Christopher: In our suffering, we end up thinking, am I on the right path anymore? Has anyone been here before? Am I completely lost in the woods? And when you come to the Psalms of Lament and you see your agony poured out, that's exactly how I feel. I can't sleep.
I feel like my bones are burning. I'm wondering where God is. That's where I am. That's a blaze on the trail that says, you are on a path. Somebody has been here before.
Somebody is here now. You're not alone in this.
Caleb: The following message was recorded at Kingstree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Christopher: We are now in the second of what will be an eight or possibly nine, possibly nine week series working through the Psalms, and we're not going through the Psalms psalm by psalm. That would take us a long time. What we're doing, as I introduced last week, is seeking to allow the general shape of the Psalms to shape our souls so that we would be formed by this book to the ultimate end that our prayers would be shaped by this book. So as we look through this book, as we look through the different genres in the Psalms, allowing that to shape us so that we are praying like the Psalms. We're praying with the Psalms.
We're praying with the priorities, and the passions, and the perspectives that we find in the Psalms, knowing that those are the priorities of God himself in Christ. And this is why it really is so important to be doing the prayer or the reading list together, because as much as we'll try, these eight weeks are not going to be enough to soak our souls in this book, but reading through the Psalms together one chapter a day for eight months, that will help. That'll be a good start. And so again, I encourage you if you want to get the most out of what we're seeking with this series to join us together in reading through the Psalms as a church. Now, this week we're going to look at one particular genre of psalms.
So I introduced this idea last week. The book of Psalms or the Psalter has many different genres, which just means different kinds of psalms, different emphases of psalms, and these are different, these are named. You've got psalms of praise, of lament, of thanks, of trust, royal psalms, historic psalms. You've got these different psalms, and it's important to know those terms were not known by David when he was writing. He didn't sit down and say, Okay, time to write a historic psalm.
Those terms are terms that we have imported into this book where we're saying, Oh, okay, that's historic song. That's a song of trust. That's a song of lament. It's labels to help us get our hands around what's going on here, but they're not definitive. Each kind of genre, they'll have a little bit of others in it.
It might be mainly trust. There's a little lament. There's a little praise. So don't be alarmed as you're reading if you're like, I can't pin down exactly which kind of psalm this is. The titles, Psalm of Lament, Psalm of Praise, these are generalities to help us get a sense of, okay, what are we dealing with here?
That being said, the most common genre is lamentation, lament, which basically just means crying out to God in the midst of difficulty. So it's a very broad genre. Wherever you are crying out to God in the midst of hardship, in the midst of difficulty, we're calling that a Psalm of lament. Traditionally, that's been called a Psalm of lament, and it is the most common form of psalm that we'll find. The second most common is praise, but even more common than praise is crying out in the midst of hardship.
Lament. Now, one might look at that and feel discouraged. Wow, God gives us a prayer book, and the most common prayer in it is lamentation. Well, discourages me, but I would encourage you not to think of it like that. Rather, see the prevalence of lamentation in the psalter as a reminder to you that God knows your situation.
He knows what we need. Just like if somebody gave you a survival pack, and in it there was a lot of food and water, you'd say, Well, this person knows. One of the things I'm going to need is food and water. There's other stuff in here too, but I'm really going to need food and water on this trip. So too in the Psalter, we find Psalms of Lament, and the Lord is saying, You're going to need this.
You're going to need to know how to walk through hardship, and I'm giving you words for that. And that's a witness to us that he knows our situation. He's aware of what it is to walk through these things, and more than that, of course, we know that God is not merely aware of our need of lament, aware of the hardness of this life, but in fact knows it from the inside, meets us there through the sufferings of Jesus Christ, as we will look at a little bit later. So what I'm encouraging you now though is see the prevalence of the Psalms of Lament not as a reason for discouragement, but as a reminder, I'm known. My situation is known, and I'm met here by the God who comes down into this suffering and gives me words for this suffering, gives me language for this suffering.
Now I'm praying that that would be the case this morning, because I know my words are not able to comfort anyone. It's dangerous to talk about suffering. One of the reasons being suffering is so intimate and acute for each one of us. For someone to stand up and tell you about it, how to pray in the midst of it, could sound and could seem very presumptuous, but my prayer is that that would not be the case, but that rather the Spirit would be present to allow now the Psalms of lament to open up to us, the heart of God in Christ to open up to us, and to gather us through these Psalms to himself, and to equip us with these Psalms for the journey ahead and for the dark times ahead, knowing that day lies beyond them. We're going to, this morning, focus our reading, focus our study in Psalm 42.
I'm going to give an overview. That'll be the first half, an overview of Psalms of Lament, but the textual focus is going to be Psalm 40. So let's turn there, and I'll read that for us, and then I'll pray, and we'll get into this together. Here's what the psalmist writes. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with a throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you downcast, O my soul?
And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls.
All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day, the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemies, as with a deadly wound in my bones? My adversaries taunt me, while all the day long they say to me, where is your God?
Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Let's pray, and we'll look by grace at these Psalms today. So Father, we come to you this morning, and I lift to you this time, and I lift to you, Lord, my words, and I pray that your spirit would be upon us, that the riches, the comfort, the beauty bound up within the Psalms, something of that, father, would be opened out to us this morning.
Something of the riches in this book would be accessed by your people this morning, poured over your people this morning, and that we might find afresh your beauty in Jesus Christ redolent in these verses, resonating in this book, meeting us in these prayers. So Father, come and grant now grace, anointing, enabling, so that I might speak and your people might hear and we might be truly built up into Christ, who is our head, our Lord, our God, and our life. We pray all these things, father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
Well, let's begin then by laying out how the Psalms of Lament shape our souls, because that really is the question that we're looking at in this study. How are the Psalms shaping our souls for the sake of prayer? So then we ask, okay, how do the Psalms of Lament in particular shape our souls for the sake of prayer? And I think there's four ways that we can look at. The first one would be very simply that the Psalms of Lament teach us that lament is allowed.
Lament is allowed, and even more than that, that it's right. It's encouraged. It's good to pour out our souls in this way. Let me just read you a few quickly. Psalm six:two-seven.
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled, but you, O Lord, how long? Turn, O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love, for in death there is no remembrance of you.
In Sheol, who will give you praise? I am weary with my moaning every night. I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with weeping. My eyes waste away because of grief.
It grows weak because of all my foes. Or again, Psalm 13 verses one through two, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy exalt over me?
Consider. Answer me, O Lord my God. Lift up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Or Psalm 22 verses one through two, well known to us, well known to our Lord. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me from my words of groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. So these are the words of God. These are the words breathed out by the Holy Spirit, given to us to pray. And so at the very least what's being done here is that the Psalms of Lament are saying, It's all right to say things like this to God.
We all have this feeling. We've all felt this, right? We've all felt these burdens, these questions, these wonderings. How long? Where are you?
Where's the answer? But the Psalms of Lament teaches you don't have to cover that over with religious language and say, I'm doing great. I'm doing fine. You know, every day with the Lord's better than the one before. We don't have to do that.
We don't have to pretend everything's all right. We don't have to assume that to feel confused or abandoned or angry means we're doing something wrong, because the Psalms of Lament say, Look, here's words for when that happens. Here's words for it. So the Psalms of Lament are giving us permission to voice our burdens to the Lord, permission to pour them out, and even more than permission, affirmation. It's good to do this.
And the flip side of that would be implicitly, it's bad to keep that all in. And every time we go to the Lord and say, Praise you, Lord, you're excellent, move on thinking, Why aren't you answering me? Where are you? No, he wants that honesty presented to him. So that's the first way the Psalms of Lament shape our souls by giving us permission to lament, and by encouraging us to lament as something that's affirmed to us.
Secondly, though, the Psalms of Lament encourage us to lament in a way that is aimed at God. So these Psalms are not simply saying, Hey, just complain. Just complain as much as you can. Just wallow in how bad you're feeling. No, the Psalms of Lament give permission to pour that out, but then they show us how to turn that to God, to point that to God, and this is critical because this is the difference between scriptural lamentation and soul embittering complaint.
Scriptural lamentation pours this out before God. Soul embittiment pours out all the problems, and then just wallows in it. That's not what lamentation is. That's wallowing. That's self pity.
Lamentation is honest in the presence of God, always aware that this is being poured out before the eyes of one who sees and knows and cares. A good way to encapsulate this concept comes in Psalm 60 two:eight, where we find the phrase, the command really, Pour out your soul before him. There's a lot more we could say about Psalm 62, but just that, pour out your soul before him. That gets both sides, doesn't it? Pour out your soul.
Pour out the pain. Pour out the frustration. Pour out the confusion. Pour out your soul before him in his presence, that he sees, aware that he knows, aware that these things are cared about by your God. So the Psalms of Lamentation acknowledge the reality of pain and confusion and hardship, and they encourage us to acknowledge that, but then these Psalms refuse to treat this mess as if it's the main reality.
They refuse to allow us to treat the problems as if they are the final truth. The Psalms of Lament are shaped such that they tell us to put the problems out there, but then they show us there's a reality over these. There's a reality under these. There's a reality that's holding these. No matter how deep the sorrow goes, no matter how profound the experience of loss, no matter how world ending the pain may be, and biblical lamentation meets us in all those places, these Psalms always continue to affirm, and never lose sight of the fact that there are hands underneath all this.
There is a presence in the midst of all this. There is a purpose running deeper than all this. So that's one of the ways the Psalms of Lament shape us. Yes, pour out your heart, but pour it out before God, never losing sight that he and not this situation is the defining truth. And it's easy, right?
You've been there. It's easy to lose sight of that. Left to myself, I can pour out the problems well enough, but then I live in the problem. And that's where the Psalms of Lament are shaping your soul to say, Pour it out, but remember there's one over it. Remember there's one under it.
Remember there's a purpose in it. Remember it's not the main final thing. That's where the Psalms help us. They shape us. So that's the second thing.
They give permission. They teach us to turn our lament toward the Lord. And third, they teach us the heart of God in Christ. The Psalms of Lament teach us the heart of God in Christ. Now, how is that, you might ask?
How does that teach us his heart? Well, this is where we pull on something from last week. Remember, ultimately, all of the Psalms in one way or another are about Christ. Now, it's different ways in different Psalms. We have to look at the Psalm and try to work through how that is the case, but every psalm, like all of reality, is about Christ.
Colossians one says that all things are through him and for him, which includes every single psalm. Every single psalm exists through the crucified and risen Jesus, and for the crucified and risen Jesus, which means when we come to the Psalms of Lament through that lens, everything's through and for Christ, we hear the lamentation in these Psalms, not first as my lament or David's lament, but first it's Christ's own lament. That's the deepest truth of the Psalms of Lament. They are the songs of our Lord. Remember what Isaiah tells us about him.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and how it says a verse before that, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrow. Jesus Christ, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. Who's sorrow? Who's grief? Why is he burdened down by sorrow?
Why is the glorious King of heaven when he enters earth, called man of sorrows? Why? Verse four, Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrowing. So when we come to the laments, and we read the lamenting of David, and we see our lamenting there, remember that under all of that is the lamenting of Christ suffering on the cross is the carrying of all the lamentation of his people, all the grief of his people, all the sorrow of his people born in himself, he is the prime lamenter, and we lament only in his lamentation. Now you might say, Wait a second.
Jesus is born way after the Psalms are written. How is it about him? How are these words his words? He was born hundreds of years after the Psalms. That's correct.
But remember, in the mind of the triune God, the identity of the man of sorrows who bears our griefs is present from all eternity. Jesus is eternally present before God, so when the Holy Spirit inspires the Psalms before Jesus is born, Christ is already completely present to God as the suffering one. The Spirit inspires the Psalms here. The Spirit of Christ inspires the Psalms here. So Jesus, as he's known eternally by God, is fully witnessed in this book, even though he as a man is not born until after it's written.
He's the foundation of these things. That's how Paul can say he's the beginning. He's the firstborn of all creation. Now, what this means for us, you can say, Oh, this is interesting. What this means for us is this.
The Psalms of Lament are first and foremost, if we're speaking theologically, centrally they are the lamentations of Jesus, and Jesus shows us who God is, which means as we come to the Psalms of Lament, we are hearing ultimately God's heart for us in Christ. Why? Who is this one lamenting? It's ultimately God himself in Christ who enters into all of our grief and laments under our burden in love for us. God himself in Christ bears our sorrow, grief, pain, and loss, and God himself in Christ is the one who cries out through the Psalms of Lamentation.
God become a man crying out as a man from the depths to God so that we as men, as humans, might pray that same prayer with him to God. So we're coming in these Psalms, we're coming in the deepest mystery to the heart of God. So it shows us our God is like this. Our God is one who doesn't disdain to come down even into our lamentation, and take it on his own lips, and make it his own cry. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
What business does the Son of God have in saying that? It's because he's come down and made it his own, because he loves us. And in doing so, he says, this is what God is like. This is what God is like. Isaiah 5seven 15, For thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a crushed and lowly spirit.
And the Psalms of Lament shape our soul by shaping our vision of God, by showing us that's who he is. He is the God who doesn't remain aloof and unmoved, but enters in, dwells with, and gives life to the lamenting, and the crushed, and the broken. So that's the third way. The Psalms of Lament form our souls by giving us permission to lament, by teaching us to turn our lamentation to him, and by showing us who our God is as the one who bears our lamentation in our place with us. Fourth and finally then, before we look at the psalm itself, we can say that the Psalms of Lament teach us that our suffering is filled with presence.
Our suffering is filled with presence. One of the most painful things of suffering, be it physical or emotional or spiritual or whatever, is a sense of solitude. I'm the only one dealing with this. I'm the only one going through this. Nobody else can really get what's going on here, and that solitude can be one of the most crushing elements.
But the Psalms of Lament teach us, no, your suffering is filled with presence. I'll give you an example of this or an analogy. A number of years ago, I had an internship in Colorado, and one weekend I decided, John, just go climb Pikes Peak. And I guess you could do that when you're in your early 20s. You say, I'm going to climb that mountain today.
So I did. I just started climbing and went up. And at the beginning there were lots of people all around me, and there was a very clear path, and I'm just going. And as you keep going, as you're getting higher, there's less people, paths are less clear, gets a little bit more uncertain. When you get above the tree line, very few people, the paths are very hard to follow.
And I began to think, Am I even on a trail anymore? Where am I? And this thought came to mind, Has anyone ever been here before? Am I like lost? And it's those times when I would see on the trees ablaze, the little marker, the little red marker or the little blue marker that says, You're on a trail.
You're Onatria. And what a relief to be walking and thinking, Has anyone ever been here? And you see ablaze in your eyes, Oh, good. I'm Onatria. Somebody has been here first.
Somebody's been here before me. Somebody's cleared the way for me. And in fact, somebody intended for me to be here because I'm on the path. And the Psalms of Lament are like that. They're like blazes on the trail of suffering.
Because in our suffering we end up thinking, Am I on the right path anymore? Has anyone been here before? Am I completely lost in the woods? And when you come to the Psalms of Lament, and you see your agony poured out. That's exactly how I feel.
I can't sleep. I feel like my bones are burning. I'm wondering where God is. That's where I am. That's a blaze on the trail that says, You are on a path.
Somebody has been here before. Somebody is here now. You're not alone in this. Hearing the cry of the psalmist saying, I can't sleep for weeping. My bones are burning.
How long will I be forsaken? Where are you, God? To read that is to be able to say, Okay, I'm not alone. Someone's here with me. Right here in this darkest place, someone's here.
Right now. So the Psalms of Lament fill by giving word to our suffering. They fill our suffering with presence. And of course, the other voice we hear singing with us when we come to the Psalms of Lament, the other voice singing with us in the prison cell of our suffering through these Psalms is ultimately Jesus Christ himself singing with you, lamenting with you, with you in that place, invading the solitude of your suffering with his own presence as the good shepherd who goes before you into the valley of the shadow of death, who tears through the end of the valley and leads you up out of it. So those are four ways.
Of course, we could say more, but those are four ways the Psalms of Lament shape our soul. They give us permission to lament. They teach us to turn our lament to God. They show us the heart of God in Christ, and they fill our suffering with presence. Now, let's take the remainder of our time then to consider the structure of lamentation as we find it in the Psalms, the structure of lamentation.
I'm going to have to go through this a bit quickly, but this structure we're going to see this morning is shared by most Psalms of lament. They're not cookie cutter. They're not going to be all exactly the same, but this is the basic structure that we have. It begins with an address to God. So look back at Psalm 42.
This is again where we're spending our time. Look how it starts. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
So you'll see this across the board. Lamentation in scripture begins with an appeal to God. O God, Oh, Lord. It's looking to him, and notice what that does. As this becomes the form of our lament, notice what this is doing in our soul.
It is forcing me to remember God in the midst of hardship. Addressing my lament to God, even with an, Oh God, before it, forces me to confess his presence on my lips even when I don't feel his presence in my heart. We address the psalm. We address the lament to him, and that's a way of saying, even when the feeling is not there, you are there. You hear me.
You are there. And notice, the psalmist doesn't feel the presence of God here. I mean, he doesn't say, Now I see you, but I used to really long for your presence. Used to really thirst for you, but thankfully now everything's fine, so now I can write a psalm. No, he's writing the psalm out of the absence.
How long? When shall I come and appear? My soul thirsts for you. Right now I'm thirsty. You're not here.
That's the point. He's not saying, You're here, Lord. He's saying, You're not here. That's what the psalm is being written out of. Where are you?
I don't feel you. I don't see you, and the address to God is allowing the felt absence of the Lord to become the confessed presence of the Lord. I don't feel you, but I'm bringing the lack of that to you, and in doing so confessing you're here. Whether or not I feel you, whether or not I see you, you hear me. You know me.
You're aware of me. And even if my soul never again feels your presence, you're here. And that's where I'm resting. That's laying where down my soul. You hear me.
So the Psalm of Lament starts with an address to God. Second, it follows up with an outpouring of the heart. Address to God, outpouring of the heart. Now often this outpouring is mingled together with the address, and that's what we find here as well. The address is coming in the form of questions.
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When will I come and appear before God? That's the beginning of the outpouring of the soul. When will I come and appear before you?
Verse nine, Why have you forgotten me? Again in verse nine, Why do I go about mourning for the sake of my enemies? So in this psalm, the outpouring of the heart is taking the form of honest, difficult answers, or honest, difficult questions. When is this going to be over? How long am I going to suffer like this?
Why have you forgotten me? This is a time of absolute honesty with the Lord. And now honesty is emphasized here because probably if you stop the psalmist and said, Wait a second. Answer me with a rigorous theological specificity. You know when you will come to appear before God, when he wills.
That's right. Okay. I'm sure that the psalmist probably recognized that. I know he hasn't forgotten me. He's omniscient.
It's not like he forgot I exist. I know that. I know that I'm mourning at least because apparently God wills that I'm mourning. You could give theological answers, and a fresh out of seminary student might come and say, Well, wait a sec. Don't say that.
Don't say that. That's not theologically accurate. But in this context, in lament, what is more important than theological precision is the outpouring of the soul, the honesty before God. Why? How long?
Have you forgotten me? And he doesn't stop and say, You're omniscient, so I know you haven't. Just, Have you forgotten me? It is a place for this. It's a place for the honest outpouring of the soul.
So the address to God, the outpouring of the heart, the presentation of the problem, but then third, and this is critical, again, the Psalms of Lament don't allow us to remain in that place, or they don't allow us to treat that place as fundamentally true, wallowing in self despair. Rather, they lift our eyes to God. They lift our eyes to Christ. So pour it out without theological specificity. That's okay, But then this is then turned.
We look to the Lord. We remember the Lord. Look at verse five and eleven. Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. And verse 11 says the same thing. Why are you cast down? Why are you in turmoil? Hope in God.
Now there's a huge difference between lifting our eyes to the Lord in the midst of suffering and saying everything's fine. Those two things are not the same. Don't hear me saying they're the same. There's a huge difference between lifting our eyes to him in the midst of the difficulty and slapping on a smile that says, Now everything's better, because I took my Bible pill, and I feel fine now. That's not the way this works.
Rather, it's like lifting your eyes to the eastern sky in the middle of the night. That doesn't make the sun rise. That doesn't make the night go away, but it does turn you to the place where you know night is going to die. It turns you to the place where you know hope is coming. I know that horizon is going to illumine, and day will come, and so I'm looking to it even in the darkness.
That's what the Psalms of Lament do. They turn us to the place of our hope. They turn us to the place of our assurance. And you see the psalmist is still in the midst. He doesn't say, Why were you downcast, O my soul?
He says, Why are you right now while I'm praying? Why are you downcast? And in the midst of that downcast soul, he is given the courage to say, This is not the end. The end is praising God. The end is praising God.
I will again praise him, my salvation and my God. So the Psalms of Lament by this third movement, there's the address to God, the outpouring of the problem, and then the lifting of the eyes. And with the lifting of the eyes, these Psalms are teaching us slowly over time until it's ingrained into the marrow of our mind and heart, teaching us the courageous hope that is able to say, This is not the end. I shall again praise him. Weeping perhaps.
Weeping, still able to say, I will praise him again. I will praise him again. The lowest we're ever dragged by the suffering and death of this life, at that deepest point, we're able to say, I am going to one day sing with joy. I am going to one day praise the name of God with freedom and gladness and an utterly unbound soul. I will praise him.
The Psalms of Lament teach us that that is true. And then we ought to say, Why is that true? Is that just hope wishful thinking? Sure, go ahead and think that if you want, if that's what helps you. Do the Psalms of Lament teach us just an empty, wishful thinking that life is gonna turn out all right?
No. The reason this lifting of the eyes, this looking to the east in the midst of the night, the reason this is not a cheat or wishful thinking is because Christ is risen. That's the only reason hope is not a lie. That's the only reason the Psalms of Lament can lift our eyes and not be utterly false comforters, is because Christ is risen. And that's the final point then for today that we see these Psalms are ultimately shaped in the form of Christ's passion.
They're shaped in the form of death and resurrection, because of course they, like all reality, are built upon the slain and risen Jesus. The scriptural pattern of lamentation is to enter into death, descend into grief, go down into the grave, and yet find that place illumined by hope, illumined by life, promised to and moving to resurrection. That's the shape of lament in Scripture. It's the shape of Jesus Christ. It's the shape of the God man who is crucified and raised and reigning from the throne of reality.
I shall again praise him is true because Christ is risen, and that's what's beating through these psalms. What's vibrating under every one of these psalms is this reality, the death and resurrection of Christ. That pattern is possible because the crucified Jesus is raised up again. Remember, we read earlier Isaiah 53, The man of sorrows acquainted with grief, the man of sorrows who is crushed for our iniquities, broken for our transgressions, who bears the chastisement that is due to us, it falls upon him so that by his wounds we are healed. And part of what it means when it says he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows is that every, just hear this, every death, every loss, every sorrow, every failure, every lament, every sin, every condemnation into which we could ever enter has been embraced and experienced by Christ in the mystery of his death.
You cannot be alone. You cannot descend further than he has gone. There is no depth, Christian, and I know, in fact, don't know. It goes so deep. There are horrors so dark in this life, but there is no depth to which you can descend in which you will not hear the heart of God beating with you there.
You fall to the deepest place and hit the rock and lie on the ground drowned in your tears, and you hear beating through the ground the heart of Christ because you've fallen on his chest even as John leans back against him in the supper. That's where you'll find yourself to be, not in some God forsaken prison, but leaning back on the heart of Christ who has descended to this place to meet you here. He's with us there in our lamentation, and he's risen. He's risen. And I know you've heard me say this many times before, but I will never tire of saying it.
His resurrection, his entry into joy is not just something that happened for Jesus. The resurrection of the crucified Jesus is something that has happened, is happening, will certainly happen to everything, everyone, every moment, every memory, every event that is united to him by faith. His resurrection into joy will raise those things up with him. It cannot be otherwise. That's the hope we have.
Jesus' resurrection is the promise of your resurrection. Jesus' joy, Christian, is the promise of your joy. The transformation of Christ's cross into a sign of glory is the promise that all your crosses will be thus transformed. All your sorrows will sing his praise. So while we genuinely lament, we genuinely weep, we genuinely grieve, we cannot finally despair.
We cannot finally despair, because Christ is risen, and the cross of the risen Jesus has become the stake driven through the heart of hopelessness, so that though we can go to the depths, hope cannot be finally extinguished because Christ is risen. That's the form of Christian lament, and we find it for us in Second Corinthians chapter four where Paul says these well known words. Chapter four verse seven, he says this, We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed perplexed, but not driven to despair persecuted, but not forsaken struck down, but not destroyed carrying in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in our bodies. For we who live are being given over to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Christ may also be manifest in our mortal flesh. That's the character of Christian lament as it's taught in the Psalms, and as we enter into it through Christ, and as we enter into it at this table, because as we come to the table of Christ together this morning, we are tasting the uniquely Christian lament.
We're tasting here the quality of the lamentation that is purchased for us by the death and resurrection of Christ. How so? Because at this table we taste the death of Jesus. We taste all the grief and sorrow and sin and punishment born in that death. At this table, we taste, we join with by faith into the body of Christ broken under our grief, the blood of Christ poured out for our sin.
You taste his death at this table, and yet you, Christian, are about to receive these emblems of death as witnesses to you of love, as heralds to you of victory, of seals to you of God's covenant faithfulness? How can you come and partake in death and taste it as love, as promise, as life? Because Christ is risen. So as we come to this table and taste the emblems of death turned to the food of eternal life, we're already tasting together the promise that lies at the end of all our lamentation, resurrection into the joy of our master. Let me pray for us then, and then we'll move into song and take the Lord's Supper together.
Father, we thank you for such a great savior as Jesus Christ. Truly there is none like him. In all the world, in every religion, in every philosophy, in every intellectual pursuit, there is none like the crucified and risen Jesus Christ who is all our hope and all our life, who teaches us to lament in hope. So Lord, we pray that we as your people, we as your body, we here at Kingstree as one little expression of the global church, that we might be taught to lament well, to glorify your name in our lamentations so that our sorrows would sing your praise. Grant us this grace, Father, that we might meet with Christ in the midst of the night, and that we might point others to the coming day, knowing that day has already broken in the resurrection of our Lord and our God and our Savior.
We praise you for our King, Jesus Christ, in his name, amen.
Caleb: Thank you for listening to this message from Kingstree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God and the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.