Bringing our Tears to God
Notes
Transcript
Announcements
Announcements
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Introduction
Introduction
We’re taking a break from Acts to spend a month back in the Psalms
Dan was gracious to teach last week—looking at Psalm 90
How to teaches us wisdom by reminding us of our frailty and God’s eternal power
And today, we are going to be in a very different Psalm
Today’s Psalm is a gut-wrenching cry of desperation
A couple of weeks ago I taught on Psalm 51, how we bring our sin before God
How sin keeps us far from God—and poisons our prayer life
But not only does our sin separate us from God—but the broken sinful nature of this world does
We experience hardships and heartbreaks, betrayals and backstabbing
And in these times too, it can feel like God is far away
How many of you have experienced grief before?
How many of you have grieved the loss of a loved one?
How many of you have felt like you have hit rock bottom?
Nothing seems to matter
If you haven’t you will; If you have you will again
This is a normal experience
We live in a broken world that will hurt and bruise us
The Psalms actually give us words to pray in these moments
When we are hurt and wounded, when our eyes are filled with tears, and nothing seems to make sense
Actually, the largest sub-section of Psalms are Psalms like this
Around 40% of all of the Psalms are what we call lament Psalms
They are naming their pain and bringing it before God
So as we read Psalm 88, I want you to listen
These words are in the Bible
They are teaching us how to pray
We can talk to God like this—We should talk to God like this
Let’s read:
(SLIDES)
1 Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out before you day and night.
2 May my prayer reach your presence;
listen to my cry.
3 For I have had enough troubles,
and my life is near Sheol.
4 I am counted among those going down to the Pit.
I am like a man without strength,
5 abandoned among the dead.
I am like the slain lying in the grave,
whom you no longer remember,
and who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest part of the Pit,
in the darkest places, in the depths.
7 Your wrath weighs heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
Selah
8 You have distanced my friends from me;
you have made me repulsive to them.
I am shut in and cannot go out.
9 My eyes are worn out from crying.
Lord, I cry out to you all day long;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do departed spirits rise up to praise you?
Selah
11 Will your faithful love be declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Will your wonders be known in the darkness
or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?
13 But I call to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer meets you.
14 Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 From my youth,
I have been suffering and near death.
I suffer your horrors; I am desperate.
16 Your wrath sweeps over me;
your terrors destroy me.
17 They surround me like water all day long;
they close in on me from every side.
18 You have distanced loved one and neighbor from me;
darkness is my only friend.
(SLIDES BACK)
We see in this Psalm, and so many others—how we are to pray when life sucks
How we bring our sorrows and complaints to God
Outline:
(SLIDES)
Speak to God
Be honest with your words
Sit in the tension
Speak to God
Speak to God
One of the first things we notice in this Psalm… is that they are speaking to God
(SLIDE)
1 Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out before you day and night.
2 May my prayer reach your presence;
listen to my cry.
‘You/your’ appears 24 times
He is not complaining to himself
He is not rambling on about his sorrows
He is speaking to someone
He is addressing someone
This is true with prayers of lament, but also any prayer
They are addressed to our God
We are speaking to God—And he is listening to us
And for this reason… even though the Psalmist is blaming God for part of his problems, it is a prayer of faith
BY FAITH the Psalmist believes that God hears his prayer
He knows that it doesn’t feel like that
14 Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face from me?
He feels like God is hiding from him
But BY FAITH he knows that God still hears him
Does the sun still exist in the middle of a thunderstorm?
And this is key… when we are going through it… Satan wants to tempt us to believe that God no longer hears our prayers
He wants us to believe that when the clouds come out to cover the sun—that the sun is gone
But this Psalm teaches us to press in, even when it doesn’t feel like God is near
(SLIDES)
6 Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Object of Faith vs Blind Faith
Chairs Example - (Photos)
(SLIDE TO MAIN)
So first, we have to give God our attention
We pray to God
Second,
Be honest with your words
Be honest with your words
When we pray to God, we don’t have to hold back
God can take it, I promise you
God is absolutely committed to loving you until the end
Nothing you could possibly say could ever change God’s love for you
So we are free to speak our hearts
“We must lay before him what is in us; not what ought to be in us” — C.S. Lewis
Expound
And this Psalm is giving us permission to pray our hearts
This is in the Bible!
The Psalmist is accusing God as the author of all of their problems:
(SLIDES)
5I am like the slain lying in the grave,
whom you no longer remember
(SLIDES)
6 You have put me in the lowest part of the Pit,
in the darkest places, in the depths.
7 Your wrath weighs heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
(SLIDES)
8 You have distanced my friends from me;
you have made me repulsive to them.
(SLIDES)
14 Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face from me?
(SLIDES)
16 Your wrath sweeps over me;
your terrors destroy me.
17 They surround me like water all day long;
they close in on me from every side.
18 You have distanced loved one and neighbor from me;
darkness is my only friend.
(SLIDES BACK)
Who does the Psalmist blame for all of their troubles in this Psalm?
Not themselves
Not their enemies
Not Satan
But God
Again, this is in the Bible—God can take it
God can take our nastiest words and hurts
But we have to be honest with our words
When we are deeply hurting on the inside, we can’t expect to just clean ourselves up and come before God
To shove all of the hardships under the rug and hope God doesn’t notice
But we bring these things to God in prayer
Finally we,
Sit in the tension
Sit in the tension
There is a major tension in this Psalm
The Psalmist is literally torn in two
We already read all of the verses accusing God
But we also read:
(SLIDE)
1 Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out before you day and night.
(SLIDE)
9 My eyes are worn out from crying.
Lord, I cry out to you all day long;
I spread out my hands to you.
(SLIDE)
13 But I call to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer meets you.
The tension we find in this Psalm is:
(SLIDES)
God loves us
God is all powerful
Why do bad things happen?
Why doesn’t he just stop it?
The Psalmist is filled with faith
But also angry at God
He is sitting in the tension
When we are in this tension, there is a need to lament
There is a need to speak up — to make our complaints known — to name our pain before the Lord
But for the most part, we don’t like living in the tension
We want things to be resolved immediately
We want to control our situations
We want to control others around us
We don’t like being out of control
Without living in this tension we tend to fall to either extreme
We trust God’s goodness in faith but hold onto our sorrows and pains because we never acknowledge them
Ex. Funeral — no sorrow
We give up on the goodness of God and are filled with bitterness and anger towards him
God is all powerful—but He must not love us
Ex. Friends in college
We need to listen to the Psalms, that are teaching us how to pray
Without praying our hearts out we often numb ourselves
The tension is too much for us to stay in
Numb the pain through distraction or sin
Try to convince ourselves that things will be okay
Try to fix our own or other people’s problems
Numbing one area of your life doesn’t work
Conclusion
Conclusion
Although we sit in the tension—we don’t always stay there
Psalm 88 is actually unique to all of the Psalms
It is the only lament Psalm that ends in sadness and despair—and sometimes our life is like that
But almost every other time we see a Psalm like this, it ends in praise
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.
We are people who lament, but we don’t need to stay in lament forever
We know that praise gets the final word
We know the end of the story
We know that no hardship, trial, or loss, can stop God’s love for us and his plans for our life
Even when nothing seem to make sense, we know how the story ends
Even though we carry our crosses
We know the hope of the resurrection
We can pray these prayers because Jesus prayed these prayers
On the cross Jesus prayed Psalms of lament
And God heard his prayers—and answered them
Praise God the final word
And no matter what you are going through today—God has not abandoned you
Reflection
Reflection
