Lament
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Acknowledge Mother’s Day
Although we do try to stick to holidays on the church calendar, we’ve always found it really valuable to acknowledge mother’s day — not just because it’s so traditional in our church culture and saying nothing would hurt a lot of feelings, but because in God’s design for the family, quality mothers are an incredible blessing, absolutely worth celebrating.
So while we’re not going to be having a special Mother’s Day service and probably never will, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to the mothers of our church. You’ll recall in 1 Timothy we’re supposed to treat older women within the church as mothers — especially by honoring them with heartfelt respect and love, and the women of Grace Baptist Church make that very easy.
I also want to acknowledge that today is a very difficult day for many, many women. In a fallen world, the pain of motherhood doesn’t just start with childbirth — for many women, those labor pains are just the first taste. Some children are estranged. Others are taken from this life before they even see the light of day. And, even at best, the love mothers carry for their children is often accompanied by deep fears and anxieties that sap far too much time and energy.
Finally, I want to recognize as well that there are those within our congregation who have recently lost their mothers and are waiting to see them again in the resurrection. All this to say, Mother’s Day is actually a really good occasion to start a lament series when we consider how frequently the work of motherhood is painful and difficult, precisely because things are not as they ought to be.
Introduce Lament series (go over the handout)
12 weeks
4 cycles of 3 weeks, each broadly addressing approximately one question
What is biblical lament? What makes it necessary?
What does Jesus have to do with lament?
How do I lament personally?
How do we lament together?
We’ll discuss each of these questions further as we get to each cycle, and this series is by no means intended to be exhaustive.
Our primary concerns this summer really aren’t theological or exegetical, but rather practical. Given our body’s individual and corporate suffering over the past few years, the pastors wanted to give both instruction and opportunity to put that instruction into practice.
Now, before we kick off our series, I’d like to lead us in an adaptation of a reading from Every Moment Holy, vol. II, a resource we’ll be returning to on a regular basis. (Every Moment Holy, 267)
Amen.
Stand for the reading of God’s word.
Psalm 39
To the choirmaster: to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David. 1 I said, “I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, so long as the wicked are in my presence.” 2 I was mute and silent; I held my peace to no avail, and my distress grew worse. 3 My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: 4 “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! 5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah 6 Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! 7 “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. 8 Deliver me from all my transgressions. Do not make me the scorn of the fool! 9 I am mute; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it. 10 Remove your stroke from me; I am spent by the hostility of your hand. 11 When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath! Selah 12 “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers. 13 Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more!”
Today, we’re going to look at lament through the lens of Psalm 39 because it contains just about everything we need for a really broad overview — not just of lament itself, but of the entire biblical story — after all, we’re talking about biblical lament, something distinctly Christian.
This is good for us because it’s when we appreciate what God is up to through the entire story of the Bible that our lamenting becomes truly Christian, centered on Jesus and God’s character and promises to his people. Otherwise, we’d just be engaging in a Christianized version of psychotherapy that has a veneer of Jesus but at its core is nothing more than an exercise in seeking happiness and better mental health through self-expression, as our society urges us to pursue. (As an aside, happiness, mental health, and self-expression are good things, but they cannot bear the ultimate weight of our hopes and desires).
Now, in order to do this, we are going to have to do just a little bit of hermeneutics, which is just a fancy way of saying we’re going to have to talk about how we’re reading our Bibles, specifically the Psalms today.
While each and every Psalm has its own historical context — this one, for example, was written by King David and handed over to Jeduthun, the choir director he’d appointed to lead worship in the tabernacle. Simply put, this is a really old song in a different language of which we’re reading a translation, and this song is in a particular spot in the book of Psalms, which has its own structure that colors the interpretation of each individual Psalm.
But for this series, instead of explaining all of that in exquisite detail, I’m going to simply assert two conclusions about the Psalms that pretty much nobody is going to find controversial on their face, until we actually start dealing with some of these Psalms.
The only reason I’m saying all this is the fact that the way we get to these conclusions is a really worthwhile discussion, just not one we’re having right now.
So, first conclusion: the Psalms are for us. When it comes to the Psalms, we have freedom to read them and adapt them as our own. God inspired these texts for his people throughout all time, and when it comes to the Psalms, it is perfectly fine to read ourselves into them. Yes, even the imprecatory and lament Psalms, which actually comprise the vast majority of the Psalms.
This is because of the second conclusion: the Psalms are about Jesus. For me, I don’t think you’ve read a Psalm rightly until you’re able to answer the question, “What does this text say about Jesus?”
Sometimes the Psalms sound like a prayer he would have uttered — indeed, he would have been very familiar with these texts, both by virtue of having learned them in his humanity and by virtue of his spirit having inspired their writing in the first place. So it’s perfectly reasonable to understand the Psalms as prayers of Jesus with only a little qualification that I’m going to completely ignore today.
If Jesus says that we belong to him and we are to follow in his footsteps as his disciples — his students — you’d be very hard pressed to say that we can’t lift the Psalms straight off the page and onto our lips, at least as long as we’re confident we’re using a decent translation or take the time to learn Hebrew. It is my firm belief that he gave us the Psalms at least partially for this very purpose.
Now, let’s dive into our Psalm. I’ve already explained the superscription, the title (which is important, by the way!), so we have three sections left.
vv. 1-3: We lament because it’s healthy.
1 I said, “I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, so long as the wicked are in my presence.” 2 I was mute and silent; I held my peace to no avail, and my distress grew worse. 3 My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue:
David, at some point, was experiencing some trouble. We don’t know exactly what it was, but that’s one thing that makes this text so beautiful and adaptable. We’ll return to the trouble later, so for now let’s look at the effects this trouble had on him.
Being a man after God’s own heart, David was trying his hardest to be pious — look at the end of verse 1. He was surrounded by bad people, unbelievers, and so he wanted to be careful to watch his mouth because he didn’t want to make God look bad. We might say that he didn’t have anything good to say, so he tried not to say anything at all — and he tried hard.
Too hard, in fact. The more he thought of his troubles, he says, “the fire burned” and his heart became “hot” within him.
And we all know what that’s like. Something riles us up, grates our gears, gets under our skin, or mildly irritates us, and then it comes. The word vomit. Those of us with a little more self control can do the pious thing and swallow it back down, but just like swallowing real vomit, it only tends to make things worse and eventually finds its way back up if the problem is serious enough.
The second (or maybe third, or fourth) time around, David gives up his piety and lets loose.
And this is actually really freeing for us. If, as I’ve asserted, we can make the Psalms our own, the Bible is more complex on its teaching concerning our words than we might think.
For a long time, texts like Ephesians 4:29
29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
and Philippians 2:14
14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing,
and finally, James 1:26
26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.
led me to guard my mouth with a muzzle and stay mute and silent because I didn’t want to incur the Lord’s displeasure by saying anything wrong — and I’m positive I’m not the only one i this room.
Psalm 39, among other things, actually gives us not only license, but perhaps even encouragement, to voice those less-than-edifying thoughts rather than trying to stuff them down until we explode with something even worse. Holding our tongues certainly has a place, but not if it leads us to emotional sepsis and eventually exploding; that’s the exact opposite of self-control.
Of course, this requires wisdom, but that’s another sermon series that maybe we’ll do next summer if the pendulum swings too far.
Let’s look at verses 4-11.
vv. 4-11: We lament because of the curse.
4 “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! 5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah 6 Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! 7 “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. 8 Deliver me from all my transgressions. Do not make me the scorn of the fool! 9 I am mute; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it. 10 Remove your stroke from me; I am spent by the hostility of your hand. 11 When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath! Selah
We saw in the last section an example of when to lament, and in this section we see some very good reasons for lamenting which can all be summed up under the fact that all of creation is under a curse — surely, as David emphasizes here.
After our first parents Adam and Eve sinned and disobeyed the Lord’s instructions for living in their first home, the Lord exiled them from that home and placed them, and all the earth, under a curse. The man was cursed that his toil would be futile and difficult, the woman was cursed that childbearing would be extremely painful, and all humanity was cursed to die and returned to dust. Not only that, but creation itself was cursed, too, and we’ll hear more about that in two weeks when we hear from Romans 8.
This curse is still in effect. All creation still groans, and we’re all still subject to death and returning to dust. Although death was defeated at Jesus’s resurrection, it has not yet been completely done away with. So in these in-between times, we have no reason to expect everything to be rosy, nor do we have to pretend that we’re not living outside of Eden. We still are.
And in verses 4-6, we see the effects of that curse. Compared to the Lord’s eternality, human life in the cursed world is quite often, as one philosopher put it, “nasty, brutish, and short.”
And David’s petition that the Lord remind him of that fact is good; as we’re lamenting we do well to remember that God is in fact perfectly sovereign and we are woefully inadequate to do his job.
So where do we turn in light of the frustrating and inescapable reality of our frailty and the cursedness of the world we occupy?
How about verse 7? We turn to the Lord himself. He is the one who has created everything and subjected it to the curse (which he is now undoing and will one day completely reverse and then some), and he is the one who gives us the breath in our lungs and instructs us the best way to live our lives according to his design.
And we know, just like David, that he is the only one who can empower us to follow those instructions, as verse 8 implies.
But now, we run into one more problem. What about when we turn to the Lord for relief from our distress, only to find that he’s the one causing the distress in the first place? David recognizes pretty clearly that this is the case in verses 9-11 and promptly gives up his complaint, perhaps recognizing that holding back the word vomit would be preferable to trying to litigate his case in the court of the Lord. It’s a lose-lose situation, to be sure, but a burning heart is better than God’s burning wrath.
And this brings us to another aspect of life in a cursed world. Even though God tells us he is merciful, slow to anger, gentle, kind, and patient with his people, characteristics that we love and cherish rightly, God is also unimaginably holy, and his hatred for sin runs deeper than we can even begin to fathom — a characteristic that we love and cherish rightly when others are sinning against us or when God’s hand of discipline is light upon us, and a characteristic that we love and cherish considerably less when his hand is heavy, so heavy in fact that it feels like we are in danger of being cast out of his kingdom, or, marginally better, killed on the spot.
Truth be told, I wish I would have discovered verse 10 a few years ago. When I first became a Christian, I was full of zeal — hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I even prayed at one point, “Lord, whatever it takes, make me as much like Jesus as possible. If suffering is how you bring that about, bring on the suffering.” I remember even sitting in the parking lot of my high school and praying, “God, I really don’t suffer all that much. Could you send some suffering my way so that I might be purified?”
And, my friends, God delighted to answer those prayers. I, of course, am stubborn and simply gritted my teeth and held on for dear life, and, being the pious young zealot I was, simply plowed ahead, resigning myself to a low-grade hopelessness and misery that life would just be one step above unbearable until I died or Jesus came back and then everything would be all right.
At one point, though, it all became too much — I think this was around the middle of 2019, and I had finally gotten to a point where I simply said, “God, can we please stop with all the discipline now? I know I’m not holy or mature or really anything close to where I should be, but this is just way too much. Can you please just take it easy for a little while?”
It felt horribly impious. I could barely get the words across my lips and grimaced as I waited for the hammer to fall and God to strike me down, but that day marked a turning point in my walk with the Lord, when I realized that the Lord is far more merciful and kind than I ever imagined. He taught me that he values my honesty and pitiful neediness far more than any outward acts of obedience or veneer of piety I might be able to manufacture largely on my own strength.
Now, enough autobiography. We’ve seen what lament is in and when to do it in verses 1-3, we’ve seen some general, creation-level reasons for lamenting in verses 4-11, so let’s move on to verses 12-13.
vv. 12-13: We lament because we are not home.
12 “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers. 13 Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more!”
Here, we’re going to focus on the middle of verse 12, specifically the phrase “like all my fathers”.
Now, one thing to know about David is that he was an ethnic Jew, a son of Abraham through the line of Isaac. This rather unremarkable detail actually contains a lot for us to unpack, and it can be all summed up like this: God’s chosen people have always been sufferers because they have never truly possessed their home.
Starting in Genesis 12, we see the story of God taking one man and turning him into a great, chosen nation, who would be the center of God’s redemption of creation. God took this man, Abraham, and turned him into the nation of Israel, to whom God gave the prophets and all his holy Scriptures to instruct the world how life is to be lived.
That project, however, was just a shadow, the entire nation’s history sovereignly superintended to be a foretaste of the work of Jesus of Nazareth. He has fulfilled all the conditions for God to redeem the world and now the only thing left for him to do in redemptive history is to return to the earth and set everything right — but in the meantime, his chosen people are still sojourners and guests, just like our father Abraham, into whose family we have been grafted by faith in God’s promises in Jesus.
So why can lament seem so foreign to us today?
We who belong to Jesus want to live the lives God has in store for us, but we too often fail, even though God’s Holy Spirit dwells in us and our old selves have been put to death. We continue sinning. That’s worth lamenting.
Even when we’re not stuck in patterns of sin, our bodies hurt. We have to take medicines, usually not to cure our ailments, but to make the side effects less unbearable — if medicine is even available to us. We get tired. We get hungry. We get cranky. We get old and slow and weak, and someday, we die and our bodies rot. That’s worth lamenting.
And even when we’re feeling pretty good and we’re living relatively decently, we should still feel the ache, the longing, for something better. We know how good God is. We know how incredibly wise and glorious and creative and full of joy he is, but we’re stuck here on this earth, with temporary buildings, and warfare, and economic uncertainty, and weeds and carpenter bees and nail guns that run out of nails when you’re trying to hold a 24-foot LVL beam in one hand and tack it in with the other — or at least I’ve heard stuff like that happens. These things are all worth lamenting, friends.
Life should be so much better than it is, and one day, it will be.
And we know this because of Jesus.
Consider what Psalm 39 teaches us about him.
Jesus perfectly guarded his ways, never sinning with his tongue, even when the wicked were in his presence. He was mute and silent, as a sheep led to the slaughter, and his distress grew worse, and worse, and worse. At the end, he did not merely cry out, “O Lord, make me know my end!” but, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The eternal Son of God took on human flesh and went about as a shadow, spending a life of turmoil not to heap up wealth and pleasure in this life, but to gather in God’s people.
Though his hope was in God, and he had no transgressions to be delivered from, he became the scorn of fools.
Instead of God removing his stroke, Jesus was spent by the hostility of God’s hand to the uttermost, himself being utterly consumed in the burning fires of God’s wrath, and in the process himself consuming that wrath to its very end.
Indeed, he who inhabited the glories of heaven with myriads of angels attending him in white-hot worship left his home to sojourn in this earth, and departed, and was no more as the Father turned his face away.
This is our Lord and Master, the Man of Sorrows in whose footsteps we are not only commanded to follow, but whose sufferings, Paul tells us in Philippians, are a gift as gracious to us as the very faith we have in that master. Let us continually approach his throne with boldness, casting ourselves on his mercy as we come to him not with our most pious, dressed-up, proper petitions, but with outstretched hands begging for even the smallest comfort he might grant us, as he has promised.
