”Chapter 12: Weeping”

Walking with God through Pain & Suffering

by Tim Killer

 

Chapter 12: Weeping

 

The Disappearance of Lament

• Our suffering is not redemptive; Christ’s suffering was redemptive. Our suffering is leading to our sanctification and ultimate glorification.
• By and large, the church has lost the use of lament as a proper biblical response to troubles and misery.
• The Psalms, however, are filled with examples of lament, cries of distress and grief.
• Job and the Prophets are filled with examples of cries of lament.

 

• Some church traditions have minimized the use of lament, out of fear of portraying a lack of faith or doubts about the love of Christ.
• This approach to suffering does not do justice to the full range of emotion displayed in the Scriptures.
• Faith in God is not necessarily a stoic faith, emotionally detached from the realities of life.
• Job legitimately expressed grief with powerful emotion and honesty.

 

A Bruised Reed He Will Not Break

• In light of the Bible’s use of lament, it is not right for us to simply say to a person (or ourselves) in grief that they need to pull themselves together. We should be more gentle and patient.

A bruised reed he [the Servant] will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; (Isa 42:3, NIV)

• The Servant is to be identified as the Messiah, Jesus (see Matt 12:20).

 

• Jesus cares for the fragile and the broken. He loves people who are beaten and battered and bruised.
• He binds up the brokenhearted and heals our wounds (Ps 147:3; Isa 61:1).
• God’s care for the depressed prophet Elijah is an example of his mercy to the “bruised reed.”
• The angel does not come to Elijah in rebuke or in an attempt to manufacture joy; he comes with care and provides him nourishment.

 

• Rest, nourishment, and encouragement are not all that Elijah needs, but that is what he needs in the moment.
• Later, God will challenge him out of his despair by reorienting Elijah’s vision of the situation.
• God takes a balanced approach with his prophet. He is a person with a body and a soul. He needs physical rest and nourishment. He needs emotional encouragement, and at the right time he needs to be spiritually challenged.

 

• Isaiah 42:3 means that Jesus is gentle with the bruised and never mistreats
• Richard Sibbes: Think “…if Christ be so merciful as to not break me, I will not break myself by despair….”
• Suffering people need to be able to weep and pour out their hearts, and not to immediately be shut down by being told what to do.

 

Weeping in the Dark

• We need to allow more room and freedom for lament. Lament is not a lack of faith.
• Reading and praying the Psalms of lament back to God can be good counsel to those in grief.
• Psalm 88 ends without a note of hope, and is a biblical reminder that darkness may go on for a length of time before the light comes.

 

• Times of darkness can reveal God’s grace in new depths.
• Psalm 88 is in the Bible for a reason.
• It reveals that God remains this man’s God not because the man puts on a happy face and controls all his emotions, but because of grace. God is patient and gracious with us. Salvation is by grace.
• Heman is not praising God, but lamenting to God, and it is inspired Scripture.

 

• It is perhaps when we are still in unrelenting darkness that we have the greatest opportunity to defeat the forces of evil.
• In the darkness we have an opportunity that is not really there in better times.
• We can choose to serve God just because he is God, not because things are going well.
• In darkness, we can learn to love God for himself, and not for his blessings, while our love for other things lessens.

 

The Darkness of Jesus

• Psalm 88 also reminds us that our darkness can be relativized by Jesus’ darkness.
• God never abandons his children, but will use the darkness to make us into what he wants us to be.
• Psalm 39 reminds us that Jesus endured the ultimate darkness for us. God turned his face from Jesus, as he died for our salvation.
• Jesus died so that we would never be abandoned by God, even in darkness.

 

• Jesus went into suffering for us. He did not abandon us despite all his own suffering. Do you think he will abandon you now in the midst of yours?
• Because of Jesus—there is always hope, even in the darkest moments of your life.

 

Grieving and Rejoicing

• What does it mean to “rejoice in suffering”?
• Don’t think of it in purely subjective, emotional Rejoicing does not mean just to “have happy emotions.”
• It also does not involve denying the real sorrow that you are experiencing.
• 1 Peter 1:6-7 does not pit rejoicing and suffering against one another.
• We can and must rejoice in suffering if we are to grow through our suffering rather than be wrecked by it.

 

• In the Bible, the “heart” is not identical to emotions. The heart is the place of your deepest commitments, trusts, and hopes.
• Our emotions, thoughts, and actions flow from these commitments.
• To “rejoice” in God means to dwell on and remind ourselves of who God is, who we are, and what he has done for us.
• Our emotions may or may not follow us in this remembrance.

 

• Rejoicing in suffering happens within
• Grief and sorrow drive us more into God and show us the resources we never knew we had.
• Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Did he not have joy in God?
• The joy of the Lord happens inside the sorrow. The weeping drives you into the joy, it enhances the joy, and then the joy enables you to feel your grief without it sinking you.

 

• Rather than expecting God to remove the sorrow and replace it with happiness, we should look for a “glory”—a taste and conviction and increasing sense of God’s presence—that helps us rise above the darkness.