Psalm 88 & Suffering

Out of the whole year, summer is when I get to spend the most time with my husband. That means instead of writing posts in the evenings I’ve been spending time with my hunny-bun. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had things that I’ve been wanting to write about though! Today I want to tell you guys just a bit about a book I just finished reading. OMG (and I don’t use that often) it was amazing! Suffering and the Sovereignty of God is the name of it (Piper & Taylor). Basically it answers these questions: Is God really in control when bad things happen? Is God still good and perfect when those things happen? To put it simply: Yes & Yes.


But not only is God in control and good and perfect he is there in the pain and suffering. Up until recently the biggest pain that I’ve had in my life had been the death of my grandpa in high school and a bad break-up a few years ago. You may be able to relate. It was God’s word-specifically the Psalms-that kept my head above water. I couldn’t get enough of them. They described exactly what I was feeling.

David Powlison discusses suffering, psalms, and God in a chapter entitled “Waiting for the Morning.” He uses Psalm 88 to talk about the depth of pain. In the psalm, one can see the writer is so full of troubles he feels near his death. His eyes even grow dim through sorrow. In his sorrows and pain he feels helpless. This chapter is pretty depressing b/c it doesn’t end with a “Yet you are the God of my salvation.” Nope, no joyful triumph here. It ends with the author describing how God has caused his friends not to just leave him but shun him-they are as darkness to him. Powlison goes on to say what is remarkable about this Psalm is that it seems right-on with pain. Are these not the things that grief and pain do to us? They are. But why is something so depressing in the bible? Well, in short it’s so that when we doubt that God is listening, we will see “that what we are feeling is normal.”

Let me leave with you with this excerpt from the chapter:

"God cares about us in the midst of pain. His goal isn’t just to get us out of the pain to joy; he also wants us to see that he is for us and with us in the pain. It is true that weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning (Ps. 30:5). The morning will dawn and God will remove every tear (Rev. 21:4), but God is not just concerned about the morning, the new day when you can shout for joy. He is with us even in the night when there is nothing but weeping, when the tears are so think that we can’t see. When we are in the deepest pit and darkness weighs on our souls and God feels so absent that we wonder if he is even real, this psalm reminds us that he is with us even then."

Who is the fairest of them all?

This week as I teach the children about People being made for the glory of God, I’ve been saying things like: God made us to tell Him “God you’re the greatest! God, you are the best! God you are the strongest! God you are the biggest of all!” Over and over we’ve been talking about this: during circle time, at the writing table, even while we play outside and singing songs. It’s been fun watching them getting it. Let me explain.

This week’s theme is Super Heroes and Princesses. So I’ve had the chance to read some books about fairy’s and princesses. I don’t normally try to tie the picture books into the truth I’m trying to teach. I just pick fun books.

However, this morning after I was done teaching them about how we were made to tell God He’s the best, one precious girl thought of God during the story.

I was reading about a character named Alice the Fairy (by David Shannon) spilling juice to magically turn her shirt from white to red, and literally using her wand to make it dark (by reaching her wand to the light switch). Then as I read about Alice asking of the mirror “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” I heard a sweet little voice that said, “God is the fairest.” Okay so I know teachers say this all this all the time but it really did “warm my heart.”

Now I know she didn’t know what “fairest” meant. However she did catch the –est ending. Since we were talking about God being the biggest, strongest and greatest-I’m sure she related that to God. But that does not make it any lighter. She is learning that God is always the best of everything. Though she didn’t know what fairest meant, she gets that God is the best of everything. And I'm thankful. Because He is.

Essential Gospel Truth #5

5) God is just and; right to punish sin

Suggested Verses: Romans 1:18; 6:23a

Explanation: “Because God is holy and righteous, He is right not to permit or allow any sin. Sin – even one

sin – is not okay with God. God hates sin and is very angry with sin. God is right to punish sin. That’s what it means that God is “just”. And God has decided that the right punishment for sin is death and hell. Death means experiencing God’s great anger forever in a place called hell. 

                  Because everyone is a sinner – including you and me – we all deserve to be punished by God. God would be right to send us all to hell. And there is nothing that we can do to help ourselves: We can’t become sinless by trying to do more good things than bad things – its too late for that isn’t it. We’ve already sinned too many times.  We can’t obey God perfectly – no matter how hard we work at it. We have a sin nature that makes us like the wrong things and makes us want to do the wrong things. We can’t clean away our sin.  Mommy and daddy can’t help you – mommy and daddy are helpless too. 

                  There is nothing more terrible than hell – it is worse than spankings, or bad ouwies, or being afraid, or being apart from mommy and daddy forever. We can never be happy in hell but we are helpless to save ourselves. We can only be happy forever if we go to heaven and live with God forever. But sinners can’t go to heaven. We deserve to be sent to hell. This is a huge problem – it is our biggest problem!”

H. B’s Interjection: As hard as this could have been to read, it would be even harder to get the words out of your mouth to a little child. Yet even harder still will be to stop yourself from jumping to the end of the story and telling what Jesus did on the cross & what he accomplished there. Why would you stop yourself? Well Jill Nelson said this:

Now let this sink in!  Don’t jump to the solution. We want our kids to wrestle with this. Don’t worry about having them feel bad! In fact, none of us can feel as bad about our sin and the offense it is to God as we should. And you need to feel something of the depth of condemnation before a Holy God, before you can begin to truly be amazed by free gift of salvation, justification from this same God. Let your children think about it, ponder, and feel it.

Illustration: (Looking at the world & the earthly effects of sin)

·       Crimes & Jail: “People are punished for their crimes & sent to jail, disobedience to parents results in various kinds of punishment”

---Why is it right that guilty people be punished?---

·       Angry Child: “He/she kid throws rock & cuts your eye: Why would it be a good thing for him to be punished? What does punishment show?”

---Why we can’t save ourselves & why it is good & right for God to punish sinners---

·       Bake cookies- (Instead of baking cookies for 10 minutes bake them for a half of an hour. What you will come out with is a very burnt cookie.) “Is this the way cookies are supposed to be? No. Would it be right for me to now say ‘These cookies are good anyways’? No, because then I would be a liar. It would not be right for me to say ‘These cookies are okay. They are good. No problem lets serve them to company’ That wouldn’t be right.

Where do these cookies belong? What would be right for us to do with these cookies? Throw them away. Can those cookies unburn themselves? No. They can’t. That’s a little bit-just a tiny bit of what it’s like that God is right to punish sinners. When we disobey God, even one of his commands, it’s a little bit like baking cookies at the wrong temperature. Just as the cookies have become darkened and bad, our hearts have become darkened with sin. It wouldn’t be right for God to say ‘that’s okay, they’re good anyway’ Then God would be a liar. God will not say ‘I was just kidding when I said you have to obey me perfectly all the time & be righteous & Holy. I won’t really punish you with death & hell. It’s okay. You are okay just the way you are.’ Just as those cookies are helpless to unburn themselves, we are helpless to change our own hearts. And you know what, you might be sad that we threw away a whole batch of cookies, but there’s something a whole lot more sad. That is, that you and I deserve to be thrown into hell and be punished forever by God. That’s a lot sadder.

Implication: You deserve God’s punishment of death and hell and you are helpless to save yourself.

Heather’s thoughts: With that, I don’t have much else to say. I wrote an entire blog on my feelings about presenting the ENTIRE, COMPLETE, WHOLE gospel to children. (Click here to view it). Yes, that would include telling children there is a place called hell & we deserve it.  Jill gives us an excellent way to share it lovingly & truthfully.

Tomorrow will be Essential Gospel Truth #6 which is “God is Merciful. He is kind to undeserving sinners.”