Sermon Outline
Tears and Prayer
Paddick Van Zyl
LDMI
29 July 2020
Scripture :
Psalm 39 :12-13 TPT
12 Lord, listen to all my tender cries.
Read my every tear, like liquid words that plead for your help.
I feel all alone at times, like a stranger to you,
passing through this life just like all those before me.
13 Don’t let me die without restoring
joy and gladness to my soul.
May your frown over my failure
become a smile over my success.
Psalm 126 :5-6 TPT
5 Those who sow their tears as seeds
will reap a harvest with joyful shouts of glee.
6 They may weep as they go out carrying their seed to sow,
but they will return with joyful laughter and shouting with gladness
as they bring back armloads of blessing and a harvest overflowing!
Theme:
God wants us to bring our deepest feelings, hurts, anguish before Him in prayer.
Introduction:
Crying is common in this world. It does little good to ask the reason for it. Mud-dyscuttle is what one might call a weeping planet. Laughter can be heard here and there, but by and large, weeping predominates. With maturity the sound and reason for crying changes, but never does it stop. All infants do it everywhere--even in pub-lic. By adulthood most crying is done alone and in the dark. Weeping, for babies, is a sign of health and evidence that they are alive. Isn't this a chilling omen? Not laugh-ter but tears is the life sign. It leaves weeping and being synonyms. *
Sermon:
Eugene Peterson, The Message bible, remarks about our tears: “Tears are a biological gift of God. They are a physical means for expressing emotional and spiritual experience. But it is hard to know what to do with them. If we indulge our tears, we cultivate self-pity. If we suppress our tears, we lose touch with our feelings.”**
We do not find in the Psalms any suggestion to either vent or deny our feelings. What we do see, practised by David, is the concept of ‘praying our feelings’. It is interesting to note that an entire book in the Old Testament is entitled Lamentations, meaning:
*To express passionate grief about something
*Express regret or disappointment about something
*To cause anguish or distress
*to think deeply about something that makes one unhappy, angry or worried
God wants us to bring our deepest feelings, hurts, anguish before Him in prayer.
We find that tears and weeping is common in the bible.
Joseph wept when he saw his brothers (Gen. 43:30)
The Israelites wept when Moses died (Deuteronomy 34:8)
Hannah wept for being barren (1 Sam 1:8)
David and his warriors wept till they had no more power to weep (1 Sam 30:4)
Job, Peter, Mary and the sinful woman:
Luke 7:36-39 NKJV
36 Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. And He went to the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to eat.
37 And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil,
38 and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.
39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.”
In Psalm 6, we find David crying out to God:
Psalm 6 TPT
A Cry for Healing
For the Pure and Shining One
A song for the end, sung for the new day by King David
1 No, Lord! Don’t condemn me.
Don’t punish me in your fiery anger.
2 Please deal gently with me, Yahweh;
show me mercy, for I’m sick and frail.
I’m fading away with weakness.
Heal me, for I’m falling apart.
3 How long until you take away this pain in my body and in my soul?
Lord, I’m trembling in fear!
4 Yahweh, return to me and deliver my life
because I know your faithful love is toward me.
5 How can I be any good to you dead?
For graveyards sing no songs.
In the darkness of death who remembers you?
How could I bring you praise if I’m buried in a tomb?
6 I’m exhausted and worn out with my weeping.
I endure weary, sleepless nights filled with moaning,
soaking my pillow with my tears.
7 My eyes of faith won’t focus anymore, for sorrow fills my heart.
There are so many enemies who come against me!
8 Go away! Leave me, all you troublemakers!
For the Lord has turned to listen to my thunderous cry.
9 Yes! Yahweh my healer has heard all my pleading
and has taken hold of my prayers and answered them all.
10 Now it’s my enemies who have been shamed.
Terror-stricken, they will turn back again,
knowing the bitterness of sudden disgrace!
While we live on this earth, on this side of eternity we can rest assured that sorrow will be part and parcel of our lives. But there is also self-pity… How do we distinguish between the two?
Eugene Peterson offers the following insight:
“Pay attention to the causes of the weeping, the source of the tears. Some weeping is manipulative, trying to get others to feels sorry for us. Some weeping is selfish, from not getting our own way. Some weeping is compassionate, a deep feeling for the suffering in others.”***
Expect tears:
Psalm 126: The Israelites are remembering the prisoners that were brought back to Jerusalem and requesting God to do it again. Like water to a dry and barren dessert.
When you walk with God, you should expect tears – the nation did not do anything wrong, no mention of repentance is mentioned in this passage yet they cried and shed tears. Tears are part and parcel of the believers life.
Isaiah 53:3 TPT
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of deep sorrows
who was no stranger to suffering and grief.
We hid our faces from him in disgust
and considered him a nobody, not worthy of respect.
Invest your tears:
Psalm 126
Farmers that are farming for a living, know very well that if they do not sow seed, they will not reap a harvest. When we sow our tears in prayer we will reap a harvest of joy, bot just in answered prayer but in sweet fellowship with the Father. Sowing seed is hard, it’s labour but when the harvest comes in there is joy. Seed needs to be planted, not thrown, not kept in the barn.
God in His grace understands our tears, our weeping, our emotions – Psalm 39, (Psalm 17:15)
Psalm 30:5 TPT
I’ve learned that his anger lasts for a moment,
but his loving favor lasts a lifetime!
We may weep through the night,
but at daybreak it will turn into shouts of ecstatic joy.
Pray your tears:
Derek Kindner in his commentary notes that Psalm 6 is one of seven Psalms (Ps32; Ps38; Ps51; Ps102; Ps130 & Ps 143) better known as ‘penitential psalms : “prayer by one who is deeply troubled and alarmed, fills the first half of the Psalm, The second half, contains no petition: only at first weeping, but finally an outburst of defiant faith. The prayers and tears have not been for nothing.” ****
Psalm 77:1-4 LEB
I cry out with my voice to God;
with my voice to God, that he may hear me.
2 In the day I have trouble, I seek[c] the Lord.
At night my hand stretches out continually;[d]
my soul refuses to be comforted.
3 I remember God and I groan loudly;
I meditate and my spirit grows faint.
4 You hold open my eyelids.
I am troubled and cannot speak.
Derek Kidner notes: “If we think it naive to cry to God aloud ..., that he may hear me, God, reading the heart, may think otherwise. Jesus Himself prayed ‘with loud cries and tears ..., and he was heard for his godly fear (Heb. 5:7).”*****
In Closing:
Tim Keller says that we are to pray our tears to God and not just talk about our tears to God.
We may feel save in the presence of God to speak our tears, our fears and concerns but also to pray these to God. He is a loving heavenly Father (Psalm 103:13; Isaiah 53:3). God is a God of grace of compassion.
Through our tears we are to look to the cross of Calvary as Jesus wept to His Father and our Father (Hebrews 5:7).
We are to remind ourselves:
“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4
The Passion Translation says it so beautifully:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and eliminate death entirely. No one will mourn or weep any longer. The pain of wounds will no longer exist, for the old order has ceased.”
Amen
Laus Deo Ministries Int.
Notes:
Wordhippo – Synonyms www.wordhippo.com
* Calvin Miller, The Valiant Papers, p. 22. http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/c/crying.htm
**Peterson, Eugene : Psalms – Prayers of the Heart, InterVArsity Press, 1987, 2000, p.35
***Peterson, Eugene : Psalms – Prayers of the Heart, InterVArsity Press, 1987, 2000, p.60
***Kidner, Derek : Kidner Classic Commentaries, Psalms 1-72, Inter-Varsity Press, 1973, p. 77
**** Kidner, Derek : Psalms 73-150 : a commentary on Books III-V of the Psalms, Inter-Varsity PRESS, 1974, p.277
