All right, well, welcome back. If you're watching online this
morning, welcome to you, especially when you're watching
with this live right now, 1116 or in days to come.
We want to invite you to come be with us in person at 115 E of
Main Street, right here in the heart of Gaylord.
This is your invitation. Hope to see you sometime soon.
All right, and those of you in the room, there are notes on the
back table. If you want to grab those either
to track with me while I'm teaching or to take them home
and have them for devotions for the days to come.
Feel free. They're on the back table.
If you have your Bible, please take and turn to Psalm chapter
13. I'm actually starting in the
Psalms this week, which I'll tell you more about in the
moments to come. So this, it's probably about 30%
into your Bible, depending on what you have at the back of
your Bible with maps and concordances and other things.
Psalm chapter 13, Psalms 150 chapters long.
So it's quite easy to find in your Bible after well after
before Proverbs. So I'll find it there.
And I'm going to be reading from Psalm chapter 13.
This is a song of David and I'll start in verse one and read all
the way through to verse 6. This is the word of God.
David writes how long, O Lord? And that's one question he asked
the second question. His first question is, How long,
O Lord, will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
And how long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my
heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be
exalted over me? Consider and answer me, Lord my
God, and light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest
my enemy say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice
because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your
steadfast love, and my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
And I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully
with me. This morning I want to talk to
you about songs of grief. Songs of grief.
Let me pray for us, God. I'm grateful for the wealth and
the diversity of emotions that are expressed throughout the
Psalms. And in these weeks where we're
looking at just vast different emotions and confessions in the
Psalms, we pray that you would grow our love for your Word, a
greater understanding of Your Word and greater adoration for
Your Word as we open our minds and our hearts and our lives to
your direction, to us as you speak to us through the Psalms
and other parts of Scripture. Speak to us this morning as we
look to the songs of grief, we pray.
And Jesus name and everyone loudly together said, Amen.
If you've been out for a few weeks, we're doing a series.
I don't often do long series, but whatever so often I'll do on
it. And so this past summer, I felt
led to do a series of fall in the Psalms.
And I'm loving hearing back from some of you that are reading and
listening to the Psalms more often maybe than you have in
years past. And I think as a church, this is
a really great moment for us to to grow and how the Psalms are
connected to the New Testament and how they're connected to the
Old Testament. So this morning, particularly, I
want to kind of navigate through Scripture starting in the
Psalms. And I want to show you how this
Psalm is connected to this story in Exodus.
And, and this Psalm is connected to a Psalm in Lamentations and
then eventually even in the New Testament, how they're all just
a beautiful tapestry of connectedness throughout
Scripture and hopefully it will grow within you even more.
Again, admiration for God's word.
And I must say, at 55 years old, soon to be 56, I still go to
God's words, seeing new depth and new things spoken to me.
And in lifelong, we get to dig in and see again the tapestry
and how things are connected. And, and so this morning I have
great delight in getting to bring you this truth.
And I want you to know that I, that I, I get excited as I'm,
we're working each week to put the Psalms in a way where
hopefully you're growing again in your appreciation for them
and how they flow throughout scriptures.
So we started the first week. If you missed it, we go back
into wherever you podcast or you can find YouTube or Facebook.
Lots of ways to get the messages now and you'll see the first
week. I just introduced the idea that
the Psalms are a playlist. They're the OG, they're the
original playlist put together by God, by the Holy Spirit.
And these are songs that are written over a 1500 year period
of time. Moses has songs in the Psalms.
They are songs. And of course, David, hundreds
of years later, and then even hundreds of years after David is
king, you'll find that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, the
days of Nehemiah and Esther, that era of followers of God
around 550 years before Jesus, there are songs even from that
period, right? And so maybe in your playlist
that you make, maybe you have some songs from the 50s and
maybe the songs that are recent, you put them all in one
playlist. And it's your expression what
God does this. And now we have this playlist in
the Psalms that we can go and glean from.
So I introduce you just to the idea of what the Psalms are.
And then the second week I talked to you about the
essential Psalms, the songs that are the most popular.
Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want. I went through the ones that are
renowned and more familiar. And then we looked one week at
the Psalms to talk about who God is.
If you want to grow in your understanding of the attributes
of God and the character of God, the Psalms are full of
discussing this is what God is like, right?
And then we looked at psalms of repentance, particularly Psalm
51 where David is. He is addressed by Nathan the
prophet about his sin with Bathsheba.
And David comes to the point where he's saying things to the
Lord like God created me a clean heart and renew a right spirit
within me. There are times in our life
where, yes, prayers of repentance that are found in the
Psalms are helpful in our own repentance, the discipline of
repentance and growing in the ways of God.
Then finally, last week we looked at suffering and sorrow,
but particularly in the context of of like faith in God and
being tormented or suffering because of our faith in God,
because of our faithfulness to God.
So Peter writes to modern, well, at least in that era, he writes
to these Christians in what is now modern day Turkey, and
they're being tormented, persecuted because of their
faith in Jesus. And Peter quotes Psalms from the
Old Testament to encourage them. OK, so we looked at those types
of suffering moments when it's because we're standing up for
righteousness. The world according to the first
Peter, remember, he said they're going to call you the evil
doers. They're going to call you the
haters. And certainly in this era with
Christians, often when we stand up for our faith, we are going
to be called haters and evil doers for standing up for
righteousness. Now this week, the Psalms that
we're going to look at this week, they're different.
They're not just sorrow, but their their grief and their
grief because of great loss. David had sorrow for his sin.
That was one of Psalm 51. And then again, sorrow for being
persecuted. But what about the times where
we go through something that is devastating and we reach the
type of grief where it's physically painful?
You could be so sad and, and, and I have been, there have been
moments and times in my life where I even in my adult life
where I was so sad and so broken and so in despair and grief that
it physically hurt. And I would cry and cry and
moan. Maybe you've been in a place
like that, the Psalms that like the one that we just read, they
give voice to those moments, those emotions.
And I'm going to show you that it's really important as we
follow God to give voice to these emotions.
And maybe you have grown up in a Christian tradition where you
weren't aware that God welcomes those expressions and those
emotions and the honesty that we find in some of the Psalms.
Maybe you came from a Christian tradition where you thought you
always had to put on happiness and joy, not understanding that
joy is an ongoing state of mind. But we can have joy.
We can coexist in the midst of sorrow and sadness.
The type of joy that we received from God, It's ongoing.
It's not just a shallow emotion, but it can coexist with grief
and sorrow, the type of joy that we find in God.
So there are, if you know anything about music, you'll
know that a minor chord has a certain sound to it, right?
You flatten the third and it minor chords their their
dissidents. And when you hear a minor chord
in music, it gives voice to angst and sorrow.
These Psalms, some of the ones that we're going to look at
today and the other psalms of grief in the Psalms, they are
minor, often in their tone, their dissidents when they
express the sorrow that they are going through.
So let me unpack Psalm 13 for you and just kind of show you
the flow that is common with the psalms of grief.
There's a typical flow, and most of them have this flow to them.
Watch what the flow looks like. First of all, the psalmist has
questions for God, and maybe you didn't know that it's OK to
question God. God welcomes it and He gives it
to us as a model. In this occasion when David is
saying God, how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?
Now it's important to understand, has God forgotten
David? No.
But does David feel forgotten? Yes.
Does he feel alone? Yes.
And he's voicing his feelings, his emotions to God.
God's going to honor his faith if it's going to come after
these verses, but he starts here and you'll find that it's OK to
question God to God. God welcomes it.
It's a model again. So how long?
Oh God, He starts with that and he references the face of God.
He says, how long will you hide your face from me?
We know throughout Scripture that the face of God represents
the attention of God. And This is why at the end of
our services, when I say, may the Lord bless you and keep you,
and may He turn his face towards you.
In other words, it's a prayer to say over you.
May you sense God's attention and presence in your life.
The face of God represents attention.
A lot of times we're their children.
We want them to turn their face to us.
Our children want to turn our face to them.
It's representing our attention. David feels like he's lost the
attention of God. He hasn't.
I'll look in the next few weeks into Psalms that have
questionable doctrine or theology, and you might read and
go, wow, is that like New Testament?
Does it match up with our New Testament faith?
I've got some examples for you, but this is a moment where
again, David has not been abandoned.
God has not left him alone, but he feels it and I'm expressing
it to God. God honors in verse 2, He says,
how long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my
heart all day? If you've had sorrow in your
life before, you might even question God.
God, how long is this sorrow going to last?
How long is this grief and despair?
How long am I going to be in it? That's this question for God.
He's expressing it now. Watch what happens.
And this is common. You can just Google songs of
grief and the Psalms and you can find many, OK?
Some scholars think as many as a third of the Psalms are sad, at
least, at least sad. And so if not grief, OK, some of
them are expressing sorrow over sin, against sorrow over being
persecuted. Some are songs of grief.
And this is the typical flow for them.
So he's expressing his sorrow to God.
But then watch what he does. He switches his flow and he says
now he's bringing petitions to God.
And he says, consider and answer me, Oh Lord my God, light up my
eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say I have
prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
Here he brings petition after being honest with God about
feeling left and alone. He's honest and God is going to
honor his prayer. But then watch what happens.
And again, this is the typical flow.
He doesn't stay in his place of sorrow.
The song is going to live at the end with a confession of faith.
He says, verse 5, but I have trusted in your steadfast love,
and my heart shall shall his future tense.
My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
In other words, God, I, I, I know that you're bringing
salvation. It's a confession that God is
going to deliver and save him from his sorrow.
And then he says, I will future tense sing to the Lord because
he is dealt bountifully with me. Watch how it switches in tone
and only 6 verses at first he's like, God, you've abandoned me,
I'm alone, where are you God, I don't sense you at all.
Then by verse 6 he's like you have steadfast love and God, you
have dealt bountifully with me. In other words, God, you've been
good to me. So he lifts himself out of this
place of sorrow in these verses. And again, this is the typical
flow in the Psalms when the psalmist confess their sorrow
and their grief, they get to a place of confession of faith and
watch this. We are encouraged to interact
with God this way. Maybe you didn't know that you
can go to God and say, God, I feel far from you.
I feel empty God. I don't know if you're even
seeing me many occasions in the Psalms.
This is the way the psalmist interact with God and we are
encouraged to do the same. So the question is, when was the
last time you were honest with God, right.
You might think you have to put on like a like just a show of
faith and everything's great, everything's great.
But but again, this is giving us the model.
You can go to God and say, God, I have doubt, I have sorrow.
I feel distant from you. Where are you God?
And from that place, the honesty before God, God will lift us out
of our sorrow when we come to him.
And that way. Now, in a way, this song is a
lament. And in a lament, at least in our
context, a lament in simplicity is just a sad song.
But for us, I want to look at it as a song from people who love
God but are navigating through the grief that life brings.
So the Psalm here is a lament. And maybe you know that there is
actually a book in the Old Testament after Jeremiah,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations. There's an entire book that is a
lament, and we believe it's written by Jeremiah.
And Jeremiah is just going on and on and on about his sorrow
over the city of Jerusalem that has been destroyed.
The people are starving. Terrible, terrible, terrible
things are happening. And in the midst of these great
tragedies, the grief and sorrow, he gets voice to it.
And it's in the Bible for us to read, right?
But watch what happens in the middle of Lamentations.
He's going on and on and on. He's writing Lamentations, you
know, roughly 550 years or so before Jesus is going to be born
in Bethlehem. And he says in Lamentations 317
through 22, watch he takes a turn, and his turn is going to
lift him out of his sorrow. He's admits my soul is bereft of
peace. I have forgotten what happiness
is. So I say my endurance has
perished, so has my hope from the Lord.
He's saying hope is dead, it's perished.
I love it. Tim Keller, who has since passed
away the last couple years, but a wonderful pastor, teacher,
writer, he said this of lamenting.
He said we need to learn the language of lament.
Until we learn how to lament, we will never truly learn how to
praise because your praise might end up just being fake.
If all you do is come to God and pretend or fake joy and
happiness when it's eluded you and you're actually full of
sorrow, then your praise will not be as meaningful when we're
not honest before God, when we're full of sorrow and talking
to God in the midst of our sorrow again is honorable.
So Jeremiah goes on in verse 19, he says, remember my affliction
watch. He's following the pattern that
we saw in Psalms. He admits that he's bereft of
peace, that he is like hope is dead.
But then he moves on to petitioning God.
It's the same flow that we found in Psalms.
Remember my affliction of my wondering is the Wormwood and
the gall. My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and
therefore I have hope. He says my hope is dead, but oh,
I want to renew my hope. So what does he do?
He says I call to mine. The steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases. His mercy has never come to an
end. They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness in the midst of his sorrow.
He admits his sorrow. Then he makes his confession.
Now the New Testament, I've showed you each week that the
New Testament quotes the Psalms often, right?
And now here's an occasion where the Old Testament, Jeremiah is
quoting the Psalms even in the Old Testament.
I want you to see they're all connected.
The New Testament is quoting in the Psalms.
Jeremiah is quoting the Psalms in Lamentations because watch in
Psalm 13 five, the passage there says, but I've trusted in your
steadfast love, and my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
Jeremiah is quoting about the steadfast love of the Lord from
Psalm 13 five. He's modeling what God had set
up for him. Limitations 324 Then it goes on.
He says the Lord listen, he's lifting himself out of his
sorrow. The Lord is my portion says my
soul. Therefore I will hope in him.
Here he's quoting from Psalm 16, five that says the Lord is my
chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot when it says the
Lord is my portion. In other words, like the Lord is
all that I need. He, he gives me the food I need.
He gives me the whatever, whatever I need, God is bringing
to me, He is my portion, right. So Lamentations, Jeremiah is
quoting from the Psalms limitation 325 through 26 says
the Lord is good to those who wait for him, the soul who seeks
him. It is good that one should wait
quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Now, I want you to see that when the Psalms are being honest in
this way, I want you to understand that they're not just
going to the Lord and grumbling or complaining, because that's
not what God is encouraging. He's encouraging honesty.
But how does that look different than complaining?
And it's just murmuring, right? Well, I'm going to show you.
So here's a story because we're instructed in Philippians
chapter 214. Do all things without grumbling
or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent children
of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted
generation among whom you shine as lights in the world.
So if we're encouraged not to grumble or complain, then what's
the difference between grumbling before God or being honest
before God? Well, I want to try to unpack it
for you. CS Lewis says this.
He says we must lay before him what is in US and not what ought
to be in US. This is valuable to know, OK?
When you go to God, you're like, God, this is me right now.
This is what's in me. It's not what should be in me
necessarily, but God. This is where I am.
And the Psalms of grief model this type of honesty with God.
But what makes what differentiates honesty with God
from grumbling and complaining? I want to show you.
God is going to deal with the children of Israel in Exodus
chapter 17, one through 7. Now, if you remember the
children of Israel and Exodus, Exodus is early in the Bible,
after Genesis. If you're new to the Bible,
you'll remember Moses and the Prince of Egypt and those other
stories, the 10 commandments. So Moses goes to the Pharaoh in
Egypt where there are Jewish Israel, Israelites, slaves, OK,
they've been enslaved for hundreds of years.
And God tells Moses to go tell the Pharaoh, let my people go.
And the Pharaoh says, no, remember, like Pharaoh, Pharaoh,
oh, let my people go, right? So that's a story.
And so Pharaoh says no. But then there are these plagues
after, you know, plague after plague.
And eventually the Pharaoh has experienced enough tragedy
because of God to find and say, OK, you may leave, right?
So they leave out of Egypt from slavery and they cross over the
Red Sea and got this miracle after miracle after miracle,
right? He shows up in their life.
But what do they do? They're like they're complainers
and they just murmur and watch what they do.
This is a story in Exodus 17, one through 7.
It says all the congregation of the people of Israel moved on
from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the
commandment of the Lord, and they camped at refitum, but
there was no water for the people to drink.
Therefore the people quarrelled with Moses and said, Give us
water to drink. And Moses said to them, Why do
you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?
Now you might think that their problem was thirst because they
didn't have water, but really their problem was trust.
They did not learn to trust in God.
So instead of them going to God and petitioning God to move in
their lives and to bring them water, instead they go and they
murmur and complain amongst each other.
And then they murmur and complain to Moses who was their
leader. But they don't go to God.
They're just complaining. Watch verse 3.
But the people thirsted there for water, and the people
grumbled against Moses and said, Why did you bring us up out of
Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with
thirst? Now consider this.
They don't pray to God in honesty.
They grumble against Moses. And this is a big principle.
How often do we grumble and complain instead of praying to
God? And like lamentations, do we
speak of the steadfast love of the Lord even in the midst of
struggle? No, they're not doing this.
So the model here is watch, you could go to God and say, God,
I'm tired, my hope is dead. We're not encouraged to go to
each other. Now, yes, there's a level of
honesty, yes, with other believers.
But when it gets to the point where they're grumbling and just
complaining, God has abandoned us.
We need water. Things are terrible.
Oh, what was me? What was me?
They're not going to God with
their sorrow. Instead, they're just
complaining and living in it. So verse 4.
So Moses cried to the Lord. Moses cries to the Lord.
They're not crying out to the Lord, they're murmuring to each
other and complaining to him. But Moses goes to the Lord and
he says, what shall I do with this people?
They are almost ready to stone me.
And the Lord said to Moses, pass on before the people, taking
with you some of the elders of Israel, and taking your hand to
staff with which you struck the Nile.
The Nile was a river that had turned to blood.
And go, and behold, I will stand before you there on the rocket
horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out
of it, and the people will drink.
And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
And he called on the name of the he called the name of the place
Massa or Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of
Israel and because they tested the Lord by saying, is the Lord
among us or not? Now they're asking kind of the
same question. David's asking God, where are
you? There's like, is the Lord with
us or not? But watch, see the difference
here? They're not asking God, They're
asking each other in a complaining, quarreling way.
It's better to go to God and say, God, where are you?
I don't sense you, God, where are you?
And then to follow the model of these psalms, where then they
make petition to God and they make a confession about the
goodness of God. The people who are not following
God well in the story, they're just complaining to each other.
They haven't gone to God, but Moses does.
And watching what's going to happen is God is going to do a
miracle. And when he does, it's going to
give a picture of Jesus. How does Jesus respond to these
complaining, murmuring people? Well, God is going to do a
miracle. He's gracious to them.
He's going to bring water out of a rock.
And the rock, of course, is a representation of Jesus.
Jesus is going to be called the rock in the New Testament, and
Jesus is going to be called living water.
So in the midst of their complaining, God is going to
respond beautifully to them. But they're not following the
model that we get in the songs of grief.
They're just complaining to each other.
And how many Christians do you know that just complain and
bellyache and complain and bellyache?
And sometimes it's like, have you gone to God about this or
you just go to your friends about it?
You just go and just just all things are terrible, terrible,
terrible. Where's the Lord in this?
Right? But they haven't gone to God
about it. That's the model that the songs
of grief give to us. God is gracious to provide water
for them, but it's not a fault. It's not a model for us to
follow. Watch we see how Jesus shows up
in this picture in this moment, John 410 through 14 Jesus just
verse 10. Jesus answered her being the
woman at the well in Samaria who was far from God and confused
and watch. He says if you knew the gift of
God and who it is that is saying to you give me a drink, you
would have asked him and he would have given you living
water. Jesus is a picture of living
water and watch it's coming from now.
I want you to see how this is connected.
Exodus has a story. They need water.
Moses delivers the water as he strikes the rock that is Jesus
living water comes out. That's Jesus.
OK now forward in history. The Psalms are going to connect
the idea of living water from Exodus Psalm 63 verse one.
Oh God, you are my God earnestly I seek you, my soul thirst for
you, my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land, for
there is no water. It's it's nodding back at the
story of Moses and the children of Israel hundreds of years
later. And then from there we're going
to see in the New Testament that Jesus is connected to this idea.
So they're murmuring and they're complaining, but they're not
going to God. That is the our discipline
should be going to God. When we have hope that it's
failing, when we're physically thirsty, we can remember that
our souls are made to thirst for the Lord.
This is the point of fasting. When we fast and we get hungry
and thirsty, it's a picture of us hungering and thirsting for
God. The songs of grief can remind us
of our ultimate need for God in this fallen world.
Now Jesus is going to utilize songs of grief in the New
Testament. The last couple weeks I've been
starting the New Testament going backwards, but this week I'm
going to end in the New Testament.
Jesus himself uses these psalms of grief when he's on the cross.
Psalm 22 verses one through 2. This is where Jesus is going to
quote. He says, this psalmist says, my
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my
groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day, but you
do not answer, and by night but I find no rest.
Can you believe this is in the Bible, right?
This is in the Bible. This is how honest God wants us
to be with Him in this place of sorrow.
Another occasion. Psalm 2219 it says, but watch
it's going to he's going to lift.
It's going to follow this pattern of you admit you're
honest before God. God, I'm full of sorrow.
I'm full of grief. But then by verse 19, they get
to the point where the Psalm is the same.
But you, O Lord, do not be far off.
It's a petition. O my help come quickly to my
aid. OK, next week I'm going to talk
about Psalms with some questionable theology again.
We'll look to those in their moments again where they're
looking like David. It's like, is God far from
David? No, but he feels that way and
God's OK with him admitting it. So in the New Testament, Jesus
is going to lean back to these passages.
In Matthew 27, Jesus is on the cross and he's experiencing
grief and agony and pain because He's paying for our sin.
We spelled celebrated communion this morning to remind ourselves
of the blood that was spilled and His body that was broken for
us. We're remembering what Jesus did
when Jesus was in the state. Verse 45 of Matthew 27 he quotes
these Psalms. Now from the 6th hour there was
darkness over all the land until the 9th hour and about the 9th
hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying Eli, Eli Lima
Sabakhthani, that is my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Jesus feels distant from God in this moment, from the Father.
If he feels it, then they're going to be moments where we
feel it. But these psalms give us a place
to confess the sorrow and then to petition God and to get to a
point where we stir ourselves back to faith.
That is the flow God invites us into utilizing these psalms in
this way. So my question for you is when
is the last time you got before God and you got honest about
your disappointment about where you feel far from Him, about
your confusion. Maybe there were moments you
were looking for God to move in a certain way and he didn't and
you don't understand why and you getting before God and simply
saying God, I'm confused. I don't understand.
I remember there was a season in my life where I was praying for
something that was really had caused a lot of grief in my
life. And I got to a point where I
would pray, I would say, God, this would be nothing for you
God, I'm asking you to move in this way and I know it would be
nothing. This would be so easy for you
God. Why, why, why?
And that honestly before God was beneficial in my journey to
growing closer to Him. Because when we deny our sorrow,
when we deny our grief, it actually distances us more from
God. Instead of drawing close, we are
honest, then we petition God, and then we lead ourselves to a
place where we make confessions about the steadfast love of the
Lord and the faithfulness of God.
I love the hymn. It is well with my soul.
Maybe you're familiar with this old hymn, right?
The story goes that the songwriter, his name is Horatio
Spafford. And in 1873, his wife and his
four daughters were crossing the Atlantic on their way to Europe.
And the ship that they were on went down.
And the mother reaches the other shore and she texts back.
I mean, she telegraphs back, right?
She telegraphs back. She she sends a message that all
four of the daughters had had passed away in this wreck.
And then he is going to Horatio was going to travel that same
route in the days to come. And the story is that the
captain of the ship comes from and says this is where the ship
went down. This is where your daughter's
went down. And it's in that place that he
pens the words. When peace like a river.
I have to sing it in order to say, When peace like a river.
Can you sing this with me? Restoreth my soul.
When sorrows like sea billows roll, He's emitting his sorrow.
Whatever my Lord thou has taught me to say, it is well.
It is well in my soul. He's doing the same flow of the
psalms of grief. He's admitting his sorrow, he's
petitioning God and he's confessing.
It is well with my soul. The discipline of this is so
important in the life of a believer.
And maybe you've never, maybe this is such a strange idea for
you. Maybe you didn't know that there
were these psalms of grief and you didn't know that they were a
model for us to follow. And maybe you've been trying to
follow God with putting on, you know, whatever level of
happiness you had in the midst of great tragedy.
God's not calling or expecting that of you.
Instead, he's inviting you to honest, honest admission of
where you are. You can question him.
You can yell at God. Did you know that?
You can? And God welcomes that honesty.
And then you get to the place again.
The flow is you are honest. You petition, and then you
confess your faith. It leads to that.
So let me give you application. Many of you are reading or
listening to the songs more than you ever have before.
And maybe when you come across these songs of grief, maybe just
skip over them and you're like, that's not where I am now.
And that's OK. But maybe you want to mark them
and go, if I ever do find myself in a place of grief, I want to
go back to those. Or you can just Google songs of
grief. You'll find them.
There are many of them, and knowing the value of them and
that they're there is important in the life of a Christian, a
follower of God. So my question is, do you skip
over them or maybe mark them to recall they're there when you
might need one? And then my hope is that as you
grow in your knowledge of what the Psalms are like, that it
will increase within you a great love for the Psalms, that
admiration and awe of the of the tapestry of Scripture, how it's
all connected. My hope, my hope, I do hope when
I teach and when you hear teaching, wherever you're
getting your teaching from, that's solid and, and, and godly
that you're growing in your love for Scripture.
As you grow in your love and admiration for Scripture, you
will grow closer to God. And knowing that there are
moments like these where people are honest with God in shocking
ways, hopefully will increase within you your love and awe of
God speaking to us in the word. Let me pray for us, God.
I'm grateful to again discover how you respond to just honesty.
And you lead us out of our sorrow and tears and mourning
when we're honest with you about it.
And so grow us in our discipline of this.
Some of us have never had a moment of honesty with you.
We've been afraid to do so and now we see that it's so
prevalent in the Psalms. Jesus, you were honest when you
felt alone. Jeremiah in Lamentations is
honest when he felt alone. But they lifted themselves out
of it. Help us to learn how to do this
well as we model and follow after these Psalms.
We pray this in Jesus name. And everyone said, hey, man,
hey, before we finish, I do want to give just a brief moment.
If you're here this morning and you've been wrestling with the
claims of Christianity, but you've never given your life to
Jesus, you've never surrendered your life, maybe you've been
wondering for a while, then I want to give you a moment to do
that today. And what does that look like?
It looks like you're getting to a place where you believe in
your heart that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is God, and then you
confess it with your mouth. You say, OK, I'm going to say it
out loud, I'm going to speak it to others that Jesus is God.
And Jesus put on human skin and came and sacrificed himself for
us at the cross. That's Communion this morning.
And through the cross and the burial in the resurrection of
Jesus, we can receive forgiveness, we can be cleansed
from our sin, and we can be set up to spend eternity with God
forever. And we received the eternity of
God now and this life, we don't have to wait until we die to
experience it. No, you can experience the
presence, the power of God now in your life when you submit
your life to Jesus. So I'm going to pray in my
encouragement to you is if you've never done that, you've
never become a Christian, then you can echo this prayer with
me. And then I will encourage you to
tell somebody, tell me, tell a friend that's mature in the Lord
that you made a decision to follow after Jesus and you
surrendered your life to him. That's the point at which you
become a Christian. And then from there, we
encourage you to be baptized and grow, chase after the ways of
God and see what God will do in your life.
Let me pray. You might want to say this echo
this prayer. If you want to become a
Christian, you could say Heavenly Father, I come to you
in the name of Jesus and I believe in my heart that Jesus,
you are God and Jesus, I confess it with my mouth.
I say that you are Lord of all the creator of all things, and I
turn towards you. I turn away from my sin, I turn
to you and I say I want to surrender my life to you.
I want to repent of my own ways. So as I surrender my life to
you, Jesus, Holy Spirit, come and dwell within me.
Put eternity into me. I pray God and grow me in your
ways. I believe I'm saved and cleansed
and born again as I surrender my life to you.
In Jesus name I pray and everyone said Amen.
Let's all stand together. Thank you so much for being here
today. I hope that you enjoy the last
little bit of fall that is still here.
Whatever a little bit you can find out there, enjoy it.
And before you go, I want to say a blessing over you if you'll
prepare your heart to receive this blessing.
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, and may he make
his face to shine upon you. And may the joy of the Lord that
is unspeakable and full of glory, may it abound to you.
And may the peace of God that passes all understanding, may it
surprise you in the midst of all of the challenges that life
brings. And then may the mercies of the
Lord, in other words, the forgiveness of God, that's new
every morning. May it be especially new to you
now in your mornings to come. And now may the Lord Jesus
Christ guard your heart and your mind.
You are salt in your light. Go now and be salt and light
unto the world. You are blessed.
I'll see you again soon.