LEARNING to CRY BEFORE GOD (STUDY OF LAMENT PRAYER)
CHRISTLIKE IN PRAYER
PSALM 13:1-6
Big Idea: Our personal relationship with God will deepen when we are willing to be honest about our questions.
Good morning church. I am going back to the curriculum of prayer. This is the fifth message on prayer including what brother Val shared a few weeks ago. Lord willing I might be gone this week to attend the Church of God’s General Assembly, so Brother Val will be preaching next week. I plan to be gone for about 10 days only since I also need to visit my family in the Philippines in August – hopefully for a few days. My eldest sister is not about 80 and every year we want to at least see each other each year. We have a big family in Mindanao, and each year we celebrate what God is doing in our lives.
First, we learned that prayer connects us to God. Prayer is a gift of God to His children. Yes everyone or almost everyone prays, but only the children of God pray to their heavenly Father. We saw in our first message that Jesus prayed – He valued prayer as a coming to His Father. Jesus on purpose left the crowd and people and ministry to spend time with his Father in prayer. In prayer He was refreshed by His Father; he received His Father’s instruction; The Father acted in response to His prayer. PRAYER AND OUR LIFE WITH GOD ARE INTERCONNECTED.
Second, we learned that prayer is an invaluable tool for our loved ones. We look at how Jesus prayed for His loved ones. We saw that Jesus took seriously the threat of an enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy his loved ones – his friends, his disciples. He saw a malevolent – evil – wicked – diabolical enemy who sought to destroy those whom Jesus loved. We saw how Jesus, in and through prayer, counteracted, every move of the enemy. He fought the enemy by calling on His Father in behalf of his loved ones. It is quite interesting that we have no record of Jesus praying for Judas. But he prayed for Peter. He prayed that his faith will remain intact – even after his fall.
Our third message on Christlike in Prayer is about praying in Crisis. How do you pray in crisis like Jesus? We saw first that Jesus saw crisis as falling under the sovereignty of God. God has full control over every crisis of our lives. In the example of Jesus we saw how he faced crisis: (a) with his real friends (he did not face his crisis alone); (b) with emotional honesty (he did not hide his emotions – he cried and described his sorrow, his pain, his fear, his sense of the coming of death, he prayed with so much pressure; (c) he prayed trusting his Father. Jesus’ example shows us that prayer in crisis is not an attempt to change the mind of God about something he planned, but instead, an aligning of oneself, a submission, a full surrender, an entrusting of self and life completely into the hands of His Father.
Brother Val shared on the Prayer of Jesus for his disciples who were described as OUT OF THIS WORLD: God to Protect us; God to Sanctify Us; and God to Send Us.
TODAY I WANT US TO LEARN TOGETHER HOW TO CRY BEFORE GOD. The Bible calls this “Lament Prayers.” An entire book in the OT is called Lamentation, a book written by Jeremiah, the weeping prophet who cried to God for his incurable wound/pain. He aches and cries for Israel who has crossed the line – God called him to declare the coming judgment against his own people. His mission was not to call them to repentance but to declare God’s judgment. He cries to God and for the people. The carries the pain in his heart for years.
I am leading this church in reclaiming the LAMENT PSALM. As your pastor and elder we are now laying hold of this truth – long suppressed, ignored, unused by the Body of Christ. WE WILL LEARN TO LAMENT IN A BIBLICAL WAY. There is a wrong way and insufficient way to cry. Judas cried, Esau cried, and their crying just made them worst! They say that crying is good – it gives you a release; but biblical crying is better – as we will see.
Gospel accommodation and consumer mentality. We’re so focused on providing people with a positive, uplifting experience, that we’ve forgotten what it means to be human. Consider the following wisdom, recently offered by Sally Morgenthaler:
"Let’s admit it. We all have days, weeks, months, and -- in some cases, years -- when the hand of God seems far from us. We struggle with doubt, depression, and emptiness. Our questions and prayers linger, seemingly unanswered. Ironically, Jesus joins us in our pain. I sometimes feel that our songs make people push the delete button on their inner life. Sad is only permissible for one measure. And, perish the thought, it’s never OK to be angry or to doubt God’s goodness or sovereignty. That would be blasphemous. So we don’t sing about such feelings. Which is interesting, because the Psalmist...certainly sang about them. But the Christian subculture in North America is, if anything, repressive. So, in keeping with our penchant for emotional editing and denial, we compose song lyrics only from psalm verses that we deem positive, excising nearly every expression of doubt, confusion, struggle, and lament (Worship Leader, March/April 2004, p. 14)."
Maybe -- if we were to provide space and opportunity in our gatherings for people to cry out to God, question God, and even get mad at God -- we might just end up nurturing believers with an authentic faith that’s stronger and more resilient than we have ever seen in our time.
What are Lament Psalms?
1. Laments, prayers as we would call them, are cries to God in times of need, whether sickness, affliction, slander, war, or some other crisis. In ancient Israel, the worshiper would normally go to the Sanctuary to offer the petition, and in many cases the officiating priest might offer the prayer on his behalf.
Our lives are not all joy, happiness and strength. At times we experience exactly the opposite. We know brokenness and pain, alienation and confusion, doubt and the absence of God. Then we lament. We cry: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Psalm 22:2).
Just as praise is not the same as thanksgiving, so lament is not identical to petition. If praise is a spontaneous response to happiness in life, lament is a spontaneous response to pain. If praise is a religious “Wow!” than a lament is a religious “Ouch!”
2. Laments are the single largest type of psalm. OT scholars identify at least 57 laments composed of individual laments and communal laments.
3. Some of us may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable about this type of psalm and prayer but lament is a thoroughly biblical form of prayer, occurring in both the Old and New Testaments. I have a friend who can easily be verbally rough on others – sometimes I wish I could be more tough with my words. The Bible is full of God’s people crying out to God, questioning God, even accusing God, doubting God. What is so amazing is God does not take His people’s words against them. He does not rebuke them for thinking that way – He answers them instead, and His people are healed.
Did Jesus ever Lamented in Prayer?
Matthew 26 and Luke 22 records Jesus in the Garden of Getsemane praying with so much weight on him that he started to hemorrhage – sweat of blood.
Hebrews 5:7 is the single most important Scripture outside of the Gospels that describes Jesus in prayer. The unknown writer of Hebrews reveals to us that Jesus must have been engaged in “lament prayers.” The Letter to the Hebrews contains a passage that might surprise many of us – the way Jesus prayed. Hebrews 5:7, “in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” This passage unparalled anywhere in the NT in terms of their intensity. Since “prayers” and petitions are plural, our author may have known several incidents in Jesus’ life when he prayed with such intensity. This sound like Jesus in agony in the Garden of Getsemane (Matthew 26:31-46 Luke 22:41-44). Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus. He wept when he was face with human suffering and grief. Guthrie comments, “Our high priest was not so far above us that tears were beyond him” (1983, 129). He truly and completely identified with our human plight of suffering.
Notice that Jesus’ prayers were addressed “to the one who could save him from death” (5:7). Moreover, “he was heard” by the Father, but the answer came not in the avoidance of the experience of death. Rather. Jesus was heard in that he received God’s grace to undergo his appointed suffering and was then delivered out of death through resurrection. Sometimes our prayers seem to go unanswered, but are later answered in unexpected and fuller ways.
Verse 7 states that he was heard “because of his reverent submission.” The Greek noun eulabeia can mean “fear”, “piety”, or “reverent awe.” Some scholars believe that all these meanings are valid here (TDNT, 2:751-54).
Why Lament and How To Lament in Prayer Like Jesus?
Psalms of lament are placed in God’s Word to help us get in touch with the pain inside.
The neglected psalms
• Psalm 10, 13, 22, 42, 88
• We tend to neglect the psalms of lament because we think that crying and complaining to God show poor faith.
• Because of this, many Christians live in denial, covering up their emotions and bottling their pain.
The necessary psalms
• We need these laments because there’s so much pain in the world.
• We need these laments because we must be honest with God.
• We need laments for the integrity of the Christian faith.
• We express our pain, raise our questions, and vent our feelings of abandonment to God in the context of trust.
The sources of lament
• The first cause is pain— physical, emotional, mental or spiritual.
• The second cause is a delay in the disappearance of our pain.
• The third cause is unanswered prayer.
• The fourth cause is the abandonment we feel, stemming from our frustration with unanswered prayers.
• The fifth cause is the doubting of God and ourselves as we wait for God’s answers.
LET THE CRYING BEGIN!
This is a lament psalm that God has given to us for use when we find ourselves overwhelmed by our enemies. When we struggle and do not know what to do.
Structure:
I. The psalmist makes his bitter lament to the LORD (1-2 [2-3]).
A. He complains that the LORD has apparently ignored and forgotten him (1[2]).
B. He vainly devises one plan to escape after another (2a,b [3 a,b]).
C. He explains that his enemy is exalted over him (2c [3c]).
II. The psalmist petitions the LORD to see his plight and deliver him, to prevent the enemies from boasting over his death (3-4 [4-5]).
A. He prays for God to intervene lest he should die (3 [4]).
B. He reasons that if he should die his enemy would boast in their triumph (4 [5]).
III. The psalmist expresses confidence in the loyal love of the LORD (5 [6a]).
IV. The psalmist, assured that his prayer has been heard, resolves to praise the LORD for dealing bountifully with him (6 [6b]).
1. The Lament Prayer (6:1-2)
2. The Petition (6:3-4)
3. The Words of Confidence and Praise (6:5-6)
1. The Lament Prayer: The Trouble
Laments are cries to directed to God.
Laments show extreme honesty before God:
Psalm 13 is a member of the frequently-occurring category of psalm - the lament. Though only six verses, it features all the things found in laments that make us uneasy. It is a no-holds-barred prayer in which the psalmist affixes blame for his dire situation with God. In two verses, the psalmist levels four straight questions at God, all starting the same way: “How long?” It is an emphatic, even impolite, series of questions.
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann warns against jumping to conclusions. Only to an outsider does this illustrate a failure of faith. On the contrary, it is, as Brueggemann writes, bold faith. Bold faith insists on presenting reality as it is experienced. It refuses to give a polite, edited-for-TV version. Prayers that arise from a contrived faith settle for a contrived god, a god who can’t handle the truth. Laments refuse to settle. They seek God and nothing less. Thus the jarring language.
If the first four verses of Psalm 13 are jarring for their boldness, the last two are jarring for their rejoicing. Like many laments, this psalm takes a 180-degree turn. “But I trust in your unfailing love,” writes the psalmist. “My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s name, for he has been good to me” (TNIV).
“How long?” repeated 4X. “How long” is a very human objection to continual anguish and persecution.
How long? The psalmist makes assumption about his relationship with God. He feels he is far from God and forgotten by him. Indeed God does not answer him and he is still enduring painful suffering.
The second “How long?” indicates that the psalmist has tried to “see God”, but God has hidden his face from the psalmist. In other words, the poet has sought God’s mercy for a long time, but God has not listened. So he cries out “How long will you hide your face from me?” This agonizing cry of the psalmist shows that he is near death (cf. v. 3)
The third “How long?” shows us more clearly how the psalmist has vigorously tried to escape from his painful condition. He has made many plans to seek God’s mercy and to be delivered from the present persecution, but his plans have proven to be vain. So the psalmist mourns all day long. He does not know what to do in order to be delivered from his present painful condition. He cries out, “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts?”
The fourth “How long?” concerns the enemy of the psalmist. He complains that his sorrow and pain, which give his enemy an occasion to be proud, cannot be justified. The poet questions, “How long will my enemy triumph over me?” By complaining of his pitiful condition, he expresses his deep trouble and seeks God’s compassion on him.
Notes: Laments are a certain kind of complaint –- one that is always expressed in the context of faith and trust in God. We believe we can be honest with God about the pain of life because we know he loves us, welcomes hearing our struggles and cries, and will reach to us in his mercy. In a lament we never let go of our faith. The reading from Revelation 6 is included as just such a case in point.
Our laments are a response to the pain of life. We cry to God when life gets hard and we discover there are no quick and easy solutions. And when that reality hits us, we sometimes question whether it does any good to pray and even have times of feeling abandoned by God. We can afford to be honest about such struggles because we know God loves us through Christ and we love him in Christ.
II. The Petition
The psalmist directly appeals to God for help. He, feeling himself away from God, prays, “Look on me, and answer, O LORD my God.” He asks God to look upon his troubled life. This petition may correspond to the hiding of God’s face (v. 1). God is directly asked to answer – a more immediate appeal than the four questions in the first part (vv. 1-2)
He implores God to enlighten his eyes which are dimmed with anguish and grief. This could mean the restoration of physical strength: the restoration of man’s health makes the eyes bright (cf. 1 Samuel 14:27, 29; Ezra 9:8). This request springs from the fear and proximity of death. The poet is in peril of death unless God intervenes in his trouble and delivers him from his enemies. In v. 4, enemies are described as real foes seeking his life. So the psalmist prays that God may hear him in order that his enemies may not be able to overcome him, and that they may not rejoice over his misfortune. All these requests indicate that the poet strongly believes that God alone can deliver him from his terrible distress.
What was troubling the psalmist?
1. That the enemy are sorcerers who have caused the illness through their fatal witchcraft or increased it by evil wishes (Mowinkel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship).
2. Death (Dahood and Craigie, Psalms, WBC).
3. The enemy could be a personal being rather than a personification of death: the enemy is described as triumphing (v 2), saying (v 4), and rejoicing (v 4). Further, the enemy is depicted as annoying and persecuting the psalmist.
III. CONFIDENCE AND PRAISE
Though the psalmist, the elect of God, finds no deliverance from the oppression of the adversary, the enemy of God, he rests confidently in the LORD’s loyal love.
Note the rapid movement from lament to confidence and praise. There are no complaints or petitions in vv 5-6. The psalmist expresses his confidence and praises God. His faith has triumph over doubt and anticipates the fulfillment of his petition. These final words of trust and praise in Psalm 13 are one of the characteristic features of the individual and communal lament psalms. The psalmist discloses that even though he has been complaining to God, he has not lost his faith in him. This faith of the psalmist resembles that of Job (Job 16) – faith of a really precious kind, for it shines when under trial. We may say that his complaint is based on his trust in God’s lovingkindness. By declaration of his trust, his complaint is no longer expressed, but his firm confidence that God will listen to his prayer is demonstrated: “My heart rejoices in your salvation (v 5). Such an assurance results from his strong faith in the Lord, even though his salvation has not yet come. Finally, he promises God: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.” The final note of praise shows that the prayer is no longer an expression of complaint, but an expression of thanksgiving. Such joyful words reveal the effect of prayer: it transforms a person from one who complaints to one who praises.
When we lament, we experience healing from God; we trust the unfailing love of God and keep coming back to that. We hold on even in the face of discouragement and temptation to give up, and we also look ahead to the day when God brings resolution.
The healing from lament
• As David experiences in Psalm 13, sharing your deepest thoughts and struggles with God bonds you to him and brings his healing to your spirit.
• We reaffirm our trust in God.
• We hold on.
• We await the day of Christ’s return, when our pain will be resolved and our circumstances will be different.
Waiting in the Blank: How Do we move from despair to praise; from doubts to daring expressions of worship?
Mark Roeda
All attempts to explain this about-face are conjecture. But I would suggest we note something. Between the last line of verse four and the first of verse five, note the horizontal strip of blank, white page. For those of you without Bibles handy, it kind of looks like this:
Now granted, blank strips like this appear hundreds of times in the psalms, separating hundreds of verses. On the surface, this one is no different.
However, I wonder how much time is tucked into that blank strip. Obviously things changed for the psalmist between verses four and five. How long did it take for that change to come? Before the rejoicing began? How many days passed in which verses one through four were the extent of his prayer and beyond that was just an unbounded blank? Maybe that blank space covers months. Maybe it took years before the joyous change in his situation compelled the psalmist to compose those final lines.
We don’t know. Even as these laments ask “How long?” over and over, they seem dead set against giving specifics. They give us only blank spaces. At the same time, this psalm is showing us how to live inside those blank spaces - wide, narrow or in-between. What do we do? We wait. We wait on God. Whether we wait patiently depends on what we mean by “patient.” We are patient in the sense that we refuse to give up on God and settle for second-rate alternatives. In other words, we refuse to dull the pain of blankness with alcohol or mindless entertainment. We refuse to simply distract ourselves with busyness. We don’t want to be numb (despite its appeal); we want what the alternatives can’t deliver: rejoicing. So we endure the blank.
Not that we like it. The blank always sucks. But here’s where the laments prove helpful. Their purpose is not to put us at ease with emptiness and the absence of God. (If anything, they increase our discontent.) Their purpose is, first of all, to give us permission to speak honestly with God about that discontent, even if it’s at the expense of politeness. Second, they remind us that the blank always comes to an end. God comes.
The question is simply a matter of how long. (How long? How long, O Lord? How long?)
Jesus himself gives us an example of faith that, rather than avoiding the blanks, endures them. As he agonized on the cross, on the precipice of the great blank space of death, he cried out in lament, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22). To link our faith to his is, again, simply to trust the blank is not infinite. We wait, looking again and again to Jesus’ resurrection. It is in the resurrection that Jesus binds the blank spaces, puts them under his authority and assigns their limits.
In the resurrection, faith finds boldness and hope in rejoicing.
Application:
We are often easily tempted by the feeling that we are forgotten by God when we are in trouble and deep sorrow. But God does not forget us. We should cling fast to the truth that God is merciful to the poor supplicant who cries out for help and deliverance. Surely God listens to the petitions of his people. If our relation to God is right, his help will never be broken off.
We also learn from this psalm (13) that prayer strengthens our faith. The psalmist faith was not strong enough to proclaim his confidence in God’s help at the beginning of his prayer. But later, at the end of his prayer, his heart is flooded with confidence and praise. Such is the power of prayer and the effect it can have.
We learn that our laments are effective means to stimulate intense devotion.
Prayer is a means to seek God to consider the condition of the one praying.
Prayer is waiting on God who is faithful, dependable, present, wise, and loving. I remember the story I shared a few months ago about a young soldier who had a private meeting with an officer, the head of the insurgent army, who infiltrated the enemy camp. His actions could sometimes be misinterpreted, but his encounters with him privately gave him confidence in him. I believe this is the power of prayer.
RESPONSE:
A Reading:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me –- just as the Father knows me and I know the Father –- and I lay down my life for the sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. (from John 10)
Habakkuk 3:17-19
WRITE YOUR OWN LAMENT
*The Benediction with Congregational "Amen"
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
The Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)
Amen!
Songs of Our Tears
by Howard Vanderwell
Text: Psalm 13
Topic: Why we need to lament
Big Idea: Our personal relationship with God will deepen when we are willing to be honest about our questions.
Keywords: Prayer; Suffering; Grief; Tears; Pain; Complaining; Complaints; Faith; Honesty; Doubt; Disappointments; Healing
Introduction
• Illustration: Vanderwell tells of a church someone visited that, to his surprise, kept Kleenex in the sanctuary, indicating that it was permissible to cry.
• Psalms of lament are placed in God’s Word to help us get in touch with the pain inside.
The neglected psalms
• Psalm 10, 22, 42, 88
• We tend to neglect the psalms of lament because we think that crying and complaining to God show poor faith.
• Because of this, many Christians live in denial, covering up their emotions and bottling their pain.
The necessary psalms
• We need these laments because there’s so much pain in the world.
• We need these laments because we must be honest with God.
• We need laments for the integrity of the Christian faith.
• We express our pain, raise our questions, and vent our feelings of abandonment to God in the context of trust.
The sources of lament
• The first cause is pain— physical, emotional, mental or spiritual.
• The second cause is a delay in the disappearance of our pain.
• The third cause is unanswered prayer.
• The fourth cause is the abandonment we feel, stemming from our frustration with unanswered prayers.
• The fifth cause is the doubting of God and ourselves as we wait for God’s answers.
The healing from lament
• As David experiences in Psalm 13, sharing your deepest thoughts and struggles with God bonds you to him and brings his healing to your spirit.
• We reaffirm our trust in God.
• We hold on.
• We await the day of Christ’s return, when our pain will be resolved and our circumstances will be different.
…………………………
Dr. Walter Brueggemann, Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, in his preface to Ann Weems’ book (pp. x, xi), has noted a pattern:
1. The Lament characteristically begins by naming God in intimate address (e.g. "My God, God of my fathers, etc.). The complaint is not uttered to a stranger.
2. There is a complaint. It tells God with some specificity what the matter is. It might even engage in hyberbole much as a child would in attempting to get a parent’s sympathetic attention (Oh God, this is the WORST...)
3. The Lament addresses God with an imperative, a demand. "Turn, Heed, Save." God’s power is not in doubt, only perhaps God’s attention to this problem.
4. Motivations might be added to the petition. God is given some good reason for acting. There might be appeals to virtue, precedent, honor or even divine vanity. "Oh God, fix this, so everyone will see how neat you are!"
5. Very often the petitioner does not stop with an appeal for rescue. If there is an enemy involved, there might be requests for something awful to happen to the foe. See Psalm 109 or Psalm 137.
6. Finally, when the hurt or anger is fully vented, something unexpected happens in the psalm. The speaker is, at the end, confident of being heard and "dealt with bountifully."
