The Gift Of Lament

Mark Medley shares with us this morning what the Lord has been teaching him in this season of dealing with loss, and how God lays out a plan for us to draw closer to him as we mourn. We pray God encounters you wherever you're at.

Sermon preached on August 28, 2022

We are Trinity Community Church, located in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Please fill out a digital connect card so we can serve and pray for you. Connect.tccknox.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see when we go live and to see more from TCC.

Subscribe to our Podcast to hear past sermons, classes, interviews, and more!

Tune in for live stream services every Sunday at 10:00 am EST.

Learn more about our church at https://tccknox.com/aboutus/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tccknox/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trinitycommunitychurch/

Watch the video of this sermon here: https://youtu.be/pcW50SCgLj0
Watch the full service here: https://youtu.be/QbE3daZlD6o

We are Trinity Community Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Subscribe to our Podcast & YouTube channel to find past sermons, classes, interviews, and more!
Find us on Facebook & Instagram

Transcript

(Psalm 42) I am sharing the “Gift of Lament”. You may have never heard a sermon like this before. The subject may feel uncomfortable, but what we are talking about is a crucial, practical lifeskill that our culture doesn’t teach us; but the Bible does. To lament means “to express deep grief or sorrow, literally, to weep and wail”. That doesn’t sound like a gift. But Biblical lament is truly a gift from God, because it is a pathway from heartbreak to hope. In my personal journey of loss, I learned that God has not left us without instructions on how to deal with grief and loss and emotions. If it is your season of lament/grief, I hope these truths from God’s Word will strengthen and recalibrate you. If it is not your season of lament, put this in your pocket and pull and it will be there when you need it.

(Polin museum) The Hebrew Bible has held a secret for us for thousands of years… a secret that is crucial for us to walk in wisdom and understanding: Heartbreak and hope can coexist… but it is not an easy existence.

Maskil: a musical term of uncertain meaning, but some have suggested that is carries a connotation of teaching. A song that holds instruction for life. If so, what can we learn?

Psalm 42

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 the 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 cast down, 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, from 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 the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

Why are you cast down, 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.

This psalm has some of our most beloved quotes; it also has verses never quoted and have never seen on a pretty plaque or cross stitch.

Full of tension and release (an orchestra of emotions)-in this order, in rapid succession: Deep longing, expectation, tears, fear of abandonment, a poured-out soul, fond remembering, glad shouts, praise songs, self-encouragement… hope, hopelessness, remembering, conversation with the deep of God, waves that overtake me, the steadfast love of God, prayer to the God of my life, abandonment (why have you forgotten me), mourning, oppression of the enemy, wounded to my bones, shouts of my enemies, remembering hope, fresh revelation of God (my salvation). Welcome to the world of lament!

Lament is what happens when what we know to be true about God and our painful circumstances clash. Our beliefs and our experiences conflict… and it is real conflict. Grief is not only the loss of a loved one. It can be the loss of a relationship, a job, an expectation that didn’t go the way you wanted, any number of experiences in this broken world.

The Bible does not leave us guessing as to how to deal with our sense of grief, desperation, fear, anger at injustice, hopelessness, repentance. It has an entire genre of literature dedicated to dealing with our emotions: it is called lament. There are 150 Psalms—50 are laments (also, prophets, book of Lamentations).

Lament is a gift, because it is the transition between pain and promise. It is the pathway from heartbreak to hope.

I want to tell you how my Father taught me to lament by telling you my story of the las 18 months. The most significant thing that happened last year was the death of my wife, Melissa. The second most significant thing is that I learned how to lament.

I’ve shared this messages in many places since the first of this year, but I realize this is a special situation because many of you knew and loved Melissa. For you, this will stir up emotions. But the end goal is to help you know what to do with those very emotions. (my story: diagnosis, six months, death, Covid, David’s birth, Melissa’s memorial service, sabbatical (face it, feel it, let God speak to it).

I was helped by three books: the Bible, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, and Inexpressible. There is a pattern in the lamenting Psalms that I will give you in steps, because that is the order we see in these Psalms, but grief is not merely an outline to follow. It is deeply personal, and a personal God will guide you through it. Five steps: Four we do, by God’s help; one God does for us. 

In lament, we: 1) We turn to God, 2) We are honest with God about our complaints, anger, hurts and questions, 3) God unveils Himself to us, 4) We ask boldly for what we need, 5) We simply trust Him. 

Step One: Turn to God. This is significant, because pain can make you turn from God. 

You have to embrace your emotions. If you don’t you’re more likely to get depressed, struggle with destructive anger, develop eating disorders, all kinds of maladies—If you stuff it down, it will come out another way. 

How do you know you will turn to God when a hard time comes? I think much of the decision happens before your tragedy. Wise decisions don’t just happen—they are worked into a life over a period of years of walking daily with Him. What we do in our day-to-day walk with God will make the difference in our time of grief; our abiding, our choosing to seek to know God (when your bucket is kicked).

I could turn to him because I know who he is… despite my circumstances.

When there is something that triggers your loss, there is a temptation to run to false comforts that are only temporary and don’t really help us. But we turn to God.

We have to turn to God because grief is a thief—if you get stuck in it, it steals the joy of the past and the hope for the future. 

Two options get stuck or not get stuck. Getting stuck doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t honor Melissa, or God. It doesn’t help my children or me or my church body. Really only one option. Go forward. But I don’t know how to do that. 

Step Two: Be honest with God about our complaints, anger, hurts and questions—The Psalmists say things to God many of us would be afraid to say. 

A significant event of lament happened on a long walk around a lake in Georgia. I had made a long list of the things I had lost when I lost Melissa (it was a very long list). I turned to God and honestly, emotionally poured out my pain and loss. It was raw and real and emotionally exhausting, but in the end it felt somewhat good to get it out there. Then something very significant happened. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and had me go back down the same list, line for line, and thank him for everything he had given me. I did it, and the effect was transforming. The grief didn’t disappear, but perspective came.

There are very real questions. Sometimes God does us answers, sometimes he doesn’t. Why is not a particularly helpful question. We want to understand why because we feel like that gives us some control. But there is a peace that passes understanding that comes when I am willing to give up my rights to the answers.

Dealing honestly with our emotions is a crucial part of our healing. One of my prayers has been that I might have a little bit of Melissa’s mantle of kindness (I’m really asking for Jesus). If I block my emotional pain (feelings), I end up blocking my compassion and that prayer will never be answered. I have to go there.

Many of us are uncomfortable talking about these things because we don’t know what to say. It is difficult to know how to respond to a loved one who has experienced deep loss. Here is what I can tell you: They don’t need answers. They need an ear. Your presence is the greatest gift…your love is all they need. When the time comes that they ask you for your wisdom, then you can talk. But a general rule is, the deeper the loss, the longer the silence. 

Step Three: God unveils himself to us—In the process, as we see in the lament psalms, there is nearly always a turning point (a “but” or “yet” moment) when who God is and what he has done eclipses the why questions (twice in Psalm 42). It is like when in a solar eclipse, both heavenly bodies are still there, but the sun is in the shadow of the moon. So the pain of loss is still there, but in the shadow of the character and person of God.

A broken world and a faithful God can coexist. Pain and thanksgiving can coexist. Heartache and hope can coexist.

Key insight: The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21b)

I have learned to allow the pain of the loss push me into the thanksgiving for the gift… this is how I got to “blessed be the name of the Lord”.

It is very easy for my grief and loss to define my life. These are very real experiences right now, but they are not who I am. My identity is in Christ. Grief is not an identity. It is a very real, profound and highly emotional and soul-shaking experience, but it doesn’t define me. Christ defines me. 

Step Four: Ask the Man of Sorrows boldly for what I need. In my case it is comfort, perspective, the ability to see a future, to hear his voice step-by-step, to learn what the new normal looks like. Faith doesn’t keep us from feeling the pain, it sustains us in the pain and leads us toward hope. If you submit to the God of this process, the process will not kill you… it will kill what is killing you. 

The One who has lost much more than any of us will faithfully comfort and guide us. 

Step Five: simply trust his character even when we don’t have the answers 

God is still, today in my point of pain, who he was before: kind, gracious, sovereign, trustworthy, with me. Sometimes God gives us something more than answers to our questions—He gives us himself. It also helps us see our idols—the things we have trusted other than God. 

There is a surrendering to the active work of the Spirit. God is actively at work, even when you feel devastated. “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning” Eccl. 7:4

This is biblical lament. But it isn’t academic; it is intensely personal and interactive, as the Sprit of God guides you through your unique journey.

This is not a one-time thing. I am practicing it everyday as I feel the pain of the loss each day brings. I am learning to lean into lament.

________________

But the key to the entire Psalm, and the key to all laments, is found in verse 8:

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me. Psalm 42:8 

The key word is Hesed—the undefinable word that tries to describe the indescribable loving nature of God. 

Michael Card (Inexpressible): Hesed: When the one from whom I have the right to expect nothing gives me everything. 

Exodus 34 — God’s self-revelation…gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in hesed (not powerful, holy, powerful)

For the rest of his life, Moses asked God for hesed, because he has seen God’s true nature.

The great surprise of the Hebrew Bible is not that God is powerful or holy (these are characteristics we would expect in a god) — the great surprise is that he is kind.

Hesed has no cognate in any other language, it is uniquely Hebrew because Yahweh is a unique God. In all other cultures, this concept never existed (no ancient hymns about the kindness of Baal or Molech).

Lament is a threshold. It is the place where we experience the hesed of God. And this is the doorway into a hopeful future. 

Psalm 31:21 

Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city.

I have a discipline—The word emblazoned over 2021 was “Kindness”.

The gospel we believe is a lamenting gospel. The Jesus story is the lament of the ages. A Holy God who weeps over a relationship that was broken by rejection from the other side; the desperation of a Savior in a garden; a holy price paid for a holy purpose. The resurrection is only what it is because of the surrender (unto death) to the purposes and goodness of the Father.

Why do so many of those lamenting Psalms end up as Messianic prophecies? Because Jesus is revealed in the lament. In times of deep lament, there is a real revelation of Jesus. 

After more than six months of intense fighting with cancer, Melissa died on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, September 16, 2021. 

And our theology becomes very real and the source of our hope.

• Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. He that believes in him, though he were dead, yet shall he live. 
• Jesus conquered death and we will not only live forever, we will do so in a new heaven and earth and there will be no more disease or tears or pain or sorrow.
• God has promised to fix the brokenness—God sent Jesus to carry out a plan to end all suffering. Revelation 21
• Jesus Christ will make all things new. This is our hope. Because of these truths, I know that Melissa is more alive than any of us.

What I’ve learned:

Lament is a holy space. It is a bridge from heartbreak to hope. We don’t have to fear because He is with us, upholding us and covering us with His hesed.

In the breakers of this broken world, we are tethered to God. We are okay. 

The last thing I did on that long, momentous walk was to surrender the dreams Melissa and I had that would never be realized—I released them to God (I’m sure this is also a process that has to be repeated over and over in the days to come). I realized that those dreams are dead, but dreaming isn’t dead.