September 2, 2020
Have you ever wrestled with great grief? I have. Was your grief so bad that you lost all hope? I have. How do you express your grief? Have you expressed your grief to God in lament? Nonetheless, did you feel abandoned by God? I have and so has King David, Job, and Jeramiah. Let us look at the Bible and learn about lamenting before our loving God.
I have had people tell me that lamenting is not good and it is not in the Bible. I will tell you that the Bible has demonstrated lament in several places with several people. Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations. David wrote several Psalms of lament. Job is full of the lamentations.
I believe the speeches by Job are his lamentations before the Lord. Let us look at a few excerpts from those speeches. Job 3: 1-4, 7:1-6 and Job 9:2-4.
“After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said:
‘Let the day perish on which I was born,
and the night that said,
“A man is conceived.”
Let that day be darkness!
May God above not seek it,
nor light shine upon it.
‘Has not man a hard service on earth,
and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?
Like a slave who longs for the shadow,
and like a hired hand who looks for his wages,
so I am allotted months of emptiness,
and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’
But the night is long,
and I am full of tossing till the dawn.
My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;
my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle
and come to their end without hope.’
If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind?
why have you made me your mark?
Why have I become a burden to you?
Why do you not pardon my transgressions
and take away my iniquity?
For now, I shall lie in the earth;
you will seek me, but I shall not be.’
‘Truly I know that it is so:
But how can a man be in the right before God?
If one wished to contend with him,
one could not answer him once in a thousand times.
He is wise in heart and mighty in strength
—who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?—‘” (ESV)
We see that Job wishes he was never born. This does not mean that he is suicidal and wants to end his life, rather it is an expression of his great grief over his situation. He continues to point out his futility. He talks about being hopeless because job feels like God is not answering him. Job acknowledges who God is throughout his laments.
Then Job makes one of the most astounding statements given his situation. A statement of hope! I wish I could have honestly said these same things when I was dealing with Laura’s health and death. He said in Job 19:23-27,
“Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth]
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!” (ESV)
In the end we know Job maintained his righteousness before God because God said, “After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.’” Job 42:7 (ESV)
Let us look at King David’s Psalms of lament. David says in Psalms 22, 1-2, 6, 9-10, 25-26, 30-31,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live forever!
Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.” (ESV)
David says startling things in this Psalm. He tells God that He fells like God has abandoned or forsaken him. This includes the idea that David feels like God is far away from him. David feels like God does not hear him. He then goes on to describe himself as a worm and he is scorned by men. However, David goes on to acknowledge that God made him in his mother’s womb. He acknowledges that the Lord is his God and he also praises God at the end. He sees that the praise he gives to God, actually comes from God. Ultimately David admits how all will proclaim God’s righteousness and all He has done. David is described in Acts 13:22, “And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after My heart, who will do all My will.’”
There are several other Psalms that you should read if you need to lament your pain to God. Psalms 12, Psalms 13, Psalms 44, and Psalms 86.
The thing I noticed about the lamentations of these two men in the Bible is that it is okay to lament our suffering to God. As we lament, we need to also acknowledge who God is, not blame Him, and accept our situation. Then we can faithfully seek God in our lament. I do not have space to write about Jeramiah’s lament, but take some time to read the book of Lamentations for yourself and discover how to lament before God. If you do not have a relationship with God you can have one through his Son Jesus. Find out how.
You can find my book, Hope Amid Hopelessness: Our Abba Father Provides a Way Through Mental Illness here.
eBook or Audiobook versions can be found at Westbow Press or Christianbook.com at Amazon or Google.
