I remember when my oldest son, Michael, was little, he liked ordering things, stacking things, building things. It was really fun to watch him, and I found a hint of delight in looking at the way he’d perfectly stack his blocks in light of the way I like to perfectly place my stapler, tape, and pens on my desk. But there was also another quality that I soon witnessed as we watched him involve himself in such building projects. Sometimes, he’d have a tall tower built when he’d go to place the very top block on it, and he’d knock a few blocks off. Instead of calmly reaching down and grabbing the few blocks he knocked off so that he might reposition them on the tower, he’d sometimes yell or groan and knock over the whole tower. That wasn’t as delightful to watch and less delightful to realize that his orderliness in some areas of life was not the only trait I sometimes demonstrated that was now being reflected in my son.
These times were followed with much training and discipline from Lili and me, trying to teach Michael what was acceptable and good and right to do when he was frustrated, angry, or sad. But, I think it’s fair to say, this isn’t something we all learn to do well as two-year-olds, and then spend the rest of our lives doing perfectly. Rather, handling our frustration, sadness, and discouragements throughout are challenging. Oftentimes, feelings of frustration or discontentedness or sadness lead us to sin. It’s simply not natural or easy for us to know how to handle such emotions or frustrations well.
The good thing is that God knows us well. He knows that we are but men, and the Scripture is given to aid us in such matters. Specifically, numerous psalms are written in which the psalmist expresses lament or sadness or discouragement before the Lord. In fact, the largest single category of psalms within the Psalter is that of lament. Sometimes the lament is made simply for an individual; sometimes it’s made by an individual on behalf of a group of people, but when you combine these together, lament psalms make up sixty-seven of the 150 psalms.1 Perhaps this is surprising to us, but I think it makes sense when we consider that the psalms were written, in part, to give us an aid in expressing ourselves before God, and we are a people who often feel deep sorrow, frustration, and sadness.
Not only do lament psalms comprise the single largest category of psalms, interestingly these psalms are also very consistently structured. Now, that might be surprising to us at first thought, since it would seem that lament is something that pours out of us quite naturally. However, when we consider how easy it is for us to fall into sin when expressing our sadness or discouragement or how easy it is to drive ourselves to greater discouragement in dealing with our sadness, it makes sense that the Scripture would model for us how to handle our expressions of grief in a way that is not only in accord with righteousness but in a manner that will actually aid us in dealing with our grief.
Therefore, what I want to do this morning is to walk through this psalm, seeing how the psalmist expresses his discouragement, frustration, and grief, and then pause so that we might learn from this example. Then, just prior to us coming to the table, I was us to pause for a little longer than normal so that we might take that time as a gathered people to lament before the Lord in prayer.
Let’s first, then, look at the content of the psalm itself. In the first seven verses of the psalm, the psalmist describes to God the horrifying scene that he has witnessed in the destruction of Jerusalem. Pagan nations have entered into the land, defiled the temple, and laid Jerusalem in ruins (v. 1). Now, consider this, the people of God are being judged by pagan nations. This is not the picture of some righteous people coming to judge an unrighteous people. Rather, it is an unrighteous people being judged by a more unrighteous people. Yet, we remember the words of Amos 3:2 as God says to Israel, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”
We expect that verse to read differently, don’t we? We expect it to say something like, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will make sure all goes well with you.” So, this verse and this scene in Psalm 79 reminds us yet again how intent God is on making his people holy. He disciplines those whom he loves.
Yet, as we return to the scene the psalmist sees in Psalm 79, it is horrifying. The pagan nation has not only come and laid Jerusalem in ruins, they are killing the Israelites and leaving their bodies in the street so that the birds and the animals come and take them for food (vv. 2-3). The survivors cannot take the time to get them and bury them, for they are fighting for their own survival. Again, it is a horrifying scene. And to top it off, the Israelites are being mocked and derided by those who see what is going on in Jerusalem (v. 4).
But it’s not as if the psalmist is clueless as to why this is happening. He knows it’s the Lord’s judgment. He knows that God is a jealous God and will not let his people prostitute themselves with idols and in all kinds of sin. He knows that this judgment is God’s declaration that he will not sit idly by while his people wallow in sin. This judgment reflects his anger and jealousy. The psalmist is not clueless about this, so he does not ask God why these things are happening. He does wonder and asks, however, how long the Lord will let this last. He asks, “How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire?” (v. 5).
He then begs of the Lord to direct his anger away from his people and toward the nations that do not know God, that do not call upon his name. That is, he asks God to direct his wrath on the very ones whom God is using to judge his people and to mock and deride them during this time, for “they have devoured Jacob and laid waste to his habitation” (vv. 6-7).
The psalmist, then, cries out for God to no longer remember their iniquities, to let his compassion come to them quickly, for they are brought low (v.8). He appeals to God to deliver them and atone for their sins for the glory of his name and for his name’s sake (v. 9). He asks God why the nations should continue to mock God and question him as they suffer (v. 10). No doubt, as God continues not to deliver them, it looks like he cannot deliver them. That, at least, seems to be the nations’ assumption. So the psalmist cries out for the avenging of God’s people to be known among the nations so that they might see it (v. 10). He asks that God would hear the groans of the prisoners and preserve those who have been set aside to die (v. 11). He asks God to turn back the taunts upon those who dare taunt God (v. 12) while God’s people give thanks to God and recount his praise.
Now, what I want to do is to divide the psalm into five parts and see how this psalm instructs us in handling our lament, in expressing our grief before God. First, we see right at the beginning of the psalm, that we must bring our laments before the Lord, making clear that he is our only hope.
Most every lament psalm starts, “O God” or “O Lord,” and this one is no exception. The psalmist looks around at all around him, and he knows that God is his only hope. Therefore, he doesn’t run to others to share with them his grief, complaints, frustrations, discouragement, and sadness. He cries out to God. And this is a reminder to us that sharing these things with God is not only acceptable, it is the good and right thing we must do as his children.
Again, let me remind us this morning that sharing all our frustrations and grief with the Lord is not wrong. No, rather let me again say more – we must cry out to God in this way if we are to handle our lament in a way that does not lead to sin.
God welcomes us crying out to him with our lament. After all, he’s the one who gave us this psalm and sixty-six other examples of expressing our lament before him. But don’t we buy into the thought that we should feel guilty in doing that? We think that this is not the way we should pray, and so we pray shallow prayers with God and really share our deep sorrows, frustrations, and complaints with others? Or, perhaps we buy into the thought that when you’re dealing with your pain and longing to lament it is really only effective to share with someone who will talk to you or hug you or something. I would dare say that these thoughts are tools of the enemy.
Walter Brueggemann has noted well the necessity of us bringing our lament before the Lord. He has written, “It is an act of bold faith … because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. . . . It insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. . . . Thus these psalms make the important connection: everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference for all of life.”2
2Walter Bruegemann, The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 52.
But what exactly does that look like when you lament before God? If psalms of lament are so structured, then surely we should learn from the model. So, what does it look like? Well, we’ve first noted that we turn to God, we can note next that we fully unveil our pain and sorrows and our situation before God.
As you go to lament before God, you don’t come to him pretending that things are different than what they are. Nor do you somehow scale back the reality of your pain or sorrows. The Lord knows them anyway. In this psalm, in the first seven verses, the psalmist does not somehow half-heartedly present the situation before God. He unfolds everything that causes him agony. He openly wonders whether God’s anger will burn forever. He openly longs before God for the enemy to be destroyed.
Verses 1-7 are a good reminder that the Christian life is not about concealing your pain or pretending as if difficulty is absent. I used to go to a church camp where we’d be asked each day if we were glad and happy. Then we’d be asked where our smiles were if we were saved. This isn’t what it means to be a believer – simply to act like pain and evil are not present. That’s the premise of something like scientology, not Christianity. Christianity says to recognize your pain, recognize your struggles, difficulties, and laments. But it then tells you what to do with them – take them to the Lord. Voice them to the Lord. The Lord is the one who wants to hear. He is the one who commands you to casts your cares upon him. One thing we can do in life is to grow accustomed to taking our cares every other place. Perhaps we put them in blogs, on facebook, or simply share them with friends. Now, none of those things are necessarily bad. What can be bad about them is if we use those things as a replacement for taking our cares to the Lord. Again, remember, sometimes God brings difficulty in your life as a discipline to bring you from sin to him. Sometimes difficulty is there so that you might turn your focus more intently on him. Therefore, if you take difficulty and turn elsewhere, you’re missing the refining benefit of your struggles. All of us could probably say that some of the most precious times with the Lord have been where we have cried out to God, letting him know our pain, our disappointment, our struggles, our laments. When you cry out in those times, “I need you, O Lord,” there can be a time of rich intimacy with God. So do not withhold your pain and sorrow before God.
As people who live much of our lives in society, with others, we know how to be measured in our struggles. People might never know the deepness of our pain or sadness. We know how to hide our hurt or anger over things in our lives, and that is not all the time inappropriate. Certainly there are times when we should not share our pain and sorrows fully with everyone. When you meet with an attorney, you probably don’t want him unloading the sorrow he has over his rebellious child. Part of functioning well in society depends on being able to measure our emotional struggles. But when we bow before God, this is not one of those times.
We can be real with God, unveiling everything that may be hidden from others, and confessing what is clearly seen by all. You must not disguise your heart before God. I’ve made reference already to some precious times of lament before God. I’ve lamented almost everything before God at one time or another. I remember one time when we were pregnant with Marie, and we’d already had a miscarriage when Lili shared with me she was having lower back spasms again. As she shared it, I left our house to go back one more time to a house that we were selling and had just moved from. I walked into that empty house, leaned back against the wall, fell down to the floor, and with tears told God how painful it was to watch my wife gripped with fears again that she might lose another child. I told him how inadequate I felt to comfort her while I knew that I did not know exactly what she was feeling. I lamented a long time that night, and I left nothing hidden. In fact, I came back to our house in a much better position to care for my wife because of it. I had been ministered to be God, and I was ready to comfort her with the comfort with which I had been comforted.
So, these first seven verses remind us to hide nothing from God as we lament before him. And I would add here as well, that even as this psalm is a lament for corporate suffering, so it is appropriate for us to lament corporately as well. It is good and right to recognize corporate struggle and corporate need. How many times have we suffered as a church? The answer is numerous times. There have been times when your friends left or had to be disciplined. There have been times when many people have been without jobs and having great need, etc. There have been times when we were so shell-shocked that we looked to see which bad thing would happen next. We’ve seen the same thing with sickness. It’s good to voice our laments before the Lord during these times. We do not have to act as if such things do not exist. We tell them to God. In those times, we can voice our sorrows in prayer, in corporate prayer, even as we gather on Sunday nights. Such prayer reminds us that holiness is a corporate command and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. So, the second thing we see in the Psalm is that we openly declare our sorrows before the Lord.
Next, this psalm (and other psalms of lament) reminds us that we make our pleas before the Lord.
One of the things that is obvious in the psalms of lament is that these are not merely times when the psalmist cries out to find some kind of emotional relief. No doubt they have that effect, but the psalmist cries out for the Lord to act. He cries out in verse 8 asked God not to hold the sins of their fathers against them and to let his compassion come to him as he feels that the discipline has been effective since they are brought low. In verse 9 he boldly asks God to help them, to deliver them, to atone for their sins. In verse 11 he asks God to hear the groans of those who had been taken prisoner and to preserve those who had received a death sentence. In verse 12 he asks God to return to them sevenfold the taunts of those who mock and ridicule God’s people. He asks God to act, to act compassionately, and to act swiftly.
This is an good and right thing to do as we lament before God. As these psalms model for us lament, again and again they show the psalmist bringing his requests, his pleas, before God. Therefore, God himself has provided for us this model. Even our Lord, in the garden, expressed his agony and cried out to his Father, “If there be any other way, let this cup pass from me.” So, bring your requests and pleas to God, even as our Lord did. This is what God instructs us to do. It is good and right to ask for something that would alter your circumstances and decrease your struggle. That night, as I lamented over the possibility of my wife having another miscarriage, I remember pleading with God for him to sustain our child’s life, and I thank God that we have our little girl, Marie, now. Let your pleas come before God.
But you probably noticed that there was a certain way that the psalmist made his pleas in these verses, namely, seeking God’s glory. This element, too, is common in psalms of lament, and it reminds us that we make our pleas based on who God is and what he has done.
Notice in verse 9, the psalmist declares, “Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!” He’s making his pleas based on God’s honor. Then, in verse 10, it is God’s honor that he is praying for, saying, “Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Finally, in verse 12, he asks God to judge those who “have taunted you, O Lord!”
So, we could say from this, “Hey, we’ve found a formula to help us pray more biblically. When we pray, add, ‘And do this for your glory,’ and all will be well.” But I don’t think that captures what we see in this psalm and at other parts of the Scripture. After all, we could pray that way and not care at all about God’s glory. In fact, that’s why I said that we should cultivate a heart that longs for God’s honor, because I don’t want us settling for not having that heart and just add a phrase to our prayers. That would be honoring him with your lips while being content that your heart is far from him.
What this psalm reflects is truly a heart that longs for God not to be dishonored and a concern that if the circumstances continue that are causing the psalmist such great sorrow, that God might be mocked. This is how we must pray. When you pray, as you have this heart for God’s honor and glory and trust in his work, you’ll make your requests differently. It doesn’t mean that you might not requests the same thing, but you’ll have a heart that ultimately longs for what honors God.
Again, looking to our Lord, he prayed in the garden that God would let the cup pass from him, but then he gladly declared that if this were the only way that he wanted God’s will to be done. That is the heart we must have. This is the heart reflected by Paul, that says, God do what you will in my life, only let the gospel be advanced.
Now, with this, you may be saying, “Well, great. I thought this was an encouragement to be to aid my in my suffering by telling me that it’s okay to share my lament with the Lord and let him openly know my pleas, but now you’re telling me that I need to do everything in light of God’s glory. So, are lament psalms really those which are gauged toward our comfort at all?” The answer is, yes they are. And they are because what we need in those moments where we’re lamenting before God is a heart that once again settles on desiring his glory and trusting in his work.
Even that night, had we gone on to have a miscarriage, I would have grieved deeply, for myself, and more deeply for my wife and child. But after that time of lament before the Lord, I was much more equipped to walk faithfully in what awaited me. And the reason was because in casting my pain and cares and pleas upon the Lord, I had been reminded that I could entrust myself to him again.
Thus, even as the psalmist prays for God to honor his name, it is a reminder to the psalmist himself that God’s honor is tied to his people, and that he will seek that in his people’s lives which will honor his name and be for their good. The same is true for us. Because God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son so that we might be to the praise of his glory, he works all things together for our good. Those two things are tied together – our good and the praise of his glory. Lamenting in light of this truth reminds us that God will work good in our lives, even if he should not answer our pleas as we desire. And praying this way also aids us so that if he answers our pleas as we desire, we are reminded not simply to rejoice in the outcome but to remember to seek to exalt God who has answered your plea so that he might be honored. Really, this brings us to the last element of psalms of lament and the last element in our psalm. In verse 13, we are reminded to praise God and to commit ourselves to praise God.
Interestingly, only one psalm (Psalm 88, I believe) fails to end with a note of hope or praise. Perhaps that is to remind us that there are occasions where we will fail to be able to see out of the darkness, and that this is not some kind of sign that we do not know God. However, the other sixty-six lament psalms end on this note of hope and trust and praise, and I think that is to remind us that we do not lament before one who is unable to care for us. We lament before one whom we can trust, one who has faithfully cared for us in the past, and one who declares he will work all together for good in our lives.
So, as we lament, our goal is to arrive at a point where we can praise God and declare our trust in him. However, there are times when our hearts ache so deeply that we feel we simply cannot arrive at that point. We simply lament before God, but even then we must take a key from this psalm and express our longing and our desire to praise God.
Notice how this psalm ends. The psalmist writes, “But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise” (v. 13). Interestingly, he does not immediately praise the Lord, but declares that he will. Lament psalms are typically split on whether they end in praise or in a commitment of praise. And perhaps this too is helpful for us in reminding us that it may be acceptable to find our hearts at a place where we cannot lift it to praise, but even in those times we need to have a desire and commitment to praise God soon.
That is, it is not acceptable to continually find ourselves saying, “God I cannot praise you, and stopping there.” We must cry out and long and commit to praise God, desperately longing to praise him as you can. It is dangerous to allow ourselves to find contentment in being unable to praise God. Again, perhaps this is why only one psalm of lament ends not on a note of hope. It reminds us that such a position is not condemnable, but it must not characterize us. We are a people who must be convinced that we can trust our God and long to be able to praise him.
So, as we walk alongside the psalmist in Psalm 79, let it be a help to us in expressing our own lament before God. In our times of deep sorrow, maybe we want to open up Psalm 79 again, remind ourselves of what our lament should look like, and cry out to the God who made you and has declared and shown his love to you again and again.
The way I want us to end this morning is to pause before God now. In this congregation, I am certain that there is a need for many of us to express our lament before God, and perhaps if this is not common for us to do, there is much to cry out to God about. Therefore, let’s take this time to lament before our Lord, even following the model of Psalm 79, and then we will close by reminding ourselves of why we can trust him and why he is worthy of our praise as we remember our Lord’s sacrifice as we come to the table. Amen.