The Dark Side of Psalm 44

In this weeks video we spent some time looking at the first half of Psalm 44. What do we see in the second half?

Psalm 44:9-26
But you have rejected us and disgraced us
    and have not gone out with our armies.
You have made us turn back from the foe,
    and those who hate us have gotten spoil.
You have made us like sheep for slaughter
    and have scattered us among the nations.
You have sold your people for a trifle,
    demanding no high price for them.
You have made us the taunt of our neighbors,
    the derision and scorn of those around us.
You have made us a byword among the nations,
    a laughingstock[b] among the peoples.
All day long my disgrace is before me,
    and shame has covered my face
at the sound of the taunter and reviler,
    at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

All this has come upon us,
    though we have not forgotten you,
    and we have not been false to your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
    nor have our steps departed from your way;
yet you have broken us in the place of jackals
    and covered us with the shadow of death.
If we had forgotten the name of our God
    or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
would not God discover this?
    For he knows the secrets of the heart.
Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
    Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
Why do you hide your face?
    Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
    our belly clings to the ground.
Rise up; come to our help!
    Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!

Well, that’s something that certainly wasn’t in the song. Has God abandoned his people here? I don’t think so. Rather His people are misunderstanding His plan. A few key takeaways from this for me are; how easy it can be to fall into doubt, and that God knows the secrets of the heart.

We are all struggling with something, and we do our best to keep that to ourselves. We even think we get away with it and all is well. There is no secret you can keep from God. Yet we try anyway. We keep things hidden, thinking and doing things we know we shouldn’t but acting like we are such Godly people. We live in sin and we often enjoy it. But as soon as anything goes wrong we suddenly cry to Him and want everything to be answered and taken care of.

He has taken care of everything but we still fail to choose Him. With amazing power He has conquered death and given us salvation. Yet we quickly jump to feeling abandoned and indulging in sin. It is our time to pray and ask for forgiveness and give thanks for the gifts we have received, especially the gift of eternal life.