How Long, Oh Lord?
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
I don’t have a funny story to share with you this morning. It’s been a hard week.
On Tuesday, I learned that a close friend’s father had died, and on Thursday, I flew up to New York to be with him for the funeral. And then, last night, just a few hours after my flight had returned me home, I learned that a dear brother in Christ here at Liberty Spring, Emery Nichols, had passed away.
I spent some time with Sue last night, along with some others from the church, and I can report to you what most of you already know: Sue is an incredibly strong and godly woman.
She knows that Emery is no longer suffering and that he stands today in the presence of our Lord, and so she bravely comforted we who had come to her house to offer HER comfort. She told stories about Emery and thanked God that the suffering her husband of 54 years was now over.
But I know she is heartbroken. And I am heartbroken.
As I drove to Sue’s house last night, I tried to pray, and the truth is that I just couldn’t find the words. All I could manage as I thought back over the deaths this week and those we have laid to rest in the past several months was this: “Oh, God. So much death. So much suffering....”
I want to be able to stand up here today and tell you that I understand it all. As your pastor, I want to be able to walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death and tell you that I don’t feel almost overwhelmed by its presence.
But those things would be untrue.
Intellectually, I can understand what’s happening, and I can even explain it theologically. I can tell you with all sincerity that as a follower of the risen Jesus, I have no FEAR of death, because I trust His promise to raise those who have followed Him to eternal life.
But emotionally, I find myself standing with Jesus outside Lazarus’ tomb and weeping. So much death. So much suffering. So much heartache.
And so, I prayerfully decided late last night to set aside our study of the church for a week to simply stand before you in lament — and to ask you to be with me there this week.
Being a pastor is hard in ways I never expected. And perhaps the hardest of those ways is seeing members of the flock suffering. And there has been plenty of suffering in this flock during the past year or so.
I never understood the weight of that suffering on the shoulders of a pastor until I became one. Until I became a pastor, I never had experienced the full impact of the Christians’ call to weep with those who weep.
And so, caught up, quite frankly, in despair over the suffering and pain I have seen among so many people I love, last night I turned to the Psalms for help.
The Book of Psalms has been called “The Prayerbook of the Bible,” and rightly so, since so many of the Psalms are written as direct appeals to God, or as praises to Him.
There are about 59 psalms that can be considered psalms of lament. These are the psalms in which a Holy Spirit-inspired author cried out to God for deliverance from some situation, where they called out, “God, where are you?!” where they bowed before Him and cried, “God, I need you now.”
It’s comforting to me to know that God is not afraid of or offended by these cries. He understands that we will sometimes feel lost, and overwhelmed, and alone, even when we intellectually understand His promise to never leave or forsake those who love Him.
And when I scanned through these psalms of lament scattered throughout the Book of Psalms, one in particular caught my eye, Psalm 90.
So, today, I want to walk us through this psalm, not just by way of teaching and exhortation, but also as a shared experience of lament.
I know I am not the only one here today who feels overwhelmed by the harsh realities of life on this sin-cursed earth. I know I am not the only one who has whispered, “God I need you now” this week. Maybe I’m not the only one who wept in the shower last night.
What I hope we will all see this morning is that the questions we have, the heartbreak we experience, the longing within us for things to be right are the same questions, heartbreak, and longing that God’s people have had for thousands of years.
And the same God in whom they placed their faith is the one we worship here together today. He is the one who holds the answers, the one who heals broken hearts, the one who will one day make all things right again.
Psalm 90 was written by Moses, probably while the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness after being delivered by God from their captivity in Egypt.
By this time, God would have revealed to Moses that the generation that had escaped from slavery in Egypt would not be allowed into the Promised Land because of their lack of faith in Him.
They would die in the wilderness, and their children would inherit the Promised Land, that place which the spies they had sent to scout it out had reported as being “a land flowing with milk and honey.”
Indeed, it’s likely that, by the time Moses wrote this prayer, the Israelites had been in the wilderness for a long time, and many of them would already have passed away.
Moses would have struggled to know how to inspire hope in the rest of the group. He would have wondered how to help them make sense of what was happening, how to comfort them as they watched the life pass out of their loved ones, how to lead them through the valley of the shadow of death.
But as we see in the title of this psalm, “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God,” Moses was not just the man whom God had ordained for this hard task. He was also a man who made it his habit to turn to God in faith, whether in good times or bad.
And so, even though what seems to have been on Moses’ mind when he wrote this prayer was the great loss of life that he was seeing all around him, Moses started just where he should have started — with praise for God’s faithfulness.
1 Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
“From everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”
Before there was — anything — there was God. When time is no more, there will be — God. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And since the very beginning, those who have put their faith in Him as the good and righteous keeper of promises have found that He is the one in whom they can find shelter from the storms of life.
In Him is life itself. In Him is peace and comfort and joy, even when nothing else makes sense, even when things seem hopeless, even when we feel overwhelmed and alone. He is our rock and our fortress.
He is truly the one we need every hour of every day. So, why is it that we so often wait until we’re overwhelmed to look for Him? If He is our dwelling place, why do we so often find ourselves so far from the comfort of being at home with Him?
Please remain seated, and join our singers as we sing “I Need Thee Every Hour.”
SONG
“I need thee every hour, come joy or pain. Come quickly and abide, or life is vain.”
Certainly as they faced the reality of God’s judgment for their lack of faith in Him, the people of Israel must have wondered if their lives were in vain.
As they lost their family members and friends, and as they remembered that God had said they would not live to see the Promised Land, they must have have given much thought to the brevity of their lives.
Indeed, it seems to me that the older I get the more aware I am that life is fleeting. Moses seems to have had the same thoughts, as we see beginning in verse 3.
3 You turn man back into dust And say, “Return, O children of men.” 4 For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or as a watch in the night. 5 You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep; In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. 6 In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; Toward evening it fades and withers away.
A young guy came into the shop on Monday and told me what a long week it already had been for him. “I just wish it were Friday,” he said.
We’ve all had those kinds of weeks, I’m sure. But I remember thinking, “We’re only given so many Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Maybe we shouldn’t wish them away so easily.”
Unless Jesus returns in our lifetimes, we will all eventually return to the dust from which we were taken when God made Adam. And however limitless and full of possibility life might seem at 20, by the time we hit 50 the calendar seems to flip past as if caught in a windstorm.
And from God’s eternal perspective, our own 70, 80, or even 100 years are like a watch in the night, just a few hours passing before Him. We spring to life with the beauty and promise of delicate flowers, and then we’re gone.
Life on earth is both brief and frail.
But for the believer, this brief and frail life is but a shadow of what we will experience in the resurrection.
We who have placed our faith in the resurrected Christ can be sure that, even as He conquered death itself at the empty tomb, we too will be raised to live with Him in glorified bodies that are no longer warped and damaged by the sin that has broken us.
And this is, in fact, the theological answer to the great question, “Why?”
We are all sinners. And sin brought death into the world. Where there is sin, there is death. And we know there is still sin in the world, because there is still death in the world.
Every time we lie or cheat or gossip or do anything else that fails to reflect the perfect and righteous character of the perfectly righteous God in whose image we were created, we sin against Him. And He is perfectly just in His just judgment of sin.
Moses writes about this beginning in verse 7.
7 For we have been consumed by Your anger And by Your wrath we have been dismayed. 8 You have placed our iniquities before You, Our secret sins in the light of Your presence. 9 For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh. 10 As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away. 11 Who understands the power of Your anger And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You? 12 So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.
There are no secret sins before God. And the wages of sin is death. And even the good things we might do here on earth are but labor and sorrow when they’re set against the indignity of our rebellion.
But God loves us, even though we have rebelled against Him in our sins.
And so, He sent His own unique and eternal Son, Jesus, to live among us as a man. And yet, Jesus lived in a way that none of us does. He lived in perfect obedience to God to show us how such a life would look, to show us the power of perfect fellowship with God.
And then, to show us perfect love, Jesus gave Himself for us as a sacrifice on the cross. There, He took upon Himself the sins of all mankind — yours and mine and everyone else’s — and He took for Himself the punishment for those sins.
He suffered not just the physical death, but the spiritual separation from the Father with whom He had eternally existed in perfect harmony and fellowship so that those who follow Him in faith could be reconciled to God.
He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We who have no righteousness within ourselves can now BE righteous through faith in Jesus.
This is the heart of wisdom. This is the love of God written in the blood of His own Son.
Remain seated, and join our singers in singing “The Love of God.”
SONG
As Moses and the people of that lost generation of Israel wandered the wilderness, I think that in their darkest hours, they may have wondered, “Where is God? Why has He left us here to die?”
Surely, they would have understood the judgment He had passed on an intellectual level. And it’s likely that many of the people of that generation would have repented from their sin of faithlessness. After all, they clearly taught the next generation to fear God — to love Him and place their faith in Him.
But on an emotional level, they probably weren’t that different from us. We who have followed Jesus in faith still watch as friends and loved ones suffer and die.
And we know that Jesus will return one day and make all things new. That He will raise our believing loved ones from the dead and give them glorified bodies and that we will live in His presence together forever.
And yet, we find ourselves weeping in the shower. We find ourselves unable to pray, except to say, “So much suffering, Lord. So much pain. So much death. So much heartbreak.”
And then, we turn our faces to heaven and cry out, “How long, Lord? How long will it be until you return?”
That’s what Moses did. Look at verse 13.
13 Do return, O Lord; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants. 14 O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. 15 Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us, And the years we have seen evil. 16 Let Your work appear to Your servants And Your majesty to their children. 17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
We have seen so much evil. We have seen so much suffering. Some days, it just seems to heap itself up until there’s nothing else to see.
But God is at work. Evil will not prevail. Death has been conquered at the cross.
And one day, we will see the majesty of God in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, as He comes in the clouds, with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise, and we who are alive and remain will be caught up with Him in the clouds. And we will be transformed.
What will you have done then of eternal value? What will you have done for the Kingdom of Heaven?
THIS is how our lives have significance as we wander the wilderness of this earth, waiting for the Promised Land.
Life is short, and life is fragile, and when we are gone, there is little, if anything, that will remain to testify of our time here on earth.
But if you are a follower of Christ, the testimony that will matter is in heaven. Vernon McGee put it better than I ever could: “Oh, to do something in this life that will have value in eternity!”
Brothers and sisters, make what you do here matter. But even more important, make what you do here matter in eternity. God will redeem the suffering and pain of this world. Let Him use you as an instrument of that work.
And if you have never placed your faith in Jesus as your only means of being reconciled to God — if you’ve never trusted Him for salvation — if you’ve never turned to the shelter of a dwelling place with God — today, I want to ask you this: Where will you find peace? Where will you find comfort? Where will you find hope in this troubled world outside of God in Christ?
You can have those things today. But you have to stop trying to have them your own way. You can only have them through Jesus. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Won’t you come this morning into His loving arms?