Sermon Transcript
The book of Romans, which we’re not in right now, we’re in the book of Job, but the book of Romans in chapter 8 talks about how one of the ways that you and I naturally and instinctively respond to the brokenness and suffering in our world is with, believe it or not, groaning. Groaning. Groaning is a deep inward response to suffering. Groaning is personal. Groaning is intense.
Groaning is something so deep that whatever it is that you or I are feeling, we just can’t quite put into words. And so we sigh and we groan. And you know what I’m talking about. And nobody ever had to teach you how to groan. Nobody ever had to teach me how to groan.
It’s like trying to answer the question if somebody were to say, who is the first person who taught you how to cry as a baby? You’d be like, nobody. You and I may not remember it, but in the very first sound that you and I made when we left the warm and protected homes of our mother’s womb was a loud wail, a heartfelt protest, which over time developed into a groan. If you’ve ever gone through seasons of pain, and I know that you have, I know that you have, I know that some of you are, you’ve watched others that you love go through seasons of pain, I know that you have, I know that you are, you know what it is to groan. You know what it is to long for relief.
You long— you know what it is to long for somebody to just fix this and make it better. I, like many of you, I’m sure, found myself groaning a few times just this past week, like on Saturday a week ago when I heard that 13 people were shot at the Tops Market grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10, injuring 3, in what appears to be hate crime, racially motivated. We hear about that event and we instinctively groan. We don’t know what else to do. We groan.
Or the very, very next day, a week ago on Sunday, when a man opened fire in what also appears to have been a hate crime on members of Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, fatally shooting one congregant and wounding 5 others that were just gathered for an afternoon luncheon. We hear about that event and we groan. I’m sure some of you would say, Steve, details are still emerging in these cases. We’ll eventually know more, so hold off on, you know, your groaning. There’s already finger-pointing.
We know people go to their different political corners in these kinds of moments. Can we just call a timeout and just all agree as humans that these things are troubling and horrific? And unacceptable and disgusting on so many levels. And when we hear about tragedies in the world, or we hear about mass shootings or racially motivated acts of terror, or what’s happening right now in Ukraine— you know, the war in Ukraine’s been happening for 3 months, it does, it’s amazing— or the devaluing of human life, or the senseless loss of lives, we hear about these things and we grieve, we’re filled with outrage. We want to mourn with those who are mourning.
We groan. We groan inwardly. We groan deeply. And what about when tragedy comes to your own door? It’s unlikely any of us personally would ever know any of the people that were affected by these other tragedies, so we can distance ourselves a bit, right?
To just kind of go, okay, we can kind of move on emotionally, even though their loved ones will be left with this scar for the remainder of their lives. But as I’ve said before, Suffering is always abstract and theoretical unless you’re the one who’s suffering.
When you’re the one who’s suffering, all of a sudden it’s personal and it’s real and it’s tangible. We know what that’s like. You know that things don’t always work out according to your plans. You know that from experience things get in the way that you have no control over, and they take your comfort, they take your peace, they disrupt your relationships, they disrupt your sense well-being. And so that passage in Romans 8 is telling you and me that as we live in this world that is broken and corrupted by sin, don’t be surprised when you find yourself groaning.
I think that’s how our guy Job felt. We’ve been doing a brief sermon series in the book of Job, not comprehensively, but just kind of jumping from principle to principle. And in chapter 3 of Job, Verse 24, chapter 3, verse 24. Job is talking to himself, but he’s also talking to God. It may not sound like it, but he is.
He’s talking to God. And he says this in verse 24 of chapter 3, for sighing has become my daily food. My groans— there it is— pour out like water. I have to tell you, as we’re talking about Bible translations, thanks to the Grimes, our English Bible translations don’t do those words sighing and groaning justice. If you were to read in the original language as the writer intended it, the right translation would not be sighing and groaning, but actually roaring and bellowing.
That word sighing is used in other places in the Old Testament. It almost always literally means the growling or roaring of a lion. That term for groans, it’s not just, ugh. It’s a word that literally describes somebody who is bawling. Mourning in the night, in mourning.
The point is that in Job’s case, this is no mere whimper. He’s not shedding the odd tear. He’s not doing the things that we as guys sometimes do to kind of pretend like we’re not crying. You know, it’s a little bit dusty in here, my allergies are acting up. He’s not doing that.
He’s not trying to keep the stiff upper lip. This is a man who is— this is the gut-wrenching howl of a man who is in deep pain and anguish, knocked down by grief, overwhelmed by anxiety. The verses go on. It says, what I fear has come upon me. What I dreaded has happened to me.
I have no peace. I have no quietness. I have no rest, only turmoil. What is Job doing? He’s doing what the Bible refers to as a lament.
A lament. How do we talk to God when he’s not cooperating with us? How do we talk to God when he’s not doing what we expect him to do? How do we process our grief and our sorrow as Christians? What does it look like to express our anger and our outrage and our sadness to God when we’re suffering loss?
Where biblical lament comes in. We’ll talk about biblical lament in a moment, what it is, what it looks like in practice. But let’s remind ourselves quickly why Job is lamenting in the first place. In Job 1, we talked about it a few weeks ago, we saw that Job is described as blameless, upright, fearing God, avoiding evil. But one day, out of the blue, God sovereignly permits and actually orchestrates sovereignly a series of tragedies to fall on Job.
4 separate disasters come, one right after the other, culminating in the sudden death of all 10 of his children. And then on top of that, Job is inflicted with pain across his body from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. And because the writer of Job knows that the readers like you and me will look at this and go, well, this must have been because of something Job had done, God disapproved of it, or whatever, the writer actually then tries to go out of the way to say, you know, actually Job was innocent. Job did not sin. This was not a direct result of his sin.
Doesn’t mean he was sinless, doesn’t mean he was perfect. It’s just that he had no outstanding sins that needed to be dealt with that God’s like, okay, I’ll punish you with suffering. It’s not just the writer that’s saying that. It’s not Job just saying that. As Dan and I have pointed out, it was God that was making this proclamation.
Job is upright and blameless. So how does Job respond? Well, so 2 weeks ago we saw that one of the ways miraculously that Job responded to his suffering was with, believe it or not, worship. The end of chapter 1. So Pastor Dan talked about what that looks like.
How do we worship possibly when we’re going through suffering as well. We also saw last week a second way that Job responded to suffering was with questions, big questions, and we were reminded that God welcomes, he invites us. He doesn’t go, hey, take your questions, go somewhere else. It’s not what God does. If you missed either of those sermons, they’re online on the church website.
You can go back and listen to them. This week we see a third way that Job responds to his suffering. He responds to his suffering with lament. When all hell breaks loose in Job’s life, he didn’t take his sufferings piously or quietly. He didn’t seek a second opinion from some physician or philosopher.
He went straight to God. And when God appeared to be silent, Job’s like, hello? He’s refusing to take God’s silence for an answer or to let God off the hook on this one. So Job worshiped. He asked questions, and Job lamented.
He groaned. What is lament? Give you a definition, you can write it down. Lament in scripture is a form of prayer that has the intent of us drawing close to God in times of great suffering and pain. To lament is to express deep regret and grief or sorrow before God.
One commentator defined it as a prayer of pain that leads to trust in God. I like that. Prayer of pain that leads to trust in God. It is both personal, a lament is, but it’s also a communal expression of grief, crying out for His help. And the laments we see in Scripture— and I’m going to tell you, there are way more laments in Scripture than you or I might realize— laments give a sacred dignity to our suffering.
Laments offer a way for you and me to voice our confusion and anguish and frustration, to process our emotions. So I realize that the notion of us talking about emotion today may make some of us a bit uncomfortable because some of us are about as emotional as a rock. There are others of us that might be more prone to being overly emotional. God’s word though never tells us that we have to stuff or deny our emotions. At the same time, scripture doesn’t just say, okay, be driven by or overtaken by your emotion.
Instead, scripture gives us something else. Which is something most of us here today, I’m assuming, depending upon the culture in which you grew up and the church in which you were raised, I’m assuming that most of us did not grow up or hearing or seeing a lot of lament. There are cultures and churches that have a language of lament. It’s not one that I grew up with. Maybe you can relate to that.
Thoughtfully praying through our emotions, humbly reflecting upon the sources of what we’re feeling, reminding God of his promises. Yeah. But also bringing complaint and anguish and just very raw emotion, pouring out the whole mess in God’s presence. I didn’t grow up hearing that, but it’s in the Bible. We see it in Job.
And so today we’re going to explore what it means to pray through and to honestly process, come before God with our honest feelings about our pain and our grief and our suffering. I want to say this, if you’ve been a Christ follower for very long, then you almost have certainly had to face this kind of contradiction or what may seem like a bit of a conflict. And this contradiction represents one of the most formidable challenges to belief in God, not only belief that He exists, but belief in His character. And this contradiction is this. It’s both a theology issue and a personal issue.
It is that on the one hand, in good times and in bad, we say we believe that God is real. And present. He’s good. His will and purposes for our world is to heal and to save and to redeem everyone in it. And we believe these things, not just because it’s good to believe it, because we actually can point to actual examples of God doing this throughout history and even in our own lives.
We can find places where he’s demonstrated his mercy and goodness and care. And most of all, we can point to Jesus coming, giving his life for us. So we’ve got that. So many of us hold on to this belief firmly in one hand, but at the same time, you look at the tragedy and the horror and the great pain in the world and perhaps even in your own life, not just the chaos in human history, but the stuff that is happening right now, and we’re like, okay, how do I hold on to both of these things at the same time? How do these 2 things come together?
For many people, when hardship and tragedy strikes, we either don’t know how to hold on to the belief that God cares and is in control, or we begin to question and let it go altogether, or we alter our view of God into some kind of absentee God who isn’t with us or who doesn’t care. Again, this isn’t some abstract theological problem. It’s a tangible problem of our human experience. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. The good news is that the Bible doesn’t try to solve this contradiction for us intellectually, as if what you and I most needed is a seminar from God on suffering.
That’s not what we need. You need that. I don’t need that. No, places in Scripture like the Psalms— there are 150 Psalms, over a third of them are psalms of lament— or places like Job that is filled with lament, as we’ll see, they’re not trying to give us a theological intellectual answer to the pain and tragedy in the world. What they’re doing is they’re gonna give us a language for how we process and even pray through this contradiction, okay?
These are prayers and honest conversations with God that are generated out of the pain and anguish of this contradiction. The language of lament is not calling you to deny that you feel the way that you do, but at the same time, it’s not calling you to just sell everything and ditch the whole belief thing. You’re to pray through it. So what does that look like in action? Instead of trying to put pressure on ourselves to smile and project an image that everything is fine, Nobody has any doubts.
I don’t have any doubts. You don’t have any doubts. To try to pretend that nobody ever struggles, nobody’s ever sick or anxious about the things that we go through— we have to ask the question, what does it mean to lament as a way of honestly praying through our tragedies and our anger and our pain? Because if there is no category that exists for us to be able to do that, if there’s no category that exists for us to be able to say, I feel like I’m being abandoned right now, God, I know I’m not abandoned, but I’m feeling that way. If there’s no category for that, then what ends up happening is we attempt to fake it or to project an image of strength that’s just not true.
We have to be willing to learn to do this discipline of lament and to practice more frequently the personal and corporate process of lament. So let’s start with learning to lament. Learning to lament. We have to learn it because, again, A, many of us were not taught this or demonstrated it, and then B, Because it makes us a bit uncomfortable. We’re like, is— can I do that?
Let’s look at just a sample chapter here from the book of Job. Job chapter 10. Job chapter 10. This is a sample lament. And they’ll put the verses up here.
Starting in verse 1, Job says, I loathe my very life. Good start there, Job. I loathe my very life, therefore I will give free rein to my complaint. He’s like, okay, God, I’m just gonna put it all out here for you. And I’m going to speak out of the bitterness of my soul.
I say to God, do not declare me guilty, but tell me what charges you have against me. Hey God, you know I’m not guilty here. You’ve already said that. You know that I’m innocent. Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands while you smile on the plans of the wicked?
Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees? Are your days like those of a mortal? Or your years like those of a strong man, that you must then search out my faults and probe after my sin, though you know I’m not guilty and that no one can rescue me from your hand? Verse 8, your hands, they shaped me, God.
They made me. Will you now turn and destroy me? Remember, you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?
You clothed me with skin. Flesh. You knit me together with bones and sinews. You gave me life. You showed me kindness.
And in your providence, you watched over my spirit. Job’s like, what happened? What changed? He’s like, you know, if, if this is what you concealed in your heart, and I know that this was in your mind, if I sinned, you would be watching me. I would not let you— and would not let my offense go unpunished.
If I’m guilty, woe to me. Even if I’m innocent, I can’t lift my head. For I’m full of shame and drowned in my affliction. If I hold my head high, you stalk me like a lion and again display your awesome power against me. You bring new witnesses against me and increase your anger toward me.
Your forces come against me wave upon wave upon wave. Verse 18: Why then did you bring me out of the womb in the first place? Okay, here we go. I wish I died before any eyes saw me. This comes up a few times in the book of Job.
If only I’d never come into being in the first place or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave. Are not my few days almost over, God? Turn away from me. This guy’s praying this. God, turn away from me so that I can have a moment’s joy before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and utter darkness, to the land of deepest night, of utter darkness and disorder, where even the light is like darkness.
He’s appealing to God for just a little bit of relief. He feels like an inmate on death row who’s just like, can I just have a final meal here, last 24 hours of peace, God, before being led off to my death? Now, there are many other examples like this in the Book of Job, and if it sounds like Job is on an emotional roller coaster, yes, you would be right. He used to think that God is just, and now he’s having a hard time reconciling those 2 things, this contradiction. At one point, Job 16, God says— Job says he feels like God is being a bully to him.
Once even Job declares that it seems as if God has orchestrated all of the injustice in the world. But often, the moment that Job says these kinds of things, it seems like he’s terrified of it because he wants to believe that God is truly just. Job is just all over the place, and we can understand that, which makes laments really difficult to outline if you’re a pastor like me. It’s because they’re real, they’re human, they’re honest, I grew up lament— using this little acrostic for prayer called ACTS. Some of you know what I’m talking about?
Somebody taught me at one point. A stands for adoration, so start your prayers with praising God, some adoration kinds of things. Read His Psalms, sing, whatever. C stands for confession. After you adore God, you worship God, then you confess your sins.
And then after that, T, thanksgiving. You thank God for what He’s given you, that kind of thing. And then S stands for supplication. After all these other things, you supplicate, you pray, you intercede for yourself and for other people, that kind of thing. Prayers of lament don’t work like that.
They’re something entirely different. In his book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy— some of you readers may want to write that down, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy— Mark Vroegop, who’s a pastor in Indianapolis and has written a lot about lament, he’s found that most biblical laments are really asking just 2 questions. Where are you, God? And to, if you love me, God, then why is this happening? That’s pretty much what all laments seem to boil down to.
Now, sometimes these questions are asked by individuals, sometimes they’re asked by entire communities. Sometimes these laments reflect upon difficult circumstances in general, sometimes a person’s choices, and then they start lamenting those things. Or sometimes it’s what others have done. But there’s also a pattern that we see as we learn to lament. We’re going to find that there are certain key elements that show up in just about every biblical lament.
And again, There’s a lot of them. I just want to go through this really quick so that we can learn this. The first element is an address to God. The first element in a lament is an address to God. Laments start with an address to God.
One distinctive feature of prayers of lament in Scripture is this raw emotional energy, like, God, why aren’t you paying attention to me in my trial? And the reason for the raw emotional energy in this address to God is not simply about the trial itself, but it’s connected to who the lamenter is addressing. Who the lamenter is praying to. Biblical lament is based on relationship. You don’t lament to somebody that you don’t have a relationship with.
So the lamenter is addressing my God. He or she is assuming that God cares and wants to hear what he or she has to say. And so that makes this sense of absence that the lamenter feels even more painful. The lamenter isn’t just doing self-talk. He or she is reminding God who he has been in the past.
So to learn to lament, we must resolve to talk to God and to keep on praying. And I know that this sounds pretty basic, but it’s where we have to start. When you lament, you’re not just talking, complaining, or whimpering. You’re crying out to God in prayer. Giving God the silent treatment doesn’t take away the pain.
So even if you feel like God isn’t listening, if I can encourage you, it’s to keep praying. Pray your struggles. Pray your frustrations. Pray your anguish. Pray your questions.
Pray— whatever you do, keep praying. Prayers of lament help us work through these emotions. The second key element in almost all biblical laments after the address to God is, 2, a complaint. A complaint like we saw just a moment ago in chapter 10 where he says, I’m going to give free rein to my complaint. Now, I realize there’s a tension there.
Complaint isn’t a very positive word. I don’t like to be around complainers. You don’t like to be around complainers. Seems like the wrong response. Shouldn’t we be grateful?
Shouldn’t we be content? But are all complaints wrong? Given how many laments are in Scripture and how many complaints are in these laments, that can’t be right. That can’t be the case. If you read prayers of lament in the Bible, you’re going to find a lot of creative complaining.
And apparently not all complaining is sinful because These things are in the Psalms. Sometimes they would set the laments and complaints to music and say, hey, everybody, let’s sing our complaint congregationally. That doesn’t give you and me permission to just vent and unload our self-centered rage at God. The purpose of the complaint is not to malign God’s character or to put God to the test and like, God, you owe me. What you’re doing is you’re appealing to God based on a relationship and confidence in his character.
It’s your complaint on the basis of who God is. So, what lament does is it honestly and it specifically names what is wrong and painful. That’s the complaint. This feels painful. This is wrong.
This is unjust. In other words, you’re naming a circumstance that does not seem to align with God’s character or God’s promises. It’s recognizing and voicing your frustration about that. That you know that God could do something about it and he’s not. You’re like, hey, God.
So biblical complaint doesn’t work if you aren’t willing to be honest with God about your complaints, your pain, your fears, your frustrations. We talk to him in the form of relationship. The 3rd element of biblical lament, as we learn how to lament, is a request. A request. A lament is not simply an outlet for our frustrations.
In Job’s case, he is in so much pain that it appears that he only really has 2 requests. He uses a lot of words to say it, but his first request is just, hey God, either kill me or 2, give me an audience with you so that I can plead my case with you and understand why you’re allowing this pain in my life. Like in Job chapter 6, verses 8 through 9, he’s— here’s his request: Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant me what I hope for, and that God would be willing to crush me. Have you ever prayed that? God, would you crush me?
Just amazing. You let loose your hand and cut off my life. Or in Job 23:2-5, even today my complaint is bitter, he says. His hand is heavy. It’s interesting, it sounds like he’s not talking to God, but he is.
At that time, the way that you addressed a great superior in deference to them was to address them in the third person. And not directly. He’s talking to God. I know it doesn’t seem like he is, but he is. You’ll read that in the Psalms and other places like that.
He says, my complaint is bitter. Your hand is heavy in spite of my groaning. If only I knew where to find him. If only I could go to his dwelling. Here’s what I would do.
I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I’d find out what he would answer me, and I’d consider what he would say to me. God is saying— or Job is saying, God, I’m miserable. God, show up, hear my cry, act, fix this. Be true to your character, God.
The requests and prayers of lament involve confidently and boldly calling upon God to act in accordance with his character. And for many of us, I think that our default mode of prayer whenever we’re going through suffering is to just skip all the other steps and we just go right to request mode. I’ve done that. What’s super interesting about the prayers of lament if you study this, is that more often than not they do request, but the requests are almost always very— like a very small portion of the prayer. It’s interesting.
They’re usually questions and declarative statements and observations, but not so many requests. They’re anguished, detailed descriptions of what the lamenter is experiencing and how the lamenter feels about it, but any requests are usually kind of secondary. And another thing that you’ll often see is that the requests that are there in the laments are often quite short. God, arise, save, rescue, avenge, vindicate, deliver, teach. Don’t be silent.
Listen to me. Lament is a request to God. It’s a prayer. We’re calling on God to act. And then the 4th element of most biblical laments is an expression of trust and/or praise.
In other words, just complaining to God should not be the end goal. It might feel good, but that’s not the goal. Rather, complaint is designed to move us along in our lament to hopefully continue trusting and praising God, even if we don’t find out all of the answers to our questions and aren’t able to connect all the dots in our suffering. Now, if you read through Job, the longer he laments and the more that he talks to his 3 friends— we’ll talk about them next week— the more you’ll probably think, um, Steve, I don’t really see a whole lot of trust and/or praise. Coming out of Job.
Despite that, there is never a point that we can see where Job completely turns away from God. He is in despair, he’s at the bottom, but he doesn’t ever completely turn away from God. And we do know now, looking back, that by the end of the book, Job eventually reaches a whole new vision of God. But it sure does look bleak, I will admit. But look at Job chapter 19.
Job 19, it’s almost the middle of the book, in the middle of the lament. We don’t know how long he’s been suffering by this point, but in chapter 19 of Job, verses 23 to 27, Job says this: Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead or engraved in rock forever! Listen to this. I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.
I myself will see him. With my own eyes, I and not another. How my heart yearns within me. There’s been a lot of experts who’ve tried to dissect that passage and try to figure out what, what exactly is Job saying. It’s kind of a problematic passage, and I’m not going to get into all of that here.
What we can say with some degree of certainty is that, if nothing else, what he’s doing here in the middle of his pain and despair is that he’s expressing confidence that God will one day vindicate him, that one day God will set him free, one day God will deliver him, whether in this life or the next, and that God will have the final say in the end, and that Job would one day see God. And he’s so excited about it that he repeats his request in verse 27. He is exhausted physically, he’s emotionally drained, and yet he’s exhilarated about this prospect of one day encountering God face to face. Now, in biblical laments, one of the things where you see it turn from complaint to trust or praise, you’ll find a couple keywords there, and there’s one in here. Those are words like however or but, or in this case, yet.
Those words almost always indicate a critical turn toward trust, like when Job says, yet in my flesh I will see God. Yes, all this other stuff, yet. I will see God. That word yet marks an intentional turn, a shift from the cause of the lament to trusting in who God is, his existence, and his character because of who God has been and what God has done in the past. It means trusting in who God says he is.
So don’t get hung up on getting all of this perfect. Okay, I got to have all 4 of these elements. You might just be in such anguish that you’re just going to start off and go, God, this hurts. And what I encourage you to do is maybe all that you can muster is to end your prayer with, God, yet will I trust you today. Maybe that’s all that you can voice.
God, yet will I trust you. All this other stuff, yes, but yet will I trust you. Whatever you do, don’t stop praying, making this intentional turn away from complaint and anguish and grief toward trust in the middle of all of this. So what do we learn from lament? Learning from lament.
How should we think about lament moving forward? Because again, How many songs of lament? I mean, I was talking to Nate. I mean, there are not like a lot of worship songs about lament on the radio. Not like a lot of hymns of lament.
I sang the hymns growing up in church. I don’t ever remember any hymns of lament. They’re there, but we don’t really— I’m not like super familiar with them. But here’s how I want to offer just a couple practical things to get us thinking about what lament will do in our lives. One of the things we will learn and experience the more that we engage with lament is that we will discover that lament, believe it or not, is a way to worship God.
It’s a way to praise God. How are they a form of praise? Because you’re not lamenting in order to put God on trial or to test him. What you’re lamenting is you’re asking God to answer according to his unfailing love, because he’s a God of justice and righteousness, and you know that, and because he’s been faithful in the past. You’re appealing to him based on confidence in his character, and that is a valuable form of worship.
God is worthy of our celebration, he’s worthy of our shouts, and God is worthy of our lament.
Went to a conference a couple years ago with Alba and a couple others from the church, and I just remember being stunned when I heard a speaker talk about God being worthy of our lament. I just had to sit with that, and I’ve sat with it now for years since that conference. It’s just stayed with me. God is worthy of our lament. Another wonderful lesson we’re going to learn is that— it would be so easy for us to miss this— lament is proof of our relationship with God.
Lament is proof of our relationship with God. When you come to Him, you’re not coming to some distant deity saying, hello, pay attention to me. I don’t have to conjure up some strict set of guidelines to conjure up a response from God. No. What you’re doing is you’re asking your Heavenly Father, with whom you have a relationship, to act accordingly.
Most of you parents can probably remember days, and maybe you’re in this season of life right now, when your kids were little and you’re trying to sleep into the luxurious hour of, well, I don’t know, 7:30 on a Saturday morning. That seems reasonable, right? But your kids somehow have a knack of just coming in and waking you up because they’re hungry. They don’t go running outside to the neighbor’s house begging for food. Where do they come?
They boldly come into your bedroom asking for what they need. And you might be tempted, like I’ve been tempted in those moments, to get upset. But ultimately you process it and you go, I’m actually honored by this request because the request is in itself proof of my relationship with these children. That’s how it is with us with God. But the reverse of this scene is also tragically described by Russell Moore in his book Adopted for Life.
Russell Moore describes going to an orphanage in Russia and with his wife as they were in the process of pursuing adoption. And Russell Moore says he remembers the silence from the nurseries there at this orphanage in Russia. It was so eerie. The babies in the cribs never cried, he said. Not because they never needed anything— of course they needed things— but perhaps because they had learned that no one cared enough to answer.
Children who are confident of the love of a caregiver will cry.
For the Christian, our lament, when it’s taken to our Father, is proof of our relationship with God and our connection to the greatest caregiver of all. Another thing we’ll come to learn is that the more we practice lament and honest dialogue with God is that lament is a way— and I love this— for us to participate in the pain of others. Some of you are like, I got enough pain. I don’t want to have to participate in the pain of others. I get it.
But lament is not only for your suffering, it is for solidarity with the suffering of others.
Lament helps us to unlearn some really bad habits like easy explanations and pat answers when somebody else is going through trouble and we just sort of jump to an explanation there. Lament helps us to not do those things. Lament helps us to not give in to the temptation to shield ourselves from other people’s pain. It causes us to look at the suffering of others, head-on. And I’ll tell you that when we love our neighbor like we love ourselves, we will allow the substance of their suffering to become the substance of our pain as well.
We will incorporate that into our own prayer lives, and we can help bear that burden with them. These are all valuable learnings, but greater than all of these is simply this. I love this. Lament is meant to awaken us to God’s grace. It awakens us to God’s grace.
It reminds us that God, in his grace, understands. It reminds us that it’s safe to pour out your heart to him. What do I mean by that? Well, think about it in terms of Job. The kinds of requests that Job makes to God, they seem really unconventional.
They might even make us a bit uncomfortable. I mean, he asked God to take his life from him, for goodness’ sake, and to depart from him so that he could at least have a little bit of peace before dying. And there are other psalms of lament in the Bible that have similar requests. I mean, these are actual prayers in the Bible, and we’re like, can I talk like that? Why is that in the Bible?
How can I— is that okay? I want to offer this thought, that the very presence of these, the sheer number of laments, the very presence of these prayers in Scripture is a witness to God’s understanding and grace. That God knows how we speak when we’re desperate. He knows how we feel when we’re overwhelmed, and he knows that we’ll sometimes say desperate things. He knows that we’ll sometimes say even incorrect things.
Things. God understands so much that he puts so many examples of laments in Scripture as a way to say to you and me that it’s safe like that, to pray like that with me. It’s safe to pour out your deepest feelings to him. Your deepest feelings, your angers, your fears, your doubts, they’re not meant to remain deep in your heart where you refuse to express them or admit to them. No, where they belong is present it to God from the very depths of our being.
But if we forget that, if we fail to remember God’s grace, then we’ll never be honest with him. We’ll never bring our honest feelings to him. We’ll pull away. We’ll fake it. We’ll pretend.
We’ll go through the motions. God’s grace, though, means that it’s safe to come to him. He is a God of grace. He understands. So the question is, why does God understand our pain and our weakness?
I think you all know the answer. It’s because we have the only God who even— and the only Scripture that even claims that our God himself came down into this world, became a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And in the Garden of Gethsemane, you know what Jesus prayed? My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. That’s a lament.
What Jesus was saying is he felt that his sorrows were so great that they were going to kill him before he even was killed by the cross. Jesus knows what it’s like to look to God and to feel like God isn’t listening. He knows what it’s like to give a cry of desperation, like, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That’s a lament. He said that on the cross.
Did you know that that’s also a lament from the book of Psalms centuries before? Psalm 22.
The reason you and I can come to God is because Jesus received the abandonment from God that you and I deserve. Jesus called out to God in that moment and God turned his face away from his Son. And what that means for you and me is that when someone like Job or maybe you or me are going through our pain and we lament our situation and we’re like, God, turn away from me, the fact is, is that God doesn’t ignore our cries. He instead turns his face towards us. Instead of turning away from us, he turned his face away from Jesus so that he would turn his face towards us.
All because Jesus experienced what we should have received. He’s our advocate. He’s our redeemer, and he lives. Came down from heaven to die for us. Paid the penalty for our sins.
Lament is not meant to be our final prayer. Just kind of period, and they just never pray again. Lament is meant to be a prayer in the meantime. I like that. Most of the lament psalms end with a— some kind of a vow to praise, like a promise to return thanksgiving to God for his deliverance.
And because Jesus has risen from the dead, we know that sorrow is not how our story has to end. N.T. Wright puts it like this: the song may be in a minor motif now, But one day it will resolve into a major chord. When every tear is wiped away, when death is swallowed up in victory, when heaven and earth are made new and joined as one, when the saints rise in glorious bodies, then we will finally sing no longer a lament. I think we’re gonna sing, at last.
For now, though, in the meantime, we lift our lament to God as we live and we wait with hope. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you that you are worthy of our lament. Thank you that you desire relationship with us and for us to be real with you. I pray that anyone going through pain or suffering right now or in the days to come, that for all of us, that we would be shaped by this teaching and let it transform the way that we interact with you.
I pray also, Lord, that anyone here today that does not know you and have a relationship with you, that today would be the day that they would turn and call upon you and be saved, delivered, forgiven of their sins. If that’s you today, would you just tell God you want him to come into your life?
For others of us, maybe what you need to just say is, yet God, will I praise you today.
Wherever you are in your journey, would you just Along with me, let’s continue to lament and to pray to God in worship and in trust. God, we offer these prayers to you in thanksgiving. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
