Laments

Sermon Style Sheet

Write that down in your formation Journal

Illustration

Sermon Text

Sermon Text: Scripture

Call to Worship

Psalm 68:19–20 CSB

19 Blessed be the Lord! Day after day he bears our burdens; God is our salvation. Selah 20 Our God is a God of salvation, and escape from death belongs to the Lord my Lord.

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Passage:

Formation Journal Page Number: 11:45-12:36 12:54-1:40

Psalm 13 CSB

For the choir director. A psalm of David. 1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me? 3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death. 4 My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,” and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. 5 But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. 6 I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.

Opening Illustration:

Test

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Getting into the Sermon

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This IS Us

[AVOIDING sadness and confusion doesn’t make things better.]

One of the biggest problems we face is our inability to deal with and process grief and confusion.

This is both a cultural problem and a theological problem

We have an underlying assumption that the purpose of life is happiness. To have fun. And so we don’t have a way to process it.

Everything is now the power of positive thinking and to allow yourself to feel real sadness is a problem.

But here’s the deal, I was already always on the brink of saddness. There was so much poverty and pain.

We do everything we can to avoid it.

creates frustration

Creates loneliness

But it also causes a problem theologically. If we don’t allow for confusion about things then we don’t have an authentic faith. Why? Because people like David were confused! It’s all throughout the Bible, and it’s never answered.

The Bible teaches what God wants us to know about him.

who he is ,how he loves us, what he expects from us, how we can please him.

The bible teaches alot

But it isn’t an anatomy book on God.

Candy before you go to bed - why

here’s what I mean by that… ok

So there is a particular question: why do bad things happen? Or why do bad things happen to good people? That’s the question.

Now there theological answer is pretty clear. Sin entered the world - there are not really good people- Just jesus.

Emotional question disguised as a theological question from someone looking for peace.

But when you are going through a time of confusion and anger and grief, that doesn’t really help. You know why? Because that’s not really the question.

The heart of that question is really this: why did this bad thing happen to me?

Why am I faced with job loss? Why am I faced with this disease? Why am I faced with this death of a loved one? Why am I going through this?

See that’s really the question. That’s the emotion behind the question. And so if we bottle it up, pretend like we aren’t confused, pretend like we aren’t in pain then the doubts get bigger and bigger and we eventually lose our faith.

It doesn’t give us theology to trust it gives us a person to trust.

He doesn’t say “Trust me, shut up, there’s no reason to be sad.”

[LAMENTS are prayers that help us express our sadness, doubt, confusion and fear.]

But the psalms give us a voice to be sad and to be confused and to take our confusion to God. The category of psalms are called laments. Perhaps one of the most famous ones is Psalm 13

So that’s what we are going to walk through today because the psalms are great tools to use in our prayer life. To give us words and ideas that can be our own in a god honoring way.

We don’t know the context exactly but this is a psalm of David. He was the king…

[Laments start with HONEST emotions]

Psalm 13:1–2 CSB

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me?

Verse one is probably the lament I pray the most. How long? Will you forget me forever?

How do you feel about it? You feel like God has forgotten you. That he doesn’t see you!

There was a movie series called the purge, and it was set in a society where one day a year all crime become legal - so imagine, what it would be like if God wasn’t looking after you? If he had forgotten you? That’s what it means to say that he has hidden his face

What we can tell is that he is in a situation where he is out of his depth.

He is sad, he is scared he is anxious.

North Carolina sadness

Panama lockdown - I said, “they can’t do it forever” You don’t know that. She was right? I didn’t know.

So let me ask you, are exasperated by any long term struggles. Maybe it’s financial, and you are working and doing what you think you should be doing but nothing ever seems to go right.

You just get some extra one but then something goes wrong.

You have a health struggle and you are praying and praying

You are having some relational trouble and you are praying and praying

And you say “how long oh lord”

But do you see how he is just being honest in his conversation with God? He is making accusations.

we don’t like it-

[Doubts addressed to GOD still contain faith]

We know better- we have better theology than that

Now I want to ask you a question - is this real or is this how he feels? Did God really abandon him? Did he really look the other way?

Of course not. Now here’s something else - does David actually think that God isn’t paying attention to him?

Emotionally, this is how he feels. But I think theologically he knows God hasn’t.

[Our negative emotions will OVERWHELM our good theology if we don’t lament.]

He’s walked with God too long to not know that God is there.

What about you?

So why do I think David actually knows the truth? Because he is talking to God. In fact, look at what he says next

We are sometimes afraid to be that honest with God - especially if you think about the times where God disciplined the people for their doubts.

So we see that laments start with honest emotions but then [Laments move to CRIES for help]

Psalm 13:3–4 CSB

3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death. 4 My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,” and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

He is asking for help! You don’t ask someone for help unless there’s part of you that still believes he is there. That he is still listening.

Look what he says - consider me - answer me. I may die! My enemies will rejoice.

David is at the end of his rope!

Then you start getting your wits about you a little more, and you go from complaining to pleading, to begging. Please God change this! Please I’m at the end of my rope!”

But you know what happens after that? If you are a christian and if you can spend time doing this and can get your bible out and start reflecting on scripture as you pray, you know what happens, you start to get hope.

You start to remember that you never had power. That all of you victories in the past were really God’s victories!

[Laments help RENEW your faith]

Psalm 13:5–6 CSB

5 But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. 6 I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.

Let me ask you a question - don’t answer it out loud - but has his situation changed? Has anything actually taken place between verse 4 and 5?

Probably not. Look what’s happening here:

In verse 5 he says I have trusted- that means that he has determined that he is going to trust God.

Say “faithful love”

He is trusting in his faithful love. That’s god’s steadfast love or covenantal love.

Covenantal love - the gospel

{ABC’s of repentance}. That means that you have a rock solid reason to trust in his good intentions towards you.

Adopted

He is so confident of God’s covenantal love that he then looks in the future and says, my heart will rejoice. He is anticipating the joy of his salvation

And he is confident that he is going to sing to the Lord! He is seeing this a done deal!

What does that mean for us?

I don’t think it means that we can be confident that we are always going to get the outcome we deisre.

I do think it means that we can be completly confident that God loves us and will never stop loving us.

He will never stop seeing you. He will never stop hearing you.

And ultimately God will bring you through. How do I know this

When I was in North Carolina, there were jobs that seemed perfect and I wanted a specific outcome. Looking back on it, 18 years later, almost 20 years late, was God faithful?

Do I understand it?

It doesn’t matter - because what do I understand - I understand that Jesus loves, he is committed to me, his faithful love is secure for me and he promises a future I couldn’t create on my own.

Revelation 21:1–6 CSB

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. 3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away. 5 Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.” 6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life.

Do you see what it’s promising to you?

I want you to learn to pray. I want you to learn to express all your emotions to God. negative all of them.

[Don’t HIDE from God.]

This isn’t quick. It’s a process.

All of the time, God will move you from distress to hope through prayer.

most of the time - you come back feeling better

I went and I prayed some more - there’s certain aspects of the christian life that you can only experience through dedicated times of prayer. There’s no fast forwarding it

If you are going through a particualry difficult time, get out your bible, open to psalm 1, and then start skimming them until you get to some that resonate with you, and use that as an outline for your prayer.

Psalm 13 stuck on verse 1 for 3 hours. That’s ok. Because then you pick yourself up and go from complaining to pleading.

And then let the holy spirit work in your life so that you can move towards hope. Maybe turn to Revelation the new heavens use that to remind yourself of God’s covenantal love

Pray for Mercy Hill - christian friendship, that get’s killed if people fast track grief and pain. If you fast grief, confussion pain, they won’t love you for it. They’ll hide. So pray for us. Pray that we would overcome the cultures teaching us that we need to sprint through negative emotion. Pray that the spirit would teach us, to sit with each other. To encourage each other. To allow each other to be sad, the way david did. Pray that we would be a church that can lament togehter.

Lord’s Supper:

On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 

Benediction:

Psalm 34:4–5 CSB

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and rescued me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant with joy; their faces will never be ashamed.

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD makes his face shine upon you and be gracious to you:

The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.