For My Suffering (Psalm 77:1-20)

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You want to go ahead and grab your Bibles, you can open up to Psalm 77. We’ll be in Psalm 77 this morning as we start our series on lament. As you’re turning there, imagine hearing this prayer: God, I pray Mitch never feels sad about his sister again. God, I pray Mitch never feels sad about his sister again. This was a real prayer prayed over a man named Mitch Everingham wrote an article about it some time ago. He had asked for prayer after the sudden death of his 13-year-old sister, and that’s what his brother in Christ prayed for him, that he wouldn’t feel sad anymore so he’d ask for prayer. He certainly hadn’t asked for prayer like that. He was taken aback, understandably, of course, began to question himself, isn’t it? Isn’t it okay that I feel sad that my 13-year-old sister just died tragically? But many Christians are uncomfortable with grief, with sorrow, with a deep and abiding sadness. I mean, after all, we’re commanded to rejoice always, aren’t we, so there’s no place for sadness. Then in the Christian life, you can see this if you share real struggles in the Christian community, Christians will often respond with visible discomfort. If you’re sharing doubt, anguish, it’s affecting your relationship with God. You’ll get unhelpful comments, certainly like the one I just mentioned. You’ll get people pushing you very quickly to get to the bright side, the silver lining, the blessing that’s underneath it all. You may get rebuke, especially if you’re expressing doubt and at worst, but probably most often, you’ll also get people who just leave, maybe not right then and there, get up and walk away, but who are just going to keep a wide berth when they see you in the future. We don’t give each other room to sit in the struggle, you’re there for the Pursuing the Heart workshop last week. You know, we talked a lot about holding space for people. Holding space like keeping that space open so that people can struggle with grief, with pain, with contrition and trusting that God is at work in it. We’re not good at this. We rush to move through it. You actually can see this even at funerals. Sometimes today, we don’t even necessarily call them funerals. In the church, you’ll hear people talk a lot about a celebration of life. Nothing wrong with that, by the way, it is a celebration of life, yes, and amen. But you know, if it’s a celebration, you shouldn’t cry at it, as you can see there, too. We don’t need to be sad. We know he’s with Jesus. Now you’re like, Okay, he is with Jesus. Now, if he was in Christ, and that is awesome for him, it’s rough for us here, Jesus wept at the only funeral we have record of him attending, knowing, by the way, his friend was going to rise again, not on the last day, but like four minutes from then, still wept because the brokenness of this world, the effects of sin and how it wounds his children. We don’t rush through, we don’t need to think that we have to rush through, and I feel so confident about that because of the Psalms, because we have the book of Psalms. These are inspired model prayers for us. Think about what that means, model prayers. In other words, we were meant to pray these. The New Testament tells us we’re to speak to one another in psalms, even so we’re supposed to pray these prayers. And they are inspired prayers, because all scripture is God breathed, and they’re in Scripture. These are God’s words for us to pray back to him. And by the way, you read Psalms, and you think, really, Lord, you want us to say that to you? And the answer is, yes, yes, he does. They’re inspired. Model prayers of struggle. Fully 40% of the book of Psalms is lament. Songs of lament, wrestling with pain and walking through the process fully, no shortcuts involved. So, what is lament? If we’re going to be talking about lament for the next three weeks, we probably should define it. I’m going to borrow Mark Rogoff’s definition from his book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, which I would highly recommend as a good introduction to lament. Mark Rogoff, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy. Mark was learned to lament in his own season of suffering and loss, his wife woke him up at one point frantically in middle of the night for two hours, she had been doing this, trying to get her baby to move, and so they rushed to the hospital, and their worst fears were confirmed. A baby, who was just a few days away from expected arrival, had died in the womb. So that’s where he’s coming from. When he talks about lament, and he says this, he says, Lament is a prayer of pain that leads to trust. Every word in that is important, and we’re going to talk about them all today, for sure. Lament is a prayer of pain that leads to trust. It’s prayer. It’s pain. It leads somewhere and ends in trust. So lament is how we bring sorrow to God. Lament is how we live with the tension of a good God and a hard life. Lament is how Christians grieve. It’s how we hurt. It’s how we help each other hurt as well. And so lament is for all of us then, because everyone in this room is either hurting right now or around somebody who’s hurting right now? 0% chance it’s otherwise than that. Glen Pemberton in his book hurting with God, which is another great, short definition of lament, right? Hurting with God, he was teaching a class on lament, and just there in his class the front row, there was somebody who had just lost a friend, somebody whose mom had passed away, where their dad had passed away a few years earlier, so he’s in college. He’s an orphan at this point, and somebody who’d lost a son, not like, that’s just stats, right? Like, it’s just how it is. We’re just looking around the room now and going, oh yeah. We need to lament right now. We need to learn how to lament, because I look at the grief and the suffering in this room, and I think I could preach this any Sunday between now and when Christ comes again, and it would be the right Sunday to talk about lament, because there’s just so much hurt. So it is for all of us to learn. And this is not the point of the series. But can I say also, this is a really good series for us in our culture too, because our culture is terrible at lament, because secular humanism provides no resources for dealing with suffering, because the goal of secular humanism is eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. And so one of the key points there is, be merry. What does suffering have to do with merriment? Nothing. It’s just in the way. It’s an impediment to what we’re trying to get to. So we have no resources, and so we paper over suffering so often, numb ourselves to it, medicate to it. You know, you think about it in a consumer society like ours, what are we being offered over and over again? It is a way out of sorrow and hurt. You. Think of how dishonest advertising is like. If beer commercials showed you grieving divorcees in seedy bars, how many people are buying beer? No, you gotta show happy, impossibly beautiful people playing volleyball in the sun and the sand. Not one of them with a beer gut. By the way, not allowed to drink beer if you’re going to be in these sorts of commercials, of course, you get the point right. Like we don’t understand how to process this. We just want it over with, done with, move on. So we, as a church, and for the sake of the culture around us, need to recover the ancient art of lament.
Because our faith, our Christian community, and even our witness, will suffer without it. I think this is a part of the reason we’ve seen this trend towards deconstruction, because we have not equipped Christians to understand suffering and how to respond to it, and that’s what we aim to do. Then in this series, gonna be three weeks, pretty short series, each one, we’re going to look at a different psalm of lament, and they all have a slightly different focus. So this morning, we’re going to look at an individual psalm of lament. You can see the title is, you know, it’s a lament for my struggle. So something I’m going through personally. Next week, we’ll look at our struggle. Lament for our struggle. What happens when there’s a corporate experience of pain. Could be national, like 911 something like that. Could be local, could be just within our congregation. We’ve been through some of that recently, certainly. And then lastly, we’ll look at a lament for my or our sin, which is real as well. We’re going to see four key elements I’m. Not always neatly, by the way, I mentioned elements, not four steps, because the last thing you need in lament is steps, right? Okay, so this is not linear process. This is messy and cyclical, but these four elements are almost always present in some form. There’s a cry, a complaint, a case and a confidence. And so we’re gonna do this morning is just walk through these stages somewhat briefly to see what it looks like in Asaph life, at least so Psalm 77 let’s start with cry 77 here’s verses one and two. I cried out to God for help. I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord at night, I stretched out untiring hands and I would not be comforted. Lament begins. How life begins with crying. You probably don’t remember it, but the first sound you made was a cry, was a loud wail to cry is human. There are so many reasons to cry you’ve left the warmth of the womb. But then once you get out in this world, you see injustice, death, fractured relationships, disappointed expectations and even just change, like good change, but still change. Can you grieve the memories that were so no one needs to teach us to cry. In fact, you only learn not to cry in specific heartbreaking circumstances. We have friends who adopted kids out of orphanages in countries where orphanages are not run well, and the kids learned no point in crying, because no one will come and get you. So they learned that the kid didn’t know how to cry when there was pus coming out of his ear. That’s how bad the ear infection was, and he hadn’t made a peep. That’s what I mean by you only learn not to cry in the most heartbreaking of circumstances. The rest of us, we didn’t need to learn to cry, but we do need to learn to lament, because lament is not less than crying, but it is more than crying because it is a cry to God, a cry to God, it is a prayer, in other words, and because it is a prayer, it is an act of faith. Because all prayer is an act of faith. It’s one of the purest expressions of faith, the fact that you would talk to God instead of trying to do it yourself. So it’s an act of faith. And if you think about it, it is faith in defiance of present circumstances and all available evidence at that moment. It is Faith in a God who hears, who sees, who cares and who acts so Asaph tells us, I cried out to God for help, right in the day of his distress. He says, I sought the Lord. Those are acts of faith, because if he had already decided against God, and if he already made up his mind that God is not going to be able to help, he’s not good. He’s not faithful to His promises. If he already decided against God, he wouldn’t bring his complaint in the first place. So it is this act of faith. Actually think one reason why Christians Don’t lament is because we lack faith. So it feels pious. I don’t need to complain to God because I I know who God is. It’s the opposite. It’s a lack of faith. One reason Christians Don’t lament is because we have low expectations of God. We don’t think God is going to do anything. We don’t expect him to act so we don’t bother asking, although I guess as a very, very thin silver lining, we’re never disappointed when he doesn’t come through whatever that means no. Lament is for those with high expectations of God. Lament is for those who are brave enough to cry to God even when it seems like he isn’t coming through on his promises. Per the Psalms, lament affirms that God is good and powerful even when this world is bad and painful. And so it’s loaded with theology, even just in the cry, even just in the I cried out to God, there is so much faith in theology present. If I can quote rogob Again, he says, lament stands in the gap between pain and promise. Lament stands in the gap. Between pain present circumstances and promise, what we know God will do in the end, to cry is human, but to lament is Christian. It is a prayer of pain that leads to trust. If you have small kids, you know that crying is loud, so loud sometimes, right? Bawling, wailing and crying should be loud. It’s interesting. This is not a silent prayer. When it says, I cried out to God for help. I cried out to God to hear me. It reads literally, and by the way, translating poetry is really hard. Translating Hebrew poetry is even harder because Hebrew is only a couple of steps above grunting, okay. It’s a very ancient language. It’s not all there. So if you’re looking at different translations, and you’re like, that’s not what mine says, they’re doing the best they can. Okay, here’s a literal translation, though, of that verse. It says, My Voice to God, I cry my voice to God. My God to hear. Isn’t that interesting? We get the repetition of voice twice when it’s unnecessary. I cry to www. Do you think you’re going to be using and yet he says it twice. It’s my voice, my voice that I’m lifting up. In other words, there’s value in vocalizing our emotion before God. To God, by the way. Added bonus, if you say it out loud, people might hear it too, and that’s good for all of us, because then people can enter into it with you. So we cry to God, not for quick resolution, but to learn to live with him when things aren’t getting better. Quote Pemberton again, he says the question lament is asking is, how do I live in an authentic relationship with a sovereign who holds the universe together when my world is falling apart? Basically, we need an answer to that question, and we won’t get one if we don’t ask, call, cry, offer our prayer of pain leading to trust. What comes next, though, we cry to God. What do we say? Second complaint, we read verses three to six for us. I remembered you, God, and I groaned. I meditated and my spirit grew faint. You kept my eyes from closing. I was too troubled to speak. I thought about the former days, the years of long ago. I remembered my songs in the night. My heart meditated and my spirit asked, hang there for a moment. Complaint. Now, how many of you are reading this? Going, Wait, complaint isn’t complaining wrong? I’ve read the book of Exodus Numbers, Deuteronomy. They grumble in the desert, and God puts them all to death. Should we actually bring our complaints to God. Well, look at Psalms, look at Asaph even here. I mean, he says the end of verse two, I prayed right, and I would not be comforted. And then he says, in verse three, I remembered, I meditated, and it got worse. I groaned, I fainted. At that point. There’s just brutal honesty here. He just said, God, I prayed to you and it didn’t work. Have you ever felt that way? By the way, of course you have, of course we all have. So what next? Then, when you pray to God and you think it didn’t work, what next? Bury it down deep and never talk about it again. No, read the Psalms. They are full of complaints, some quite pointed, and by the way, sung liturgically in worship services, meaning that we can talk about it with God in the presence of others. That is how we are supposed to deal with it. Even Yes, I need to say it yes, some complaining is sinful. Plenty of complaining is sinful. Profoundly self centered complaining, of course, complaining that that veers into anger with God. We never have reason to feel anger with God, because that would assume that we are sitting in judgment on him. Not a good place to be, of course, but most likely just complaining to people about God. That’s when it gets really sinful, right? We’re complaining about circumstances, not before the Lord, but to other people. So yes, some complaining is sinful, but not all. Biblical complaint expresses anger at circumstances, at the brokenness of this world, and sorrow as part of the process of faith. And that’s. Words, we complain because we believe that God is God, the way Stacey glutty Smith says it, she says a lament honestly and specifically names a situation that is painful, wrong or unjust, in other words, a circumstance that does not aligned with God’s character, and therefore does not make sense within God’s kingdom. That’s a biblical complaint. It is basically telling God that he doesn’t seem very God like right now we tell a little bit more of the rogops story. A few years later, they were pregnant again, very nervous, of course, going in to their appointment, and sure enough, it didn’t go well. Because they got there, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the baby, it’s that there was no baby. It was a false positive in the pregnancy, hormonal stuff that I don’t understand. Okay, and so there they are in the same parking lot outside the same hospital where they had been before, hearts broken yet again. And his wife prayed this. She said, God, I know you’re not mean, but it feels that way today. That’s so carefully phrased for an off the cuff prayer. I know you’re not mean, but it feels that way today. By the way, are you feeling uncomfortable right now with language like that? Because you probably should be. If you’re not feeling uncomfortable, I’m not sure you understand what we’re talking about. So yes, this is a tough prayer to pray, but what exactly is the alternative? Pretend it’s not. There, if you don’t voice your complaints in prayer, in trust. In other words, I mean, you got two options really. First, you’ll succumb to anger if you just let your soul steep in that sorrow, it will lead to a deep despair and bitterness toward God and a loss of faith. That’s one alternative. The other alternative is stoicism, like just pretend it’s not there, stiff upper lip and all of that. Those are not good options. So we make our complaint. This is not just uncontrolled venting, but a methodical process of actually dealing with the hurt and the questions before God. You know that in the midst of great suffering, your world can contract until it is just the pain. There’s nothing else we can become myopic in our suffering certain and so that’s why we need to deal with it honestly. What might that look like? Just brief suggestions here in seasons of distress journal your complaints like actually get it down on paper. What the complaints are, and then make them to God like talk to God about it again, as long as we got a pursuing the heart emphasis going right now, this is also something that we can do for others. We can draw others out. If you got somebody who’s got that anger thing going or that stoicism thing going like this is when we come in and we draw out that complaint so they can deal with it before God. But as you talk to God about the complaints, they will lose their hold on you, as we’ll see as we keep going in the Psalm. And so you’ll move from disorientation to reorientation. It’s like spiritual vertigo, and you finally get right side up again, not fast, not linear, you know, three steps and I’m done, but that’s what happens in the end. No, just very, very briefly. How do we complain? Well, so that we’re not falling into sinful complaint. There’s just four words to keep in mind. First of all, complain humbly, humbly like complain like you’re standing before the God who is there a holy and good and just and loving God absolutely fine to bring painful questions to him, but we do still come in awe of His Majesty. We complain humbly. We recognize that we don’t have the whole picture, and he does. Second, we complain biblically. That’s really helpful. Again, God gave us words template for prayer. Use it. Open the Psalms, find one that speaks to your circumstance, and go, I’m going to borrow some of this language, or even the grammatical structure would be so helpful. Complain biblically. Third, complain honestly. I don’t know why you would try to lie to God. Like, if you’re feeling like, it feels like you’re mean God, say that to him. Okay, it’s okay, and you say it carefully. It feels you didn’t say you’re mean God, that’s. Different statement, but you still can just own what’s going on inside of you. I’m doubting. I don’t even know if you’re there at this point, these are fine things to say. Psalm 73 Psalm 89 look at them. They’re stronger than even what I just said. Fourth, we complain temporarily, temporarily. It has an end. Okay? This process, it’s like spiritual surgery. I mean, what happens in surgery? Your doctor, at some point is going to use a scalpel on you. She’s going to slice you open. She does not go on slicing you open forever. At some point, she stitches you back up, right? And it’s the same thing here. Yes, the complaint is like the scalpel to get out the infection, as it were. And then, and then we move. We make a switch, frankly, we move to the next stage here. So third element stage, whatever case verses seven to nine, will the Lord reject forever, will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger, withheld His compassion? These are the questions he asked right at the end of verse six. So having made complaint, the psalmists then make their case. What are they doing? They’re calling upon God to act in accordance with his character. Here, this looks like a series of questions, honestly, questions that are sort of straddling complaint and case right, sort of in between. I’m not sure which one’s happening here, but he is certainly making a case. Now, what sorts of questions do we find in the Psalms? They’re not rhetorical, but wrestling. They’re not leading, but loaded questions. These are loaded questions, laser focused on God’s character. I mean, look at what gets mentioned here, his favor. That is the word grace, by the way, favor, love, faithfulness, in terms of whether or not he’ll keep his promises. Mercy, compassion, like this is how we describe God with these words. And so Asaph here is saying, if this is who you are and this is who you are God, then why does it seem like you’re not acting in accordance with it? That’s the case that’s being made. Now there are large categories of questions in the Psalms, and give you some of them again, look around, find the one that makes sense for you, where you are at this moment here, the big question is, why are you so angry, right? You can see it. Are going to be angry forever. We ever get compassion, mercy, grace again goes along often. So why are you so angry with the will you be angry forever? Which, of course, usually shows up in the Psalms, in that famous How long, oh Lord, how long. Sometimes the question is, why aren’t you dealing with them? Those people come back to that in a second. Or, why are you so far away, unresponsive?
All of them, though, in a nutshell, the question that’s behind them all, why aren’t you being like God, from what I can tell, but notice I keep saying it, but we gotta keep saying it. All of those questions are still based on trust, because they’re based on what we know about God’s character. I know who you are. Why does it seem like you’re not acting in accordance with it? And so that understanding then drives another way that Psalms make their case. We don’t have it here in this psalm, but often in the Psalms, we get not questions, but petitions, requests made of God. So we go from the question, God, why aren’t you acting to the petition, God, act. Do something here. Act, Lord. What sorts of requests do we get? Arise? Is a big one. Let’s not kid ourselves. What’s being said right there is basically wake up because it feels like you’re asleep on the job. God, would you wake up? Would you stand up? Would you act on our behalf? Help us is a big one, of course, help us remember is a common one. Remember what? Remember his covenant and his character. Remember his promises to us. Remember. But on the flip side, they often say, forget, remember who you are. But would you forget who we are? Forget our sins, Lord, remember them. No more. Let justice be done. Remember. One of the questions is, why aren’t you dealing with them? You’re a God of justice, they’re being unjust. Could you address it? Please? God restore us. Hear right? I’m crying out. I’m losing my voice. It’s vocalized. Lord, it’s loud. Would you hear and then also respond? Don’t be silent. Answer me. God teach me. Vindicate me. You can see again, we get this wide range of questions, wide range of requests. And that’s such good news, by the way, because that means there is a psalm for every one of us, for every moment that we are in for a great variety of circumstances. But you read these requests, you see the high expectations that the psalmists have of God. They are stepping out in faith. They are risking disappointment. What if he doesn’t rise up and do justice, not really risking it, because we know that he will. And here’s where we see, though, that the value of wrestling with the doubt and pain, making the complaint, making the case, because in the process, contradictions surface. I mean, just look at the one question we get here, verse eight, has his unfailing love vanished forever. Let me rephrase that for you. Has his unfailing love failed? And you can see, as Asaph is asking it, he’s going, well, that’s stupid. It’s unfailing love. So of course, it can’t fail. And so you begin to like tease this out, we remind ourselves of who he is, and that breeds confidence in his response. In other words, we are stirring up faith in ourselves in asking these questions, has his promise failed for all Well, no, no, that couldn’t be look at all the promises he’s kept in Scripture, even in my own life. Look at what’s coming down. No, I know that’s not the case like that’s how the process unfolds. So as we ask God questions or petitions, as we ask God the who question, begins to eclipse, the why question. You know what happens in an eclipse, right? So you get the sun beaten down on you, you’re being scorched by it. The Moon moves in front, and all of a sudden you can’t see it anymore. That’s kind of what happens here, except you got to reverse. It doesn’t work astronomically, okay, but it works the other way, because what’s really happening, it’s the moon. Is the why? Questions, right? Just a dead hunk of rock floating in space, and then the eternal God, the source of all light and life and warmth, moves between us and that rock, and we see him, and we see by him, and our questions are eclipsed by our faith in who he is. And so the lesson the psalmist begins to learn is that personal experience is an unsure foundation on which to build faith. Personal experience is not how you want to develop your faith in God, because circumstances change, we can only build our faith on the true knowledge of God’s character that is solid rock. And so in asking these questions, we receive the most important answer, aren’t you good? Aren’t you holy? Aren’t you loving? Aren’t you there? Yes, that’s what I needed to remember that produces in us, the triumph of hope over despair, and the irrepressible conviction that God is always who he always is, which then leads to that last moment element, whatever you want to call it, confidence, the longest part of the Psalm. We won’t need to spend a ton of time here, though verses 10 to 20. Then I thought to this. I will appeal the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds, your ways. God are holy. What God is as great as our God. You are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the peoples with your mighty arm. You redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. The waters saw you, God. The waters saw you and www, depths were convulsed. The clouds poured down water. The heavens resounded with thunder. Your arrows flashed back and forth. Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind. Your lightning good up the world. The earth trembled and quaked. Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen, You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. Psalms of lament invariably contain a turn in. A turn, that moment when faith breaks through, when that prayer of pain leads in the end to trust, usually marked off by a word like yet, but, or in this case, then, then what? By the way, another one that is tricky. Literally, verse 10, literally reads, then I said, this is my wounding, the years of the most High’s hand, very dense, packed and not even quite a sentence. I don’t think, I don’t, not sure it’s got a subject, a verb and a complete thought. The years of my wounding there. Sorry, this is my wounding, the years of the most High’s hand. But what happens there? That’s the turn right. This is my wounding. That’s the pain. That’s what he just talked about. And then he says the years of the most High’s hand, like when he stretched out his hand. And so that’s the move from pain to promise to power to who God is, and that is the turn that happens in the rest of it, right? So conscious shift from his pain to God’s power. You can actually see it worked out, because you get this shift. You look at the first nine verses there, you get a whole bunch of subjective I statements, and then you look at 10 to 20, and you get a bunch of objective you, statements, statements of fact. This is what you have done God. I mean, compare how he even uses vocabulary differently in the two halves, words like remember and meditate. Look at verse three. I remembered and I groaned, I meditated and I just about collapsed. Same exact words show up again in verses 11 and 12. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider your works and meditate on your mighty deeds. I need objective facts. I need the proof that you are who you say you are. And so there’s that shift. He has rebuilt his faith on the solid foundation of who God is and what he’s done. He plans it out in verses 10 to 12. This is what I’m going to do. And then he works it out in verses 13 to 20. And after that turn, the Psalmist just they sound different. Just think for a moment what changed exactly, that they sound different after the turn, not their circumstances that we can tell, not in most cases, at least not God. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever, thank God. So all that’s changed is our perspective, our perspective. That’s the value of remembering and meditating. It’s like we’re taking our souls by the hand and walking back to Faith after the wrestling process. Don’t skip ahead there right after the wrestling process. This is what we do. There is a courage and conviction required to call to mind what God is like, to rehearse his deeds, his miracles, his works. Verses 13 to 15 is when he says it, I know it, okay, you are holy. He’s actually quoting Moses’ song here what God is as great as our God. I remember what you’ve done. I remember who you are. Now for the psalmists, because they are in the Old Testament, the gospel is the Exodus. That is the primary salvation event in the Old Testament. And so that’s where he takes himself. He walks through its history. We get the Red Sea in verse 16, we get Sinai in verses 17 and 18, and we get the whole leading from Egypt to the Promised Land in 19 and 20, including the Red Sea again, there in verse 19. Can I just make a brief like aside over here to just the corporate power of story? There’s this fascinating moment in Exodus, chapter 10, verses one and two, where God basically says, I’m sending the plagues so that you can tell your kids and grandkids about them, like I want you to have a story of my faithfulness to share. And it works, because one of his great, great, great, great, great grandkids is here writing Psalm 77 and reflecting on it. And now we’re reading Psalm 77 reflecting on the Exodus. And somebody could hear your story reflecting on Psalm 77 reflecting on the Exodus, and it just continues on from there. That’s the corporate power of story. And again, one of the reasons we wrestle in front of others. But there’s so much truth to ponder in the Exodus, isn’t there? And. You see his power, right? He separates the waters. And remember, in Old Testament, thought we saw this in Revelation. Of course, water is symbolic of chaos and evil, and God’s got all this power over it in verse 16, what do we have to fear? But then even there, why are they at the Red Sea in the first place? Only because God heard their cries and sent a rescuer, delivered them from slavery, because he loves them and he has promised himself to them by covenanting with Abraham. Then he binds himself anew to his people at Sinai and takes the next step in the covenant of redemption, where he reveals himself in new ways and teaches us in new ways. Then he leads and shepherds his people. By the way, what a powerful word, Shepherd. You’d sit there for a moment, couldn’t we? Aaron already took us there and putting out the Lord of Psalm 23 Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside quiet waters, refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right path for his namesake, even when I even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not fear for you are with me all that in the word Shepherd. That’s what he does for us. Yeah, that’s going to help faith. He shepherds his people. He sends others to help shepherd them all the way my savior leads me. Whom have I to ask beside and what I love about this psalm is that it doesn’t even end. He doesn’t even have to summarize his new confidence and faith. He doesn’t say at the end, as some psalmist do, I will trust, I will yet praise you. There’s this intentional anticlimax at the end of it, what I picture here when I read this Psalm, I often have to lie down with Amari, who can get a little stirred up at bedtime. And so he does that thing where he’s like twitching in bed. Some of you probably do this too, right? And you can tell and his heart is racing. His breathing is fast and shallow. So I lie next to me, holding him for sure. And you can feel physically right as his body relaxes, and the heart slows, and then the breathing slows, becomes very regular, and eventually, honestly turns into snoring. So what happens at the end there? Amari never says, Thanks, Dad, for lying down with me. I feel much better now because he fell asleep, and that’s like, what’s happened for the psalmist here? He doesn’t even get to that point where he says, Thanks God, because it’s just like, I’m good. I’m good. I don’t even have to say it here. So that’s what I mean by confidence, that active trust, active patience that comes when you’ve voiced your complaint, you’ve made your case, and you can rest now because of you know who he is and what he’s done. Now let me ask you, do we have less reason for this confidence, or more, more because we have a greater gospel that we can preach to ourselves? Lament is in road map words, once more a road map to Christ. It is the language of a people who know the whole story, the whole Gospel story, creation, fall, redemption, consummation. God made the world good. Creation, but fall sin brought devastating consequences, sorrow and suffering. But the good news is, God is redeeming the world. And hey, we just spent 14 weeks in Revelation. We know how the story ends. We know what the consummation looks like, right? But let’s not blow past number three. God is redeeming the world. We also know redemptions cost Jesus, the perfect Son of God, came to rescue us from our own devastation and sin, and Jesus, because of that, because he came in the flesh and lived as one of us. Jesus had to lament. Jesus prays a Psalm of lament, My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? Psalm 22, verse one, that’s a loaded question. Also, didn’t you say I will never leave you nor forsake you? Well, God, why have you forsaken me? So he has to pray a prayer of lament. Even though he’s the only truly innocent sufferer who’s ever lived, he prays a prayer of lament, because he endured all of the cruelty and injustice of this world. He knew physical pain. He knew death his own and the death of loved ones, and he knew what it felt like to have a God who is. Far off, at least for a moment. In his case, truly So, and he did all that for us. That’s why Julie read for us earlier that we have a high priest who gets it, who can sympathize with us in our weakness, and so that gospel tells us all we need to know about who God is. He is a God who keeps His promises. He is a God of love and grace and mercy, and there will not be anger forever, because Jesus dealt with that satisfied God’s wrath at the cross. By the way, those are all the questions that got asked in verses seven to nine, all of our answers at the cross of Christ and the empty tomb that follows, we have definitive answers to the questions we ask once again, the WHO eclipses the why. We know that answer. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit that doesn’t eliminate suffering, sorrow, grief, but it brings deep rest and even Joy hears the rejoice always. It’s deep though, right? It’s deep when we know that and we breathe and we sleep. So what do we do with all this? It’s a very simple, big idea this week. Just learn to lament with the Lord. Learn to lament with the Lord. We need to develop this skill urgently. So what might that look like? I’m just gonna speak to a couple of different couple of different groups of people pretty quickly here, if you haven’t suffered yet, prepare for it. And here I’m speaking most likely to a lot of the kids in the room, not all the kids in the room, some of the kids in our congregation have suffered more than I would wish in a lifetime already, but suffering will come, prepare for it so that you’re ready for it when it comes. What about those of you who have shut down or who have buried it deep, like you need to open up to God and to others. You know what happens? You bury things down deep, like this is going to be a spiritual ulcer in your soul. You need to do that surgery that we talked about, open up to God and others. Or if you’re one of the ones who’s angry, doubting great, wrestle with it, struggle through the anger and the doubt. Go through the process, messy, cyclical process, until you reach confidence and trust in God, and maybe you start slow. Maybe it’s not more than a prayer. God, I know that you’re not. Mean unfaithful, far off. Fill in the blank. God, I know you’re not this, but it feels like it today. Okay, that’s a really basic prayer of lament. We can start there, or maybe it’s stating the complaint. And all you can get to is, God, I choose to trust you today because of the gospel, I choose to trust you today. Great, that’s a start, right? It’s a start. Start somewhere, and then start reading the psalms of lament and use them as a blueprint, a template for your prayers. Again. Aaron said this. I didn’t pay him for this, by the way. Okay, you just set up my whole sermon here. The book you know, everything your child should know about prayer, and he’s like praying through the Psalms. Why am I not doing this? Exactly? Why are we not doing this? This is a prayer book for us. Pray through the Psalms. Use them as a blueprint, the cry, the complaint, the case, the confidence. And we can do this together, also pursuing each other’s hearts and drawing each other out in these ways. And speaking of by the way, parents, let me just say this too, you need to give your kids not just permission but the vocabulary to have these conversations, a vocabulary for emotion and for pain like what we find in the Psalms. Kids learn the words and practice them, cry out to the God who is there, who hears and saves and loves, learn to lament with the Lord. Let’s pray to him now, Lord, we know this world’s brokenness all too well. We know the hurt, the pain, the sorrow, the suffering, the injustice, it’s everywhere. It’s all around us. It’s inside us even. And it can be hard to trust you in the midst of it. It can be hard to hold on to faith when we. Feel these hurts so deeply. But Lord, we know who you are, and we have definitive proof in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, reign of Jesus, that you have dealt with it, that you are dealing with it, that you will set it all right in the end, and that therefore we can trust you completely. So Lord, help us to trust you wherever we are, whatever we’re experiencing, to rest in the confidence that comes from knowing Christ in whose name we pray, Amen.