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A Plea for Deliverance
A Plea for Deliverance
Psalm 3
June 7, 2020
Last year at this time, I finally settled into being home. For four months, I lived with the rhythm of flying to Houston, a week of being strapped to an IV machine pumping chemicals into my chest, nasty side effects, longing for but dreading the flight home, easing back into the space for my body to fight the punishment it had received, struggling with depths of fatigue I’d never imagined, a little improvement, and only to repeat the same process. Some among us have gone through far worse experiences with loss, opposition, abandonment, betrayal, sickness. Everything you’ve grown to call normal, totally absent. Life has crashed in. Although you know it won’t last forever your mind remains unconvinced. Just like the psalmist, the words mumble from our lips, “How long, O Lord? Why, O Lord, have You turned Your back on me?”
We lament.
Or maybe we’re afraid to do so. We wonder if we might be denying the faith or calling the Lord’s character and faithfulness into question. We question our spiritual sanity. We’ve been told not to complain, to never question God, and to just suck it up and be silent. The British “stiff upper lip” runs through many of our veins. Can we even use a question mark in a prayer? How could things happen the way they’ve happened? We wonder if we’ve done something horrible and now face God’s wrath upon our lives. We second-guess what we’ve heard about God’s love and the cross. What did we miss? Where did we misstep? How did we fail? Where is the Lord God?
If we would bear up in such times and move from pain to praise, “from heartbreak to hope,” from brokenness to joy, we must learn to lament. It is no barren complaint baring angry fangs at deity. Nor is it unrequited bitterness over what seems personal injustice. Rather, as Mark Vroegop has helpfully written in, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, “Lament is rooted in what we believe. It is a prayer loaded with theology. . . . Therefore, lament stands in the gap between pain and promise. To cry is human, but to lament is Christian. . . . The space between brokenness and God’s mercy is where this song is sung.”[1] A third of the psalms carry this song of lament, both personally and corporately. Vroegop writes, “One out of three psalms is in a minor key.”[2] But that’s life, isn’t it? The idea of smooth seas until you reach the golden shore is fantasy.
The Lord is not passive in our suffering as He welcomes our lament. He’s chosen it as “a path to praise” as He leads us “through our brokenness and disappointment”[3] to levels of glory and joy found only in Him. So, how do we respond when our world crashes in on us? We learn to lament. And through lament, we’re led to deeper satisfaction and joyful hope.
I. Entering into Lament
The opening Psalms (1–2) are often called the doorway to the Psalter. The first prizes the life built on the Lord and His Word. The second assures us of God’s sovereign unfolding of His eternal purposes in His Son. How ironic as we come to the 3rd Psalm to find a lament. But how realistic. For life, real life in the nitty-gritty daily happening of human existence, knows more about suffering, hardship, difficulties, trials, and pain than the happy-go-lucky, not a problem in sight frame idealized in pop culture. So effective has been culture’s misshapen slant on life, that we tend to live in despondency when the least thing wrinkles our shirt. That’s why we need the truth of God’s Word. Holy Scripture doesn’t paint a carefree picture of God’s people. We feel the deep anguish from one character to another who awaits the day when faith becomes sight. Maybe no one pictures this better than David, a man who knew the highest highs and the deepest lows.
1. Reality (Sometimes) Stinks
The superscript identifies this as one of seventy-three psalms attributed to David. Some simply state, “Of David” (lēdāwīd, belonging to David).[4] This one clues us in on the circumstances around the psalm: “A Psa[...]
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By South Woods Baptist ChurchA Plea for Deliverance
Psalm 3
June 7, 2020
Last year at this time, I finally settled into being home. For four months, I lived with the rhythm of flying to Houston, a week of being strapped to an IV machine pumping chemicals into my chest, nasty side effects, longing for but dreading the flight home, easing back into the space for my body to fight the punishment it had received, struggling with depths of fatigue I’d never imagined, a little improvement, and only to repeat the same process. Some among us have gone through far worse experiences with loss, opposition, abandonment, betrayal, sickness. Everything you’ve grown to call normal, totally absent. Life has crashed in. Although you know it won’t last forever your mind remains unconvinced. Just like the psalmist, the words mumble from our lips, “How long, O Lord? Why, O Lord, have You turned Your back on me?”
We lament.
Or maybe we’re afraid to do so. We wonder if we might be denying the faith or calling the Lord’s character and faithfulness into question. We question our spiritual sanity. We’ve been told not to complain, to never question God, and to just suck it up and be silent. The British “stiff upper lip” runs through many of our veins. Can we even use a question mark in a prayer? How could things happen the way they’ve happened? We wonder if we’ve done something horrible and now face God’s wrath upon our lives. We second-guess what we’ve heard about God’s love and the cross. What did we miss? Where did we misstep? How did we fail? Where is the Lord God?
If we would bear up in such times and move from pain to praise, “from heartbreak to hope,” from brokenness to joy, we must learn to lament. It is no barren complaint baring angry fangs at deity. Nor is it unrequited bitterness over what seems personal injustice. Rather, as Mark Vroegop has helpfully written in, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, “Lament is rooted in what we believe. It is a prayer loaded with theology. . . . Therefore, lament stands in the gap between pain and promise. To cry is human, but to lament is Christian. . . . The space between brokenness and God’s mercy is where this song is sung.”[1] A third of the psalms carry this song of lament, both personally and corporately. Vroegop writes, “One out of three psalms is in a minor key.”[2] But that’s life, isn’t it? The idea of smooth seas until you reach the golden shore is fantasy.
The Lord is not passive in our suffering as He welcomes our lament. He’s chosen it as “a path to praise” as He leads us “through our brokenness and disappointment”[3] to levels of glory and joy found only in Him. So, how do we respond when our world crashes in on us? We learn to lament. And through lament, we’re led to deeper satisfaction and joyful hope.
I. Entering into Lament
The opening Psalms (1–2) are often called the doorway to the Psalter. The first prizes the life built on the Lord and His Word. The second assures us of God’s sovereign unfolding of His eternal purposes in His Son. How ironic as we come to the 3rd Psalm to find a lament. But how realistic. For life, real life in the nitty-gritty daily happening of human existence, knows more about suffering, hardship, difficulties, trials, and pain than the happy-go-lucky, not a problem in sight frame idealized in pop culture. So effective has been culture’s misshapen slant on life, that we tend to live in despondency when the least thing wrinkles our shirt. That’s why we need the truth of God’s Word. Holy Scripture doesn’t paint a carefree picture of God’s people. We feel the deep anguish from one character to another who awaits the day when faith becomes sight. Maybe no one pictures this better than David, a man who knew the highest highs and the deepest lows.
1. Reality (Sometimes) Stinks
The superscript identifies this as one of seventy-three psalms attributed to David. Some simply state, “Of David” (lēdāwīd, belonging to David).[4] This one clues us in on the circumstances around the psalm: “A Psa[...]