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts? According to Queen's University, the average individual will have about 6,000 very distinct thoughts every day.

And what the article goes on to say is that the majority of those thoughts tend to be negative. So it puts the negative thoughts and VIP seating in your mind. It's called a negativity bias. So the Average person has 6,000 thoughts a day, which means your mind has 6,000 employees who work in the complaint department. The gratitude department has Carl, and Carl only works on Saturdays, apparently 9 to 9.

15. And that's it. David is saying. David is saying, how long must I wrestle with my own thoughts? We all have emotions we would rather not admit out loud.

I don't want that in writing. I don't want that on the record. Thoughts like anger and jealousy, envy, fear. Can I say it? Insecurity, resentment, bitterness, lust, rage.

Everyone has thoughts that we would rather not admit we carry. And some of us think that if we don't admit those emotions or if we would admit those emotions, we are failing spiritually. The psalmist is saying the opposite. Naming an emotion isn't the same thing as endorsing the emotion. In other words, you can be angry and sin not.

You can be caught up in desire, but not stumbled into sin. Naming an emotion isn't the same thing as endorsing it. One of the greatest lies Christians believe is this. If I'm a mature Christian, I shouldn't feel certain things? No, mature Christians still feel emotions.

They've simply learned how to name it and where to take it. And so research in modern neuroscience has discovered that when we put words to our emotions. I feel angry. Honestly, I just feel insecure. I feel out of control.

I feel disrespected. I feel like you dishonored me right now. I just feel lost. I feel like everyone is comparing me. When we're able to name the emotion, the intensity of the motion begins to decrease.

In other words, we are now leading the emotion. The emotion is not leading us. Psychologists sometimes call it this. Name it in order to tame it. If you need to tame it, name it.

We name what we feel so that we can move what we feel into a greater reality beyond our emotional feelings. Here's what's amazing. David didn't know anything about neuroscience. He just had the spirit leading and inviting him to put words to what he was feeling and then to move his feelings towards what he needed to feel. Write this down.

Write this down. Because what remains hidden often remains unhealed.

What remains hidden remains unhealed. The moment David names his fear and his anger and his disappointment with God and with life and his enemies, he is no longer carrying those emotions alone. He is inviting God to carry it with him. Think about some of the most shocking and precatory prayers. David prays.

These are prayers. He holds nothing back. Give you two of the big ones. In Psalms 58, David says, Lord, strike my enemy in the jaw. Break the teeth of the wicked.

He's like, God, punch him in the face.

Some of you are like, I found my Monday verse. Yes, sir.

Later on, David will pray this. He's talking about the Babylonians, which are his national enemies, and they've wreaked havoc in his land. And. And he says basically to his enemy, he says, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

My grandma doesn't have that quilted on her blanket. You know what I'm saying? That one's not on the calendar in her kitchen right there. Take the babies of my enemies and throw them over a cliff. What is this, a Bible?

Like, is this the same David who wrote, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want? Apparently, he's not going by David anymore. He's going by the notorious DAV is what he's doing. He Snoop Doggy D or something like he has changed his street name on this one. What is he doing?

Watch this. Theologians would call it the doctrine of the dignity of vulnerability. The dignity of vulnerability. Where God dignifies us, where God dignifies our relationship with him, and where God dignifies our emotions by giving us space to articulate what we feel with him in a safe place. It's called the doctrine of the dignity of a vulnerability.

God says, like a child would come to its parent. Think about this. If your kid came home from school or from a friend's house and they were clearly upset, they were shook by something that took place, something's off. You ask them what's going on and they refuse to tell you. Would you rather have an emotional, raw, unfiltered truth or a polished lie?

No, I'm good. I'm just tired. No, you want the truth, don't you? That is the dignity of vulnerability. As my son, as my daughter, come to me and tell me what happened.

Share with me what's going on so I can help you or walk you through it. This is how God sees his children. The dignity of vulnerability. Come to me. Let's talk about it.

But God, my words aren't sanitized yet. I can work with that. Doesn't the Bible teach us thou shalt not lie? We tend to think of lying as only in a mistruth or a manipulation to one another. But we can actually lie to ourself.

We can lie to God, we can lie about ourselves. How you doing? I'm good. But are you? The dignity of vulnerability.

God desires an intimate relationship with us. And the bridge is honesty. Which raises then an important question. Is there a difference between biblical lament, what I just described, and a complaining spirit? Tell the person next to you, I think this was a setup.

I think this was a setup. Obviously there is. Right? The Bible invites us to be honest about our feelings and yet it warns us not to develop a complaining spirit. Miserable people have traits that make them miserable.

Have you noticed this? And yet miserable people are miserable because they never thought through their misery and therefore they continue to be miserable. One of the top traits of miserable people is that they carry a complaining spirit. Have you ever known somebody that their go to conversation starter is a complaint is something negative? Like they would never enter into a conversation if it wasn't around something negative.

That is their gateway. That is their gateway to conversation. Oh my gosh, you will not believe. Isn't it exhausting? Don't you see it in their eyes?

Like you've got to be tired about this too. No, there's something in them that actually comes alive when there's something to complain about. They're not them if there's no drama. Anybody know who I'm talking about? If you don't, somebody's thinking of somebody is all I'm trying to say.

Do you remember when we were in elementary and they had that DARE program? Dare? And I forgot what it stood for. We always said it stood for drugs are really expensive. But.

But that wasn't it. It was something like drug abuse resistant. Something rather. I think. I think.

I think that at the adolescent level, instead of dare. Well, probably alongside there, we need to come up with care. Care, Complaining and rehearsing everything. Prevention program. That's what we need.

We need to figure out how to walk through valleys and not bring the residue of its dirt with us into the promised land. Proverbs 21 says, you know, it's better to live alone in the desert than to live with a complaining spouse. Eyes up here. Don't look at anybody. Don't look at body.

Let the Holy Spirit minister to them on their own. And think about what the Bible saying. It would be better for someone in your life who is constantly complaining for you to live in the blistering sun and the harshness of the sand and wind rubbing your skin raw, than to continue to have a conversation with that person. Every head bowed, every eye closed. Right now, think about this.

God is wanting us to bring our honest emotions to him. And at the same time, it warns us what a complaining spirit does to our life. I don't have time to bother this too much, but Just for reference, First Corinthians 10 tells us why the first generation of Israelites, the one who Moses helped lead out of 400 years of Egyptian captivity into the promised land. First Corinthians tells us why the first generation of Israelites never reached the Promised Land. And it's shocking.

It tells us this. Five reasons why. It says they craved evil things. Okay, that'll keep you out of the promised land. I see that one.

They worshiped idols. Okay, that makes sense. That'll put a limitation on sexual immorality. Okay, that makes sense. They tempted God.

Okay, yeah, yeah, the number five. They complained. Like, I read that a while back, and I thought, one of these things are not like the others. How does complaining belong on the same list of craving, evil and tempting God? It's because of what complaining does to our soul, our perspective of God, his faithfulness and his goodness over our life.

According to the Bible, a constant Complaining spirit. Watch what it does. It stirs up frustration in you rather than a faith within you. It creates a victim mentality where now all of life is against me and I'm by myself rather than me being able to overcome evil with good with God's help. Last week we had Dr. Sims in and I was looking for a new restaurant to take them.

And I was on this particular review website talking about local restaurants, and one of the reviewers said, do not come to this place. I've been here 11 times and never had a good experience.

I thought, stop going. It's not that hard. After the fourth one, call it quits. But this is what constant complaining does. You actually revel in the negativity because it gives you something to complain about.

Watch what a constant complaining spirit does. Constant complaining doesn't reflect. This one's personal. This one's personal. I was telling my therapist a while back, I just feel like I. I'm getting too negative about things.

And I listed out all my complaints and you know, and she thought I was like over exaggerating the amount of complaints I had. And truth was I was just getting started with old girl I was just getting up with and. And she says, why do you think this is? And I said, I said, I don't know, maybe it's because I have high standards. And she said, or low tolerance.

I said, girl, I pay you. What are you talking about coming at me like this? And so I prayed that God would knock her teeth out. Like David said, is what I did is in the Bible, guys. And.

This is how you know, I only had this morning to work on the sermon. This is how you know, this is how you know I wouldn't have made this last thing. The Bible says that a constant complaining spirit does. It dulls your life. It dulls your life.

Philippians 2 tells us that as people of God, we're to shine like stars in the universe. We think complaining actually gives us something to talk about. It actually robs us of the very illumination that God wants to do in our life and through our life. So which is it? Do we bring our complaints to God or not?

Yes, we bring our complaints to God holistically, vulnerably, and honesty. But we also protect our heart from growing into or molding into a spirit of complaining Israel. Here's the difference between Israel not reaching the promised land and God inviting. David's prayer number one is this. Israel complained about God.

David brought his complaints to God, and there's a huge difference. Israel's complaints became a Habit in which they blamed God for everything.

David just made it a habit to bring his complaints to God about everything. Now notice what happens. Notice what happens. One is going to harden your heart. The other one is going to open it and heal it.

Here's what I want you to notice. Watch the movement of David's prayer. Verse 1. How long do I have to endure this? When we get to verse six, he says, but I trust in your unfailing love.

My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord's praise. He has been good to me. When we read the entire Psalm 13, six verses, David takes five big steps. Come out.

Five big steps from how long to I trust God, let me get my praise back. So for all the saints with complaints, let's talk about five steps of caring complaints faithfully to God. Are you ready? We're gonna fly. Number one, be honest about what you feel.

Number two, remember what's still true.

I've got facts, but you also have a truth. He is the way. He is the truth, and he's the illumination of life. Remember what's still true. David says here in the psalm, he has been good to me.

So he doesn't deny his pain. He simply refuses to let his pain, pain become the only thing he sees. Walking around with a spirit of gratitude, remembering the goodness of God in your life, it doesn't. It doesn't narrow life's reality. It actually expands the reality.

He's still been good to me because in the end, if this thing triumphs over me, I still win. For to be absent with the bodies, to be present with the Lord soon, and very soon, Jesus is coming back for his bride. So whether this thing takes me in this life, it can't take me in the next. And either way, I win because I'm tethered to the only thing who ultimately wins. Be honest about what you feel.

Number two, remember what's still true. Number three, choose your words carefully. Notice what David says in the psalm. He says, I will. Will is an act of your word.

Will I will sing. I'll learn to get my joy back, my song back, my lyrics back, the Lord's praise, for he has been good to me. Another time in Scripture, David will say, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. Number four, release unrealistic expectations.

Between verse one and verse six, David had some real things to complain about regarding what people have been doing to him and some of us, if we're honest, we're developing a complaining spirit. Because we have unrealistic expectations about the people in our life.

Some of us are disappointed because we've expected perfection from people who were only capable of giving us humanity.

In other words, we're expecting an apology from people who feel like they don't need to apologize. We're expecting Christian attributes from people who are not Christians. We're expecting people to showcase the love and the joy and the peace of Jesus when they they don't have that spirit of God within them. And may I remind all of us, we don't all the time, every time, get it right either. So our hope is not in expecting people to be perfect, but to allow the perfection of the Holy Spirit to build us, strengthen us, walk with us, move us, mature us.

Lastly, number five David would say it plainly, trust God before you understand. Here's what makes Psalms 13 just remarkable. David doesn't stay with his initial complaint. He articul. He articulates his grand grievances, but then he intentionally moves his grief towards trusting God.

He says, he says, he says, I have honest complaints, but I also have a choice. I can stay with my complaint or I can move my complaint to Christ. He begins how long? And then he ends. But he has been good too.

Me, did a situation change? Not in five verses, but something changed with him. And so I just want to tell everybody this weekend. You don't have to pretend like you're on verse six when you're still on verse one.

Verse one can be holy too. Verse one can be sacred too. Just don't cling to verse one. So we weeping endures for a night Verse one But joy comes in the morning Verse six the joy of the Lord isn't automatic. He says, I will sing, I will bless the Lord, my heart will rejoice, I will sing the Lord's praise for he has been good to me.

One scholar said he's reminding himself of the goodness of God. Another scholar said he's probably talking himself into it. In either case, there's an act of the will I must move out of verse one mentality into verse six trust. The point of these passages isn't that David was brave enough to pray raw prayers. The point was a loving God wanted to preach, preserve raw emotions, and to lead us into hope and strength and life everlasting.

No wonder, no wonder he's that friend who sticks closer than a brother.

So Lord, I thank you for the dignity of vulnerability and the intimacy of friendship. Lord, thank you for this powerful truth that reminds us that in verse one living your eye is on the sparrow and so your eye is on your children. But also thank you for the friendship of the journey from verse one to verse five. But thank you for the triumph of verse six that you shall overcome Lord, for every heart that has been encapsulated by a consistency of negativity. I pray that you would give us a new eye, a new perspective and a new mind to think about things.

Help us to retrain our eyes to see what is good and true and lovely and praiseworthy and righteous and holy. And may we meditate on those things and through the meditation of our mind about the glory and the goodness and the blessings of God from the abundance of of the heart the mouth speaks so then change our vocabulary. Let our words begin to edify and strengthen not just words of praise to you, but words of articulation about you. And in doing so may it strengthen the ears and the hearts of other people who listen in onto our conversation. We invite you to listen lead us into verse 6.

Living in Jesus mighty name and everybody said come on Amen. Amen. God bless.