For My Sin (Psalm 38:1-22)

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Good morning church. Go ahead, grab your Bibles, open up to Psalm 38 Psalm 38 as we wrap up our series in lament, as Kyle just mentioned. And so here we are, last series, last sermon in the series on lament. And we’re lamenting the brokenness of this world we’re lamenting. We have to learn to lament, because there is so much that is wrong in this world, so much pain, so much sorrow, so much suffering, so much evil. That raises an immediate question, of course, which is, Why is the world broken? And ultimately, of course, we know from Scripture that all sorrow and all suffering has its roots in sin. It is rooted in the problem of sin. In other words, we broke the world when we rebelled against God, when Adam and Eve rebelled against God way back in the Garden of Eden, as recorded in Genesis three. So all lament involves lamenting sins presence like that’s what we’re lamenting, the fact that sin is here and has messed things up. Sin wrecks lives, sin ruins relationships. Sin destroys everything in its path, which I think gives us a better perspective on sin. In some ways, we sometimes conceive of sin as like an individual mistake, and it may be that also, but sin is like taking a sledgehammer to this dam that is a holding back all the world’s sorrows and evils. It’s this crack in the dam, and then we’re shocked when the dam collapses and we’re drowning in sorrow like what happened here. We did it. We did this. And so we, as one writer, put it, we lament sin, not just because sin sends us to hell, but because sin makes life hell here and now Now, sometimes we can connect the dots between sin and suffering directly. We start to see right my sin here is leading to my struggle here. And when that happens, our prayers of lament morph into prayers of confession. We see this in Scripture. See this in Psalms in particular. That’s what we’re going to see today. But let me start even with an example from my own life, like how I experienced this I was, at one point, it was a number of years ago now, let go from a ministry position that I held. And I was let go, at least in my eyes, unjustly, and I would go so far even as to say vindictively. And so I was struggling, obviously, and turned to the psalms of lament as I was praying during this time, even some of the imprecatory Psalms, you know, Lord, smash the teeth of the wicked. And I’m like, you know, these are brothers in Christ. Just give them a toothache. You don’t need to smack, you know, like but so turn to the psalms of lament and praying through this, but in the process and and hearing the the psalmist like David wrestle with their own sin, I began to see not just the sin against me, but also my part in it, kind of like, okay, yes, this was unjust, maybe a little bit vindictive, but at the same time, if I hadn’t been who I was, this also probably wouldn’t have happened. And it led into confession. I think that’s how lament often works, and so the last place we need to go to complete our very brief introduction to lament is sin. In the first week, we talked about our personal suffering, our personal struggles as an individual lament for my struggle, and gave us kind of the blueprint from there last week, then we looked at what it looks like for us to lament for a corporate suffering or struggle might be a national or a local tragedy or something that happens to us as a congregation even. But this week, we look at a lament for my sin and our sin. Now we don’t know the specific context where what’s causing David to pray this prayer here in Psalm 38 but honestly, that’s helpful. Allows us to apply it in different circumstances, I think, and we are going to follow the same pattern as we look at Psalm 38 that we’ve seen in these other sermons that we preached here in the last two weeks where we look at the cry, the complaint, the case, and then ultimately the confidence so Psalm 38 A Psalm of David. Let me read the verses one to four for us as we look at David’s cry to God. Psalm 38 one to four, a Psalm of David, a petition Lord. Do not. Rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath, your arrows have pierced me. Your hand has come down on me because of your wrath, there is no health in my body, there is no soundness in my bones. Because of my sin, my guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. The word cry is exactly right here. When we read this Psalm, it almost feels like we’re committing an indecency reading it because we’re like listening in on this deeply personal conversation that David is having with God. Seven times in this psalm, he addresses God directly, including the very first word, Lord Yahweh. But again in verse nine, twice in verse 15, twice in verse 21 again in verse 22 he keeps speaking to God. He is crying Yes, but he is crying to God. Now, why does David cry out? Well, it’s because currently, God’s hand is heavy on him, in his anger, in his wrath against David’s sin. He says that God’s arrows have pierced Him, and there’s this disease of some sort that is plaguing him. As a result, there’s this interesting shift that happens as we move from verse one to verse three. You look at verse one right, do not rebuke me in your anger. Discipline me in your wrath, even verse three because of your wrath. So everything’s getting turned on, God to begin like it’s kind of your problem, Lord, until we get to the end of verse three, because of your wrath, there’s no health in my body. There’s no soundness in my bones because of my sin, my sin. So David understands that he’s the reason he’s suffering. He’s the reason for his suffering. He’s not pleading his innocence before the Lord. No, he’s pleading for mercy. Despite his lack of innocence, despite his manifest guilt, he is he says, Here sick because he sinned Now, having said that, we have to be really careful here, we’re going to need to affirm three statements in rapid succession, or we will go off track. Theologically, we’re going to pull all Scripture together here real quick, do a biblical theology of sin and sickness, three statements we have to affirm. First of all, we must affirm, because the Bible affirms it that all sickness and all suffering is a result of sin. All suffering all sickness is a result of sin in a general sense, in a general sense, because sin brings death and destruction into the world. Again, we broke it, and now we live in a broken world. Second though, not all sickness, not all suffering, is a direct result of sin,
where we can just connect the dots immediately you did this, therefore this happened. We know this because of books like job. Kind of the point of the whole book of Job, in many ways, it’s nothing that Job did. It’s not that he sinned in some way. In fact, God himself in the book of Job says that’s not what’s happening here. Job is actually the most righteous person on the planet. Something else is going on. Or John. Chapter nine, the disciples say to Jesus, who sinned, this man or his parents that he should be born blind, we need to connect the dots here, just which.do I connect it to? And Jesus goes, No, guys, not because of that. It’s so that the glory of God may be displayed in him. Second, Corinthians, 12, Paul’s praying that the thorn in his flesh would be removed, and God says it’s there for a reason. Okay, it’s keeping you humble. You’re gonna be grateful for it. So not all sickness, not all suffering, is a direct result of sin. Third statement we need to affirm, some sickness, some suffering, is a direct result of sin, where we can draw that straight line. David knows this because David has it happened twice, even in his own life, after his sin with Bathsheba and after he simply takes the census of the military men. In both cases, people suffer as a result, direct result, of his sin. Miriam Moses’s sister, when she attacks his leadership, becomes leprous, at least for a time when, of course, we could do this when it comes to sickness, even specifically what David is talking about here, there are some sins in areas like lust or gluttony that lead. Directly to certain illnesses. Of course, have to affirm all three at the same time. Now, which do we have here? Though, is this sickness a direct result or not? We have no idea. David actually doesn’t tell us here. Doesn’t say but what we are clear on is that this illness opens David’s eyes to His spiritual plight. So whether it’s a direct result or not, it causes him to look inward and see some stuff that he doesn’t like. That’s often how suffering works, by the way, when suffering hits, when sorrow hits, we see our self reliance, our practical atheism, my story again, the one that I shared to start, I saw my arrogance. It’s hard to believe. I know I’ve grown a lot, but try to picture it. And so it leads to this self examination. John Piper has got a good analogy that explains how this works. Oftentimes, our lives are a little bit like a bottle of water with a bunch of sediment in the bottom, and so if you’re looking at the bottle, it’s clear, looks pure, even you might be willing to take a sip until something jars the bottle and the sediment shakes up, and then you’re looking at that going, No, thanks, I’ll get a different bottle. And that’s what we see in our own lives, and that’s also why suffering accomplishes such good in us. I like the way John Calvin says it. He’s commenting on a psalm just a few earlier than this one. He says, No one can give himself cheerfully to prayer until he has been softened by the cross and thoroughly subdued. This is the chief advantage of afflictions, that while they make us sensible of our wretchedness, they stimulate us again to supplicate the favor of God, okay, because they make us aware of our wretchedness. That means they also make us turn to God. That’s exactly what’s happened to David here, so that he is, verse four, crushed, not just by the burden of his suffering, but by his sin and guilt as well. And so he recognizes his guilt, and he cries out to God, there’s a lesson for us in this, of course, let lament lead to self examination. Maybe, as you’re suffering, and you look at it, you’re checking in, and you can see there is a direct line, okay, repent of that. But maybe there isn’t a direct you’re just suffering as a general result of sin. Okay. Still bemoan sins power. Practicing lament like this will lead to an increasing pursuit of godliness, because it will stir that kind of self examination and a greater sensitivity to sin. I love the way Glenn Pemberton puts it. Quoted him in the first sermon as well. He says, If lament is the practice of being honest with God, it stands to reason that I must first be honest about myself, and that’s what’s happening here. Not easy, though, right? Not easy. Much easier to blame other people. But what I find interesting then, so David says, Okay, this is my fault, right? It’s my sin, it’s my guilt. But it’s interesting that owning his sin doesn’t keep David from petitioning God. He doesn’t say, I’m suffering, although it’s my fault, and then walk away. He says, I’m suffering, it’s my fault. Lord, I still want to make my complaint, and that’s where we go next. So let’s keep reading the complaint. Verses five to 12. David writes, My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly, I am bowed down and brought very low. All day long, I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain. There is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed. I groan in anguish of heart. All my longings lie open before you Lord. My sighing is not hidden from you. My heart pounds, my strength fails me, even though light has gone from my eyes, my friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds, my neighbors stay far away. Those who want to kill me set their traps. Those who would harm me talk of my ruin all day long. They scheme and lie. The complaint changes when we are conscious of our sin. It’s not why is this happening, Lord, but I know why this is happening, Lord, but would you please stop it still? Would you please intervene still? And that’s exactly. What David says, right? He says, My wounds fester because of my folly. And Folly is, in the Hebrew language, just a fancy way of saying spiritual stupidity, of which we are all guilty, unfortunately. Now, what folly in particular? Again, Folly is a it’s not an intellectual category, it’s a moral category. And so it means flouting God’s will, disobeying God’s commands, and expecting that he won’t notice or care. That’s folly, right there, and it is silly beyond words. And so David recognizes this owns it. But then notice how methodically he still lists his complaints three specific areas, all related and all stemming from this sin. So first of all, we know that he’s got some sort of disease, some sort of physical affliction. He’s got Festering Wounds, which is not good, because that means they probably smell bad, even, which we’ll come back to in a moment. He’s got back problems. We see in verse seven, although if you’re in a different translation, it may say sides are burning or something like that, really difficult to translate, but something is hurting anyway, like he’s got chronic pain. In fact, we’ll say that in verse 17, my pain is ever with me. It almost sounds like he’s got, like fibromyalgia or something like that’s a sort of painful experience that he’s got here at least.
Then second, his disease, his physical affliction, leads to social rejection. Verse 11, my friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds. My neighbors stay far away again, maybe because he smells bad, because his wounds stink. It’s interesting. The word he uses there in verse 11 for wounds, more literally, is plagues. But that doesn’t sound quite right to us in English, but that word plague is used most often of leprosy, and I wonder if he chose this word, even though it’s probably not the right word, in a sense, because he feels like a leper in this time, because he’s being rejected, he’s being cast out. You can’t come around us any longer. Derek Kidner comments on this verse. He says it’s ironic, although we probably have all seen it many times, but it’s ironic that the more a person needs human support, the less by his abnormality, he naturally attracts it. So when we’re in trials and again, maybe it’s a health problem, but maybe it’s something else. Grief would be a really good example. Those are the people that a lot of us avoid like the plague because we don’t know what to do with them. We don’t want to get whatever they have, something like that. It’s actually only the gospel that will overcome that tendency in us to stay away from people who are suffering and instead to rush towards them. I mean, think of Matthew eight, where a man comes to Jesus, but he comes to Jesus as a leper, which you’re not supposed to do. Of course, leper is supposed to walk away from people. Instead, this guy goes right up to Jesus, and he’s got no pretensions of any sort, no claims to control or anything like that. He’s not saying, Jesus, I’ve got most of my life together. I just need help in this one little area I’m leprous or anything like that. No, he just comes and he says, I’ve got nothing. All I have is this hope, if you are willing, you can make me clean, and Jesus says, I’m willing be clean. But do you think of the brutal self honesty that would take to come to someone and say, I have no hope except you? And that’s what’s often lacking again, where sorrow can lead to salvation from sin. Really, I’m reading a book right now about a woman. It’s her testimony of salvation. But she was addicted to psychedelic drugs, LSD, mushrooms, things like that. And she would always look at other people, heroin addicts, cocaine addicts, those were druggies. Those were addicts, not her. Her mind was just being opened. So she couldn’t bring herself to that place of saying, I need help because I am a drug addict. We have to speak that truth about ourselves. So again, we see how lament breeds that sort of self examination, that confession. And so I’m not saying it’s true in every case, you know, every illness or anything like that, but, but sometimes with this social rejection, it could lead us to go, Okay, I’m being rejected, but maybe I’m being rejected because I’m a liar, I’m rude. You. People just don’t want to be around me. Or again, in my case, my story, I’m arrogant. People get tired of it after a while. So some sort of disease, physical affliction, leads to social rejection, and then third enemies plotting his ruin. That’s verse 12. Maybe they see an opening. Here are these rivals to the throne scheming for it. If he dies, is this a chance to shame him? You know, in an honor shame culture, I don’t know. We just know that all of this is happening simultaneously and all as a result of David’s sin. So with all this going on, you know, he can’t help we couldn’t help but cry out to God in confession and complaint. And here again, is one of the great benefits of our suffering, is sin and suffering. That combination sin and suffering expose our powerlessness, that lack of control, so that we do come to Jesus like spiritual lepers. I like the way Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it. He lost his son when his son was a teenager, early 20, or something like that. And he wrote a book, a lament for the son. And he writes this. He says, we live in a time and place where, over and over, when confronted with something unpleasant, we pursue not coping, but overcoming, really true of us, by the way. So we’re not trying to figure out how to go through something. We’re always trying to figure out how to get out of something, right? And so that’s what he’s talking about here. Often we succeed. Most of humanity has not enjoyed and does not enjoy such luxury good. To keep in mind, death shatters our illusion that we can make do without coping when we have overcome absence with phone calls. He wrote this a while ago. I mean, think about face time now, winglessness with airplanes, summer heat with air conditioning when we have overcome all these and much more besides, then there will abide two things with which we must cope, the evil in our hearts and death. And so David again, he’s bringing them together here, in this moment, that sorrow, that reality, I don’t even have control over my physical body, which is wasting away day by day. That sorrow forces us to confront not God, but our sin. There’s one way, by the way that God works suffering for His glory and our good as we just sang, but that, then, in turn, shapes us into what we should be. We look inside and we go, Well, this is not matching up. I am not who I should be. I see that now. Well, that means I also see what I should be, and I think that’s what verse nine gets at all. My longings lie open before you Lord. My sighing is not hidden from you. David’s like dissecting his heart, examining his deepest desires, his affections, his loves. Now I see who I am and I see who I should be. Augustine says this about the Psalms. He says, The Psalms are given to us as a divine pedagogy for our affections like what we love most. They’re God’s way of reshaping our desires and perceptions so that they learn to lament in the right things and take joy in the right things. So it’s functioning to tune David’s heart, as it were, to God’s desires. Suffering forces David to see himself truly. So he cries out to God for mercy, complains about sin, his sin and sins of others, and then he makes his case. Verses 13 to 20. Let’s look at the case now. David continues, I am like the deaf who cannot hear, like the mute who cannot speak. I become like one who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply, Lord, I wait for you. You will answer, Lord my God, for I said, do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my feet slip, for I’m about to fall and my pain is ever with me. I confess my iniquity. I am troubled by my sin. Many have become my enemies without cause, those who hate me without reason are numerous. Those who repay my good with evil lodge accusations against me. Do I seek only to do what is good? Now, at first glance, this all feels a little scattered. Of course, prayers offered in the midst of pain often do, but David’s actually making a tightly reasoned case for God’s action when he says in verse 13, verse 14, that he’s deaf and mute. He’s not talking about a physical affliction here. It’s not like his sickness meant that now he couldn’t speak and he couldn’t hear. Anymore. He’s talking about his settled policy with regard to his enemies. Basically, he’s adopted a Hear no evil, speak, no evil, approach, which can be tough when people are gossiping about you or slandering you. So what is it that motivates or empowers this obedience? He’s not going to get into a shouting match with his enemies, and the answer is the request that he offers in verse 16 and the confidence that he expresses about that request in verse 15. Alright, I prayed a prayer. Don’t let them gloat exalt themselves over me when my feet slip. Lord, Imma, wait for you. I know you’ll answer that prayer. Lord, He’s waiting on God. He’s trusting in God’s reply. By the way, we mentioned the these four movements in a lament, right? Cry, complaint, case and confidence. We keep talking about the fact it’s not a linear process, right? It’s messy and it’s cyclical. And it’s cyclical. And so what do we get here? We get a little confidence coming out in the middle of his case. I know you’re going to hear I know you’re going to answer Lord. He prayed for justice, and he trusts the judge.
Now it’s interesting as you read the Psalms again, it’s not the only psalm of lament about sin that you can find in Scripture. So trying to draw out some patterns that we find, we can learn a lot from studying the many reasons that the psalmists believe God will intervene. They get this kind of confidence when they’re making their case, and then the stronger the case they make, the more confidence they have. So what is the case that they offer? There are at least seven kind of main reasons. They say, Lord, you should intervene. You should step in. Now. Two have to do with the Lord. One is his reputation. Would you do this basically, for the sake of your name? God that people look and go, Wow, what a deliverer. The other one is God’s character. Really, it’s coming from I’m asking you to do something that’s consistent with what you’ve done before. So what you’ve done before? Would you do it again? Lord, would you act consistent with your past actions? Most of them have to do with the speaker. So some motivations we get there, the speaker’s guilt, which is what we have here. I know I don’t deserve this, quote, Jack, still sometimes it is the speaker’s innocence, though I’m blameless, at least in this one area, Lord, or the speaker’s helplessness or the speaker’s trust. Would you do this because I trust in You, Lord, or the speaker’s promise of future praise. When you deliver me, I will sing of your glory. What’s interesting is that several come together here in this section. I mean, he is trusting in God’s past acts. God hears prayer, answers prayer. Well, if that’s the sort of God I’m praying to, I’m gonna trust that He hears prayer and answers prayer. But mostly he’s drawing from his guilt and his innocence and his helplessness and his trust, although special emphasis is on his general guilt and specific innocence, and that’s where he goes in these next few verses, general guilt but specific innocence. These are these twin reasons that he expects a speedy answer. So first he confessed his iniquity. He says, verse 18, I confess my iniquity. I’m troubled by my sin. My sin bothers me. He’s saying, and so he’s saying, I know I deserve this, but I also know that you’re merciful, Lord. And so since I’ve owned this, would you show me mercy? But then second, he says his enemies have no reason to attack him. Many have become my enemies without cause, those who hate me without reason, right? So I’m innocent here, Lord, in this situation, at least especially because I’m trying to repay evil with good. Verse 20, only seeking to do good. And in this, of course, he reflects the character of his future savior, Jesus. So let me just trace the case again. Make sure we’re we’re following what he just said. He’s saying I’m not lashing out in anger, Lord, but entrusting my situation to you. You are the just judge. You will bring justice. I know you’ll answer my just prayer, because I’m not pretending to be what I’m not righteous, sinless, but I’m also trying to be what you asked me to be innocent here, repaying evil with good all, for your name’s sake. So there’s a lot to learn in this little section, and this is just a sample, an example of it. He’s not just cataloging his complaints. He’s not just presenting this laundry. List of issues that God needs to fix. He’s reasoning biblically, which, by the way, breeds confidence know God hears us and that we will have what we ask when we ask according to His will. First John five. And so that’s the confidence we see in these last few verses of the Psalm. Then verses 21 and 22 confidence, Lord, do not forsake me. Do not be far from me. My God come quickly to help me, My Lord and my Savior again, not a linear progress here, because we kind of get confidence ensconced in the case because he’s asking God to do something, although it is this nice little bookend to the Psalm. It opens with, Lord, don’t rebuke me. And then it closes with, come help me, Lord. And that’s interesting. It reveals just the structure of the psalm reveals this deep truth the way Alec Mateer says it. He says, The God who acts against our sin is the God to whom we can appeal for help, the very God who saves us from our sins. So that God is not just judge, but as we see here in verse 22 Savior as well, the only reason that David can wait patiently for an answer from him, as we saw in verse 15, right? It’s not because David’s got a particularly placid disposition. It’s not because he’s practicing stiff upper lip stoicism, no. It’s confidence in the covenant God. Who saves covenant God. Where he says, right, he’s using the covenant name, Yahweh, verse 21 Lord all caps. And then he says, My God, my lord, my Savior, right? We’re in relationship. You’ve bound yourself to me, to us in covenant. That’s why I can wait on you. It is the confidence what he expresses here. It’s the confidence what Hannah read for us earlier in Lamentations three verse, 33 lamentations 333. Says, For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone. He does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone. And that word, willingly, literally reads from the heart. God does not afflict from the heart. When God brings troubles into our lives, we could almost say his heart’s not in it. And again, just take a parenting example. You know exactly what you mean. You gotta spank your kid or something like that. It doesn’t make you happy when you do it, it makes you the opposite of happy, but you love them enough to do it, and that’s what’s happening here as well. So lamentations, 333, by the way, what is lamentations? It is a lament. That’s where the name comes from. Blew your minds. I know it. You had no idea it’s a lament in the midst of deep pain, and what’s going on that this writer would write lamentations. It’s the devastation of Jerusalem. The city has been sacked, the temple has been destroyed. And here the writer of Lamentations is going, Yeah, but it’s not because you wanted to do this, but because you love us enough to do it, so that our hearts will be changed, will be brought back from our sin to You. And that’s the confidence David has here. Like, why would God stay far away verse 21 or refuse to help? Verse 22 when he’s the God who keeps coming near to help people. And again, David’s thinking probably of the Exodus, when God came near to his people in Egypt and delivered them out of that suffering and anguish. But we would be thinking of Jesus. Jesus. So once again, our confidence can be even greater. Do not be far from me. Come quickly to help me. That’s what the incarnation is when God Almighty, the second person the Trinity, became flesh, became human, and lived among us, to come near to us, to bring us the help that we needed. David feels like a leper. Maybe you do too now, or have felt it at another time. Okay? Well, we know Jesus heals lepers, that’s what he came to do. But even more than that, Jesus is willing to become a spiritual leper for us, to switch spots with us, right? He’s willing to make this one leper clean. That’s great news. Even better news, he’s willing to be treated like a leper for our sakes. He’s willing to be cast out and rejected for us. So when we feel like lepers, physically and. Emotionally, spiritually, we have confidence that we can draw near to the God who is already drawing near to us. And you think about how easy that should make our confession lament, because there’s no fear, there’s no shame, there’s no guilt, when we come to God and say, I got nothing, I’m a leper, but if you’re willing, you can make me clean. So it takes us to our big idea. It’s not complicated. I don’t know if you’ve caught that. Our big idea has been the same three weeks in a row. That’s intentional. Okay, we kind of just have one big idea, learn to lament. But here this week, learn to lament sin and its effects before the Lord. Learn to lament sin and its effects before the Lord. Lament helps us chart a course back to God
when we’ve been tossed by sins, storms after that, dam breaks and sweeps us away so that we’re lost. Lament helps us admit our failures, identify sins effects on us, on others, on the world, and then to return to come back home, because Jesus has opened the way for us has become the way for us. We know we see it so clearly in the cross and the empty tomb that God does not afflict willingly, even when sin is a direct cause of our suffering. No but he loves to forgive and to show mercy and love. So as we wrap up this series, just worth asking where we go from here, because we want to be doers of the word, not just hearers of it. So let me just speak to three groups briefly here as we close. First, those of you who are skeptical still about Christianity, asking questions and pause, as I often do when I address this group. We’re so glad you’re here and asking these questions with us, not because we have any particular wisdom, but because shows that you are in earnest in asking these questions and willing to listen to God’s answers. You don’t need to hear from me, believe me, okay, but you do want to hear from God and from his words. We’re so glad you’re here and asking questions in this place. But my word to you from this series is to let lament chart your course back to God. What I mean by that is lament reminds us that something is so obviously wrong with this world. You cannot possibly look at this world and go, Yeah, this is good, right? There’s too much going on for us to think that. So let that stimulate some questions in you, like, what exactly is wrong with the world? And what’s the cause of that wrongness, because it’s more than physical right so it can’t just be Darwinian answers here there is evil like a moral problem. The Bible calls it sin. Another question you need to ask is, Can sorrow and suffering have meaning and purpose? Can it do anything in us. Can God redeem it in our lives? Not that the suffering is good, but it does good in us. And the last question for you would be, is there any hope at the end of it? Is there any hope at the end of a life that will be filled with sorrow and suffering, especially when we consider how much sorrow we bring on ourselves, Is there the hope, not just of resurrection or restoration, but is there the hope of forgiveness? And the answer is yes, and it’s found in Jesus. Second group, the majority of you here today, I’m sure, individual believers. I mean your takeaway, of course, learn to lament again. All three big ideas, learn to lament, practice what we’ve preached, but be intentional here, even if you’re not suffering greatly now, fine. Pick a minor issue, one that’s maybe not worth doing a whole lament about. But pray, you know, using this template, cry, complaint, case, confidence, grab a Psalm of lament and work your way through it and see if you can sound a little bit like David or one of the other Psalmists get used to the form and the language of lament, so that you know what to do when storms assail, because they will. It’s a guarantee. And then lastly, let me speak to us as a corporate body, as the church. I think our takeaway from this series is to hold space for others to lament, to be the sort of community where people can come in and lament. Church is not a place for happy, crappy people only we came together this. Morning to worship the one who is called a man of sorrows and one acquainted with grief because of our sin, by the way, and for our sake. So I would think that men and women of sorrow would be very welcome here. Should be expected here even. What does that look like? Of course, some of that means that we pursue hearts. You know, when you say, How you doing, and the person goes, I’m fine. You don’t go, great. This wasn’t even really a question anyway, right? No, we go tell me more about that. Let’s, let’s grab coffee. Let’s talk. Enter into grief with people, and on the flip side, by the way, and this one is maybe the harder one enter into community when grieving still come when you’re in the midst of it, so we can cry out together. I heard a wonderful story just recently really struck deep within me, but it was a somebody had reached out to their pastor and said, Hey, I’m going over to this family’s house. You know, they just had this tragic loss. And can you help me? I need I need a word. I need a passage to share with them. And the pastor, clearly, a wise, wise pastor said, I don’t have a passage for them, but I have a passage for you. Weep with those who weep. And that’s the sort of people we want to be right, to come together and go, you’re crying. I’m crying because one part of the body hurts, and we all hurt. And that can happen one on one. Of course. It can happen in groups, Journey groups, community groups. It can happen in services too. I think one of our corporate takeaways from this series needs to be the sorts of songs we sing, because I don’t think we have a single song of lament in our hymnal here, which is way out of whack with the book of Psalms. We do pray prayers of lament occasionally here in the service, we need more, but then even just coming together specifically to lament. I’ll remind you again. June 22 we’ll have a congregational prayer night that Shane and I will lead, and it will be a night of lament. Specifically we need this the way Eugene Peterson said it one of my favorite books on prayer, called answering God. Right? He speaks to us through His Word, and then we answer Him in prayer. He says, The Human Condition teeters on the edge of disaster. Human beings are in trouble most of the time, and those who don’t know they are in trouble are in the worst trouble. Lament is the way God gave us. And remember Jesus modeled for us to acknowledge that trouble, to work through it and to arrive back in that place of restful confidence. Remember the story I told about Amari right, like holding him, where you get that the breathing slows and the heartbeat slows, and the pupils get to the right size, and all that kind of stuff, to arrive back in that place of restful confidence in the arms of our Lord and our Savior. Let’s pray to him now, Lord Jesus, we come to you as the man of sorrows, ever so acquainted with grief, the grief we inflicted on you by our sins. But you did not run from us despite our spiritual leprosy, physical leprosy, every other sort of leprosy. Lord you drew near to heal us, to restore us, to redeem us, and ultimately, Lord to resurrect us in the end, and so Lord, give us that confidence that even now, we can come before you as we are, to lament sin, ours and the sins of others, and to lament sins effects in the world and in our lives, knowing that you hear us, that you answer us, that when We draw near to you, you draw near to us, that you have come to help us, that you do come to help us, and that you will come again to set all things right in the end, that’s the confidence with which we pray in Christ’s name, Amen.