A Lament for Advent

Please turn your Bibles to Psalm 13, Psalm 13.

That's on page 453 in the chair Bibles around you.

As I mentioned earlier, Pastor Chris made the call yesterday

afternoon that he was too sick and his voice was too far gone

to, to teach and preach today. And so instead of being in Luke

1, we're we're going to end hearing the the song of

Zechariah. We'll, we'll turn to a different

song, a song that we don't normally associate with

Christmas. It doesn't, doesn't give us the,

the, the warm Christmas feels. But I do believe that it is a

song that many Christians may find very helpful to pray this

time of year or any time of year for that matter.

You see, just because it is the Christmas season, that doesn't

mean that we are full of Christmas joy and peace.

Perhaps this Christmas you feel more distant from God than you

ever have been before. And all the bright lights and

the decorations and the songs and the carols, they're all just

a constant reminder that your heart isn't responding to the

joy of Christmas like it used to.

If that's you today or, or that will be you in the future, or

maybe somebody that you know and love is experiencing something

like this, then let's turn our ears now to this song, A Psalm

of David, a lament Psalm, Psalm 13 to the choir master, a Psalm

of David. How long, O Lord, will you

forget me forever? How long will you hide your face

from me? How long must I take counsel in

my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God, Light up my eyes lest I

sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say I have prevailed

over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love.

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with

me. Let's pray, Heavenly Father, as

we come to this Psalm, I pray that this Psalm would be a path

for our hearts when we experience a dark season, when

we experience times when you seem silent to us.

So I pray now Lord, that as we as we walk verse by verse

through this, that our, our hearts, our, our lives would

walk with it. So please guide us now in Jesus

name, Amen. A few years ago Doctor Russell

Moore was wrote a book on adoption titled Adopted for Life

and he shares the story of how he adopted his two boys from

Russia. Let me read his story here.

The creepiest sound I have ever heard was nothing at all.

My wife Maria and I stood in the hallway of an orphanage

somewhere in the former Soviet Union on the first of two trips

required for our petition to adopt.

Orphanage staff LED us down a hallway to greet the two one

year olds we hoped would become our sons.

The horror wasn't the squalor in the stench, although it we at

times stifled the urge to vomit and weep.

The horror was the quiet of it all.

The place was more silent than a Funeral Home by night.

I stopped and pulled on Maria's elbow.

Why is it so quiet? This place is filled with

babies. Both of us compared the

stillness with the buzz and punctuated squeals that came

from our church nursery back home.

Here, if we if we listen carefully enough, we we could

hear babies rocking themselves back and forth, the crib slats

gently bumping against the walls.

These children did not cry because infants eventually

learned to stop crying. If no one ever responds to their

calls for food, for comfort, for love, no one ever responded to

these children. So they stopped.

The silence continued as we entered the boys room.

Little Sergey, now Timothy, smiled at us, dancing up and

down while holding the side of his crib.

Little Maxim, now Benjamin, stood straight at attention,

regal and czar like, but neither boy made a sound.

We read them books filled with words they couldn't understand

about saying goodnight to the moon and cows jumping over the

same. But there were no cries, no

squeals, no groans. Every day we left at the

appointed time in the same way we had entered in silence.

On the last day of the trip, Maria and I arrived at the

moment we had dreaded since the minute we received our adoption

referral. We had to tell the boys goodbye

as by law we had to return to the United States and wait for

the legal paperwork to be completed before returning to

pick them up for good. After we hugged and kissed them,

we walked out into the quiet hallway as Maria shook with

tears and that's when we heard the screams.

Little Maxim fell back in his crib and let out a guttural

yell. It seemed he knew, maybe for the

first time, that he would be heard on some primal level.

He knew he had a father and mother now.

I'll never forget how the hairs on my arms stood up as I heard

the yell. I was struck, maybe for the

first time, by the force of the ABBA cry passages in the New

Testament. Once I had memorized in Vacation

Bible School, and I was surprised by how little I had

gotten it. Until now.

The story has helped me be thankful for when I hear my

children cry. Yes, when our children cry, it

means that something is wrong, but it also means that something

is very right. Our children feel loved, and

they know that they'll be heard. The Christian life is a lot like

this. We are God's children, and so

when things go wrong, we cry out to Him.

As Romans 815 says, you have received the spirit of adoption

as sons by whom we cry. ABBA, Father, it is good to cry

out to God. But what happens when you cry

out to God and he doesn't seem to respond?

We read and sang about God's comfort in in Isaiah 40.

But what happens when you cry out for his comfort and he's

silent toward you? There are seasons in a

Christian's life when you feel like God has forsaken you, like

he's silent toward you and and even opposed to you.

Isaiah 45 verse 15 says truly, you are a God who hides himself,

Isaiah 45:15

who hides himself. Why does God hide himself from

us? Does that sound odd to you?

Maybe it makes you afraid. This experience is as odd and

perhaps as terrifying as it sounds, is a normal Christian

experience. Psalm 13 reassures us of that.

Now, one of my former pastors and mentor, Kevin Carr, he said

this in one of his sermons. He said the doctrine of God's

hiddenness is not the doctrine of God's absence.

The doctrine of God's hiddenness is not a doctrine of God's

absence. He is always involved in the

lives of his children. So how is that true when all the

evidence seems to indicate the contrary?

Psalm 13 and many other Psalms and passages throughout the

Scripture assure us that experiencing the hiddenness of

God or the silence of God is a normal Christian experience.

If you're in a dark season today, if you feel like God has

forgotten you, that your prayers are not being heard or responded

to, then I pray that Psalm 13 can be your prayer this Advent

season and help guide your heart verse by verse to respond

rightly to God in your suffering.

If you're not in a dark season, I want to give you instruction

to help you prepare, to help prepare you for those times, or

perhaps to help you help somebody else.

We walking through dark season. The main point from Psalm 13 is

this. When we experience the silence

of God, let us not be silent, faithless, and despairing, but

let us instead cry out to God, pray for the mercy of God, trust

in the love of God, and rejoice in the salvation of God.

And that'll be the four points here that we'll cover.

Cry out to God, pray for the mercy of God, trust in the love

of God, and rejoice in the salvation of God.

So the first way we are to respond when God to God, when we

experience his silences, is to cry out to God.

We see this in verses one and two.

Look with me. How long, O Lord, will you

forgive me forever? How long will you hide your face

from me? How long must I take counsel in

my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Our Psalm begins with groans for relief.

How long, O Lord, again and again we can cry out.

How long will you forget me, God?

How, how? How long are you going to hide

your face from me? Have you felt this before?

I have. Many faithful Christians have.

God feels so distant and you and you pray and pray but nothing

changes. You read your Bible and nothing

changes. You sing songs at church and

nothing changes. You have fellowship with

brothers and sisters. Nothing changes.

You're hit with trial after trial and you find yourself

spiraling down and down with with seemingly no help from

heaven. Your soul is not at rest day or

night. You just, you just want to

sleep. You just want to check out, just

escape. You want to get away from all

your problems, but you can't because they're always on your

mind after weeks and months and yeah, even years to begin to

think that, well, you're probably not saved because

nothing adds up. If you were, If you were saved,

why would prayer be so difficult?

Wouldn't things change after you prayed if you truly were saved?

If you were saved, wouldn't wouldn't you?

You get something from reading the Bible?

If you were saved, wouldn't, wouldn't you enjoy singing

worship songs? If you were saved, wouldn't you

be overcoming sin and having power in your life to do great

things for God and not be such a burden on everybody else?

It just doesn't add up. When this happens we often

become preoccupied with ourselves and in our standing

before God. Verse 2 says how long must I

take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

Here we see the progression of what happens after long seasons

of darkness. After going God Word in prayer

and then feeling rejected or ignored, we begin to go inward,

from Godward to inward. When God doesn't answer, we

often retreat to introspection to try to solve what's wrong

with us. But that doesn't help.

We cannot counsel ourselves. We need help from outside of us,

from God himself. Experiencing the silence of God

can be perplexing and seem contradictory to what God says

in His Word. It makes sense why why God would

take away things and even people from us, but why would he remove

himself from us? I mean, it makes sense why God

would take away good things that are becoming idols to us, but

why would God take away fellowship with Himself?

Isn't God's ultimate goal to have us worship him and, and,

and commune with him? And you were told to to pray for

God's Kingdom to come and for his will to be done.

And what's more in line with that than than that?

I abide with him and, and I pray to him and he responds to me and

he plays his word to me and he directs me.

God, where are you? What's so wrong with me that you

won't answer? Why have you forgotten me?

When someone starts speaking this way, that they feel distant

from God and it disturbs them and they're sorrowful and

they're concerned about it, that's a good sign.

That's a good sign. When someone talks like that,

they sound a lot like the Psalms.

The same Holy Spirit who is in you is the same Spirit who is in

the psalmists who wrote the lament Psalms.

When someone groans like like Psalm 13 or like Psalm 22 or

Psalm 42 or many others, you can know that that is a response

you'd expect from someone who has the Holy Spirit within them.

It'd be more concerning if if they just didn't cry out to God

at all, weren't concerned at all, didn't cry at all at all.

Like, like, like the babies in the Russian orphanage without

any parents to comfort them. And so pray the Psalms to God in

the midst of dark seasons. Scripture is both.

Scripture is is God's word, God's words to us.

Prayer is our words to God. The Psalms, then, are are this

poetic union of both Scripture and prayer, of God's words to us

and our words to God. God in his sovereign wisdom,

ordains that we go through the times of suffering and times of

feeling distant from Him. And at the same time, God in His

mercy has not left us alone, but He's given us the Psalms as

words to help us pour out our hearts to Him in whatever trial

we may face. When we don't know what to pray

to God or just without words, isn't it so loving of our Father

to give us His own words to pray back to Him?

There's 150 psalms, and if 65 of them are lament Psalms, at least

then perhaps we need an increased diet of lament in our

private and corporate worship. It's OK to lament during Advent.

It's good. It may ready your heart for

Christ's coming, perhaps in a way that joyful songs don't.

So why does God hide himself from us at times?

What are what are his good purposes for us in in doing

that? Well, the Westminster Confession

of Faith gives a helpful summary of the Bible's answer to this.

It says that God's Providence towards us often does include

dark seasons, chapter 5, paragraph 5.

And this is from the modern version.

It says this. The most wise, righteous and

gracious God often leaves his own children for a time to

manifold temptations and to the corruption of their own hearts.

And then our confession tells us what God's good purposes are for

doing this. It says this, He does this one,

to chastise them for their past sins, 2 to humble them by making

them aware of the hidden strength of the corruption and

deceitfulness of their hearts. And then three, to raise them to

a closer, more constant dependence upon himself for

their support, to make them more watchful against all future

occasions for sinning, and to fulfill various other just and

holy purposes. This excellent statement brings

out some of God's purposes for providentially hiding himself

from you. He's, he's humbling you, perhaps

disciplining you, showing you the depths of your sinfulness,

and making you more prayerful, more watchful, more dependent on

Him. Those are good things.

As you cry for God to hear, you know that He has already heard

you and is answering you in ways that you might not have been

asking for or listening for. The second way we would respond

to God when we experience this silence is to pray for the mercy

of God. See this in Psalm 3, Psalm 13,

three and four. Consider and answer me, O Lord

my God, light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest

my enemy say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice

because I am shaken. You see the psalmist shift from

groaning and complaining to asking God to respond to him.

It's, it's OK to groan and complain to God.

He can take that. It's that's OK.

Don't worry. But we mustn't stay there.

We need to ask for help. Remember, God hasn't forgotten

you. Isaiah 49 verses 14 and 15,

Isaiah 49:14

which Pastor Chris just preached on a few weeks ago, gives us

such reassuring words. But Zion said, the Lord has

forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me.

Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no

compassion on the son of her womb?

Even these may forget. Yet I will not forget you.

Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

You are God's child, beloved. How could he forget you?

He has, in a sense, engraved your name on the palms of his

hands. So pray to God with confidence

that He will consider you and answer you.

Here's a comforting quote from Charles Spurgeon.

You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so.

He who counts the stars and calls them by their names is in

no danger of forgetting his own children.

He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature

He ever made or the only St. He ever loved.

Approach Him and be at peace. When we ask God to consider and

answer us, we can ask Him with confidence because we are His

children and He loves us. And so ask and wait, Ask and

wait. The last verse of Psalm 27

leaves us with this note resounding in our ears.

Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart

take courage. Wait for the Lord.

How long did Elizabeth and Zechariah have to wait and pray

for a child? Perhaps they had felt at times

like like like they were just praying to a wall.

And maybe they even stopped praying for a child at some

point, but God was still at work.

He hadn't forgotten them or His loving plan.

Pray and wait. The third way we are to respond

to God when we experience this silence is to trust in the

steadfast love of God. Trust in the steadfast love of

God. We see this from the first line

of Psalm 13, verse 5. But I have trusted in your

Psalms 13:5

steadfast love. Here we find ballast for our our

tossing and anxious souls throughout this Psalm.

God moves us from groaning and complaining to praying and

trusting, and then even to rejoicing.

There's no indication in this verse that David's situation

suddenly, all of it suddenly, all of it all of a sudden

improved, and now he's hopeful and optimistic.

There's no indication of that. No, our situation may not

change, but our heart can. It changes sometimes, often very

slowly, having back and forth from anxiety and despair and

anger to trust and patience and humility.

When we experience the silence of God, we're to reflect on

God's steadfast love for us and then trust in that love.

Trust that He loves you now. Trust that He'll love you

tomorrow, even if your enemies don't go away, even if your

situation doesn't change. The first thing to help us see

the steadfast love of God towards us is to know is to know

that God's love for us is defined by Him and not by us.

We may think that God would be loving if He would remove our

enemies from us, if He would take away our trials.

But God defines His love differently and we need to look

for His definition of love. Otherwise, we might be looking

for something that may never come.

Turn with me to Genesis 39, the story of Joseph, Genesis 39.

I'll bring us up to speed. Joseph is sold into slavery by

his brothers, and then then he's bought by Potiphar, his wife.

Potiphar's wife tries to seduce him, and then when Joseph runs

away, she lies, saying that he was trying to take advantage of

her. Look now at Genesis 39, verses

Genesis 39:19–21

19 through 21. As soon as his master heard the

words that his wife spoke to him.

This is the way your servant treated me.

His anger was kindled. And Joseph's math master took

him and put him into the prison, the place where the King's

prisoners were confined. And he was there in prison.

But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and

gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.

Verse 21 is amazing. The Lord showed Joseph steadfast

love while he was in prison. Joseph wanted out of prison, but

God's love toward him wasn't to take him out, at least not yet.

Instead, God's love was expressed in the form of favor

in the eyes of the prison guard. So in your dark season, look for

God's love toward you in the details of how he dearly

sustains you. Don't just wait for the whole

dark season to pass. Look for how God is loving you

today in the in specific, ordinary, sustaining ways.

God's steadfast love toward us today in a dark season has deep,

deep roots, gospel roots, roots that we should never forget,

Roots that remind us that God's love isn't temporary, it's

steadfast, it's ancient. So when did God's love for us

begin? Ephesians chapter 1 verses four

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

and five says He chose us in Him before the foundation of the

world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in

love. He predestined us for adoption

to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose

of His will. So when did God's love for us to

begin? It began before the foundation

of the world. He predestined us in love.

His choosing of us was not a cold act of sovereign will, but

of love, and that not just this general love for a group of

people, but a particular a particular love for for you and

for me. He lovingly created a plan to

adopt us as sons and daughters, and Christ agreed to be the

sacrifice on the cross to make that happen.

This love for you was further expressed and further promised

in the covenants of the Old Testament and fulfilled in the

New Covenant in Christ. When you are in the darkest day

of your life, remember the darkest day in all of human

history, the day that Christ expressed and demonstrated His

love for you when He died for you on the cross.

Greater love is known than this, that someone laid down his life

for his friends. This is a love you can trust in.

You can put your faith in God's faithfulness.

If Christ died for you and united you to himself, will He

not be with you and guide you and love you forever, no matter

how dark the valley gets? What can separate us from the

love of Christ? Finally, the fourth piece of

counsel for when we experience the silence of God is to rejoice

in the salvation of God. Rejoice in the salvation of God.

Psalm 13, verses 5:00 and 6:00. But I have trusted in your

steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your

salvation. I will sing to the Lord because

He has dealt bountifully with me.

The psalmist trusts in the love of God, and from that, that

stable, fertile soil of faith, joy begins to grow.

Look at the tenses of these words.

I have trusted in your steadfast love.

He has dealt bountifully with me.

These are verbs in the past tense we're to.

We are to meditate on God's past grace towards us.

He has dealt bountifully with us in innumerable ways, benefits

that were all purchased for us with the death of Christ and

applied to us by the Holy Spirit.

Because of this, we have we have something to sing about, even if

the dark season doesn't lift. When we consider Advent, when we

consider the baby in the Manger, that is such a beautiful picture

of God dealing bountifully with us.

He could not have sent us a greater gift.

The Psalm ends with rejoicing, but know that not every St. in a

dark season is there yet. It's a journey.

Going from verse one to verse 6 can take years and rejoicing in

a dark season that might look different than what you expect.

And still they're still in with that rejoicing might be

intermixed with tears and sorrow or perhaps not much feeling at

all. So, dear St., Wherever you are

in this Psalm, let the Psalm guide you.

Let it guide your prayer. If if you're not praying to God

at all, cry out to him in faith as a child.

If you're if you're groaning and complaining to God, know that he

hears you, and so pray for His mercy to help you in your

specific circumstance. Pray for specific help.

Get into the specifics when you pray.

And if you're if you're fixated in the current moment and you

feel insecure in God's love, remember God's ancient and

steadfast love for you ultimately expressed in Christ's

death for you and daily communicated to you through his

Providence and provision. And finally, if you, if you're

meditating on God's steadfast love for you in Christ, respond

with rejoicing. Even if the feelings aren't all

there, even if you don't have all the answers, even if God

still seems to be silent toward you, declare His greatness.

Sing of how He has dealt bountifully with you in Christ.

If you're experiencing the silence of God today, know and

remember that Jesus Christ experienced the silence of God

on the cross when he cried out. My God, my God, why have you

forsaken me? Jesus experienced the silence of

God so that you wouldn't have to forever.

Let's pray. Oh Heavenly Father, we thank you

that we can cry out to you. We thank you that you hear us.

Lord, we pray for your mercy, for the brothers and sisters

here that perhaps are experiencing your hiddenness,

your silence. Oh Lord, we pray that you would

remind them of your love, remind them of what Christ did on the

cross for them, that ultimate expression of love.

Lord, help us to wait, turn US away from despair and help us,

Lord, to love one another, to not shy back from others who are

in dark seasons, but to step in, to sit with people in the

darkness, to pray for them, to wait with them.

This we pray in Jesus name, Amen.