A message on pouring out our pain and the Lord who listens
“A prayer of an afflicted man. When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.
1 Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry for help come to You.
2 Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn Your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly.
3 For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers.
4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food.
5 Because of my loud groaning I am reduced to skin and bones.
6 I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins.
7 I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof.
8 All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a
curse.
9 For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears
10 because of Your great wrath, for You have taken me up and thrown me aside.
11 My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. ”
It seems to me that a lot of us are doing just fine. Please bring up our first slide.
We’re fine as in stressed, distressed, forgotten, scared, rejected, angry, unwanted—fine. This meme has been making the rounds for a few years now—please bring up the next picture.
This is “fine” right? So how are you doing? Please bring up the next slide.
“I’m fine,” is often what comes out when, “help me, help me, help me,” is what’s inside. We need connections in which we can see this and say what’s really going on or we miss one of the reasons we exist as a church.
For the next three weeks we’re going to be looking at a man who’s not fine. This sort of individual enters those sanctuary doors every week. You see this person when you drive around town. You might have seen this person in the mirror if you stood still to look long enough. How are you doing? Are you really doing fine? Pour out what’s in you to God. Pour out your pain to Him. That’s what we see this man doing: pour out your pain to God.
We will study this in three points. First: please listen. Second: trouble upon trouble. Third: what does God have to do with this? We see the call to listen in the preface and in verses 1-2. We see the man’s troubles in verses 3-11. We see what God has to do with this in the preface, verses 1-2, and verses 9-10.
This man begins pouring pain out to God by asking Him to listen. That’s our first point: please listen. This Psalm, Psalm 102, is an abrupt change. The Psalms that came before are some of the happiest Psalms. They are filled with confidence and joy. One of them is the thanksgiving Psalm, “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.” Then comes 102. Then comes feeling stressed, distressed, forgotten, scared, rejected, angry, and unwanted. That’s how it goes in life, though, doesn’t it? Life throws you a left hook and when you come to, you’re down on the mat. That’s what the preface to this Psalm is all about, “A prayer of an afflicted man. When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.”
It’s even worse than that, though. The Hebrew just has “the prayer of an afflicted” rather than “prayer of an afflicted man.” It’s as if the man’s entire personality has been engulfed by his trouble. He has become his affliction. People with MS rightly say they are more than MS. People with cancer rightly say they are more than a cancer patient. This man feels like he’s not more. He feels like he’s nothing more than his troubles. Sometimes it feels that way for the children of God. It’s right here in front of you in black and white.
So, what do you do when your life is one big aching sore? That’s why this Psalm was written. It was written so that you would do what this man did. This man took it to the Lord. The first word of verse 1 in the Hebrew is the Lord’s name. Imagine a kid coming home from school crying. The minute he bursts through the door he yells, “mom!” Mom immediately knows that something is wrong. That’s what’s going on here.
This is a cry of howling pain. It’s quite long by the standards of Hebrew poetry; verse 1, “Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry for help come to You. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn Your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly.” The repetition makes the point. Imagine a teenager girl sitting her dad down saying, “dad, we have to talk. Please listen. I’ve got something important to tell you. Don’t say anything until I’m done. Just listen. Please.” Any dad would recognize, “This is going to be important.” That’s what’s going on here.
This man is bringing his pain to God. He’s also calling God out. “Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress,” is a way of asking, “where in the world are you?” “Turn Your ear to me” is a way of saying, “you don’t seem to be paying any attention to the mess I’m in.”
Now this might seem irreverent but actually it’s quite reverent. It’s reverent because it takes God’s promises seriously. “Jesus, you said you would be with me always even to the very end of the age. I can’t seem to see what you’re up to right now.” Reverence involves taking God at His word. It would actually be irreverent to refuse to avoid dealing with God in this situation. Some people refuse to deal with God directly when in pain because underneath all the layers, they don’t think of Him as a Father who cares. They think of Him as a judge; they think of him as a king, and “you don’t go running to the judge with your problems and you better not whine to the king.” These people have a majestic, stern, disinterested God. Their relationship with Him consists in trying to avoid ticking Him off.
This man is quite different. We will see that he has an incredibly high view of the Lord. He thinks of Him as the king—the king of kings. He thinks of Him as the judge of every man. He also seems to think that the Lord is quite fond of him. This man seems to think of himself as a beloved child of God. Tim Keller gets this man’s heart right when he says, “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child.” It’s worth asking whether you would dare to wake up God at 3:00 AM. It’s worth asking whether you think He’d want to hear you at 3:00 AM. Do you have a relationship with God like that? If not, you could.
People in relationships deal with each other. They do it imperfectly. Job presented his own complaint to the Lord imperfectly. Some of what he said was brash. Some of it was simply the pain talking. When the Lord answered him, Job recognized his faults. He said, “I put my hand over my mouth I spoke of things I did not understand.” The Lord didn’t hold it against him, though. The Lord defended Job and called him His servant. The Lord isn’t petty. He’s got broad shoulders. Calvin’s right, “when God permits us to lay open before Him our infirmities without reserve, and patiently bears with our foolishness, He deals in a way of great tenderness toward us.”
Is that how you see the Lord? Tozer is right, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Is your picture of God anything like what you see in Jesus? Can you go to God like you go to Jesus? Jesus isn’t 50% like God or 75% like God. He’s 100% like God. He is God. God has never changed His brand. It’s us who misunderstand him. Go to Him with what’s in you. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!” That’s what this man is doing. Now let’s see the griefs he brought to God. That’s our second point: trouble upon trouble.
If you’ve ever been in extended agony, you’ll see that this man gets it. He gets pain. He describes his days as vanishing like smoke. That’s a way of saying that they’re all pointless. Monday was pointless. Tuesday was pointless. Wednesday is going to be pointless. “Today was just a day fading into another, and that can’t be what a life is for,” as one depressing song puts it. It’s not what a life is for. That’s what makes it so painful.
The man’s days are smoke and where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It’s the man himself that’s on fire; that’s verse 3, “for my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers.” The man’s days are pointless because everything about him is in flames. Some of you know what it’s like to watch your home or business burn up. You know the feeling. “What a waste of everything we’ve worked for.” This man is watching himself burn up daily.
As a result, his heart is like withered grass; that’s verse 4, “My heart is blighted and withered like grass.” It’s always discouraging to see yellow and brown grass. We’ve got a nice amount of grass in our lawn. The grass which is shaded by trees is green and soft. You can run on it with bare feet. Not so with the unshaded grass. That bristles. That’s yellow and brown. The lawn of this man’s life is yellow and brown. Sometimes the Lord makes you lie down in green pastures. Sometimes He makes you lie down in withered brown grass. Both times come in this life. This is a Psalm for the hard times.
One of the markers of being in hard times is that the necessities of life seem unimportant. You see that in verse 4, “I forget to eat my food.” Depression, anxiety, and panic can make eating almost unthinkable. Some of you know what it’s like to be so nervous about a meeting that you don’t eat supper. Some of you know what it’s like to be so distraught that you don’t eat breakfast, dinner, or supper. It’s not the weight loss program you want. This man had done it long enough that he looked like a bag of bones; verse 4, “I forget to eat my food. Because of my loud groaning I am reduced to skin and bones.”
That’s a terrible situation. When you’re there, it seems like life is for other people—not for you. You can’t eat. You also can’t sleep; that’s verse 7, “I lie awake.” You don’t realize what a relief sleep is until you can’t sleep. One of the cruelest parts about anxiety and depression is that your brain won’t shut off. Being unconscious would be a relief, but you can’t get there. You lay awake not wanting it to be night and not wanting the morning to come. Everyone else is asleep and that makes it all the worse. You’re knocking around by yourself. You’re like a bird that’s squawking before the sun comes up; that’s, “I have become like a bird alone on a roof.”
So, there’s no relief for this man at night. There’s also no relief in the day. There’s no relief in the privacy of home. There’s no relief out in public; that’s verse 8, “All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse.” We’ll get into the specifics of that next week, but for now just recognize that this man doesn’t want to be alone, and he doesn’t like being out in public. Nothing makes it better for this man. Everything—nighttime, daytime, being home, being out in the community—everything makes it worse. If you’ve been there, you know what it’s like. If you haven’t, take this as an eye opener for how some people live. This is what despair looks like.
Despair robs you of the simple joys of life; that’s verse 9, “I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears.” Your favorite foods don’t satisfy. Your favorite movies no longer make you laugh. Any blip of happiness is just a signal to you that you must now re-enter your downward spiral.
When you’re there, you’d give anything for it to be over, but it never seems to end. That’s verse 11, “My days are like the evening shadow.” In the late evening, the shadows are long—about ready to disappear because night is coming. That’s how this man feels—the good times are over forever. In his case, though he never gets to disappear because there’s always tomorrow, and that’s not a hopeful statement. Tomorrow just means more of the same; “my days vanish like smoke,” and it starts again.
So, what does the Lord have to do with this? Where is the Lord in this trouble? That’s our final point. The short answer is that the Lord has everything to do with this. That’s the case for everything in life. That’s Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” This man knows that the Lord has everything to do with his situation. You see that he knows in verse 9-10, “I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears because of Your great wrath, for You have taken me up and thrown me aside.” This man believes that the Lord’s hand was in this left hook that put him down on the mat. Do you believe that? The Bible’s picture of God is unsettlingly large. “He works all things after the counsel of His will,” as Ephesians 1:11 puts it.
Now it’s precisely this man’s understanding of God’s involvement which drives him to God. This man only goes to God because he thinks God’s in charge. He doesn’t have an affirming, head-nodding, sympathetic God who can do nothing to change the situation. Why bother with that? This Psalmist knows the all-powerful God who has a hand in this situation, and so can change the situation. This God can also change this man in the middle of his situation. We tend to ask where God is when life hurts. He’s right in the middle of it. You find him on a cross.
The Lord is listening to this man. He’s a listener. The Lord is also the inspirer of this prayer. God inspired this man to write this poem. The Lord wanted it in Scripture. It’s therapeutic. The Psalms were written, in part, for counseling reasons. They give voice to what goes on within us. They give us language to take to God. Hearing this man of God articulate the griefs that have been rumbling around in your heart reminds you that true children of God feel this way at times.
So, God is the listener. He’s the inspirer. He’s also the sufferer. Jesus entered into our pain. None of us would wish anything we’ve studied tonight on our worst enemy. None of us would ever choose it. Jesus chose it. That’s how the gospels picture Jesus’ healing ministry. ‘This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”’ Jesus suffered. “All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse.” That sounds like him. “I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof.” That sounds like him in Gethsemane. “For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers… My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.” That sounds like the cross. Don’t imagine that being a child of God means a pain free life. It wasn’t for the only natural child of God.
So, God is the listener here. He’s the inspirer. He’s the sufferer. He’s also the one who sits with the sufferer. He sits with the sufferer. Sometimes we try to get people out of suffering not for their sake, but for our sake because it makes us uncomfortable to sit with people in their pain. That’s where the Lord is here, though. “When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.” That’s where Jesus is. He’s with the man. If we aren’t willing to go where Jesus goes when others are in pain because it makes us uncomfortable, there’s something wrong with our comfort zone.
You’re never going find Jesus where things are “fine”. Follow him. Pour out your heart to him. Amen.