Psalm 102
Let’s hear God’s word together
from Psalm 102, which at the top, the little phrase before
verse one says, a prayer of one afflicted when he is faint and
pours out his complaint before the Lord. Psalm 102, beginning
at verse one, says, hear my prayer, O Lord. Let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me. Answer
me speedily in the day when I call. For my days pass away like smoke
and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is struck down like
grass and has withered. I forget to eat my bread. Because
of my loud groaning, my bones cling to my flesh. I am like
a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places.
I lie awake. I am like a lonely sparrow on
the housetop. All the day my enemies taunt
me. Those who deride me use my name for a curse. Fright ashes
like bread and mingle tears with my drink. Because of your indignation
and anger for you have taken me up and thrown me down. My
days are like an evening shadow. I wither away like grass. But
you, O Lord, are enthroned forever. You are remembered through all
generations. You will arise and have pity
on Zion. It is the time to favor her.
The appointed time has come. For your servants hold her stones
dear and have pity on her dust. Nations will fear the name of
the Lord. All the kings of the earth will
fear your glory. For the Lord builds up Zion.
He appears in his glory. He regards the prayer of the
destitute and does not despise their prayer. Let this be recorded
for a generation to come, so that a people yet created may
praise the Lord, that he look down from his holy height. From
heaven, the Lord looked at the earth to hear the groans of prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare
in Zion the name of the Lord. And in Jerusalem, his praise,
when the peoples gather together in the kingdoms to worship the
Lord. He has broken my strength in mid-course. He has shortened
my days. Oh my God, I say, take me not away. In the midst of
my days, you whose years endure throughout all generations. Of
old, you laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens
are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will
remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will change
them like a robe and they will pass away. But you are the same
and your years have no end. The children of your servants
shall dwell secure. Their offspring shall be established
before you. Amen. This is God’s holy word. I have lots of memories of growing
up in church. My sister and I were talking
the other day about the, First church building we both can remember.
We remember the Pepsi machine in the basement where for a quarter
you could get a Mellow Yellow. We remember Mrs. Wells, our babysitter,
who every Sunday night would give us a quarter and we’d put
it in the machine. And I don’t know how we got away with getting
a Mellow Yellow at night, but we did. But we remember that,
we remember where the Sunday school rooms were, where dad’s
study was, we remember the sanctuary, we remember coming down, sitting
on the front steps for the children’s sermon, all those sorts of things.
But one of the things I remember in the church was thinking this,
if only I didn’t have to go. Children think that way a lot.
They think of ways to get out of service. They develop kidney
troubles. They delay getting into church. And then we have our escape plans.
If only we could maybe just get out for a moment. And then as
we’re teenagers, we want to keep the nursery. Not out of altruism
and love for the kids, but we just want to keep the nursery
because we’re not in preaching. Well, we’ve got a way to fix
that. We put a speaker in there that’s nice and loud. You can
even hear me sing through it. But I can remember, you could
hear me sing through today’s speakers in the sanctuary too,
I think. But I can remember. 35 years ago on Sunday nights
in church, singing songs and then praying with the rest of
the church for a little while. And as soon as I opened my Bible
to Psalm 102 this week and recognize the opening words, hear my prayer,
oh Lord, let my cry come to you. I can remember 35 years ago being
seven years old in the back of the fellowship hall where we
had prayer meeting and the Elon students from Inner Varsity Christian
Fellowship, which at that time was a pretty new ministry there
on campus, would come play their guitars and they would sing for
us or lead us in singing the Calvary Church Movement Psalms. Some of you may know what those
are, but I can remember singing, hear my prayer, oh Lord, hear
my cry unto you. When my heart is overwhelmed,
lead me to the rock. I have memories of that 35 years
ago, and just as soon as I opened up this psalm, I can hear and
remember the congregation singing those very words. At seven years
old, you’d rather be playing. At seven years old, you’d rather
be at home. At seven years old, you’d rather not be in prayer
meeting. In my day, that was not allowed.
In fact, during prayer meeting, I was thinking of this during
the prayer time, Dad used to jab us, pray for your grandmother,
son. And for about five terrified minutes, you got up the nerve
to think about what you could pray for, for your grandmother.
And if the five minutes passed, you’d probably get another elbow.
You hadn’t prayed for your grandmother yet, son. And so participation
was both forced and, what would you call it? Mandatory, but also
there was a follow-up. There was no way you were not
gonna get to pray. Now that I’m 42 years old, I
look back on that and the memory of being able to read Psalm 142
today and think back to 35 years ago, remembering that moment
in church. It shows you how faithful God
is, that sometimes the seeds he plants in your life, they
don’t come to fruition until you need them and until you are
maybe in a difficult place. When you’re young, you have no
life experience. When you’re young, you generally
have no suffering, right? When you’re young, you think
you’re invincible. When you’re young, you think you’re gonna
live forever, but someday the clouds will loom over you and
all those seeds that were planted in your life by God’s grace and
by his spirit may come back to bless you in your life. And so as we think about Psalm
102 tonight, I want you to think a lot about the whole span of
your life under God’s covenant, under his covenant blessings. You may not know that what is
deposited today may pay great dividends later in life. Here’s the sad thing though,
I think. There are probably very few young people singing Psalm
102 at prayer meeting at age seven. Sadly, young people aren’t
running to God. They aren’t running to Christ.
They aren’t running to the church. They aren’t realizing that when
all hell lands upon them, that life is short, life is transient,
life is brief, that the seeds their parents were planting were
great and important. And Psalm 102 is a good reminder
of the seeds that are planted in life and how they may come
to bless us sometime later and we don’t see it now. In Psalm
102, the psalmist is sick. He’s sick, he’s suffering, but
he’s also the king and he’s also facing lots of other struggles
in life. And I want you to see in this
prayer in addition to the covenant blessing of having God’s word
planted in your life at times when you may not think you need
it. It will be needed later for sure. But I also want you to
think about this. A lot of times in our life, God
is very small and we and our issues are very big. What I mean
by that is we don’t think eternally. We don’t think about God. We
don’t think about his kingdom and his glory, but we think about
us. We think about our needs, our immediate needs. We think
about our little kingdom, our little bits of glory. Oh sure,
we’re Christians. Oh sure, we pray. Sure, we trust
Jesus. We love him. We want to be forgiven
of our sins. We want to go to heaven with
him one day. But if you really think about
it, God is very small in our lives and we, are big, and I
think this psalm will help change that perspective. So, first thing
we want to consider in this psalm is the opening prayer of verses
1 and 2. In the opening prayer in verses
1 and 2 say these words, Hear my prayer, O Lord. Let my cry
come to you. Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me. Answer
me speedily in the day when I call. We talk about different kinds
of prayers sometimes. We speak of sentence prayers.
Dear God, help Aunt Susie to feel better. We just stop there.
But then we know about long-winded prayers. That’s where when the
food’s getting colder and colder, Uncle Frank is still praying
for all the people of the world who are less fortunate than us.
Meanwhile, our food is getting cold and we’re becoming less
fortunate second by second. The turkey is spoiling. So there’s
long-winded prayers. There’s silent prayers. We don’t
know what to pray and so we just sit in silence. But then there’s
prayers like this one here. It’s what we might call a machine
gun prayer. We just open it up. And in this opening prayer of
Psalm 102, there are five requests. The very same request given over
and over and over. Maybe you found yourself praying
like this before. You can only say to God the same
thing. Maybe you change the words, you
change the action verbs. Maybe you add an exclamation
point, but over and over he says this, God, I’m praying. Listen, God, I’m crying. Listen, God, don’t hide from
me. Don’t ignore me in the day of
my distress. Turn your ear to me. Answer me
in the day. that I call. And so in five different
ways, he’s saying the same thing. He has serious business to attend
to with Almighty God. And rarely do we find ourselves
in a position like this. But when we do, aren’t we glad
that we have a God who will listen and who will hear us when we
cry out to him? And so this is the opening of
this prayer. The second section of this prayer
You might think of it in this way. Life is short and full of
sickness and suffering. Life is short and it’s full of
sickness and suffering. And you find this in verses three
through 11, and I want you to look at verse three, then we’ll
look at verse 11, and then we’re gonna look at the verses in between
four through 10. Verses three and 11 are almost
like a bookend to the section in between. Verse three and then
verse 11 speak of, the brevity, the shortness, the
temporariness of life. Verse three, for my days pass
away like smoke. And then verse 11, my days are
like an evening shadow. I wither away like grass. Life is short, it’s full of sickness
and suffering. One of, or another way we can
think of Prayer Time at Church is an organ recital. Have you
ever thought of it? Not the Diane Bish organ recital,
not Public Radio’s Pipe Dreams, but I mean hearts and lungs and
ears and noses and throats and big toes and little toes and
pinky fingers and Aunt Susie’s uncle’s friend who had a cousin
who once knew somebody. Usually our prayer requests are
organ recitals. Oh, my back, my head, my heart,
my spleen, whatever. But what does the psalmist recognize
here? You could almost read Psalm 102 and not know that he’s sick.
Y’all think about that. You could read Psalm 102, where
the psalmist is sick, but he prays for so much more. In just
a moment, we’ll get into what he prays for. But in verses three
and 11, he recognizes life is short, but in between in verse
five, and then in six and seven, and then in verse eight, and
then verse nine and 10, he prays for his sickness, yes. He prays
for his loneliness. He prays to God because he is
mocked by enemies. And he also prays to God because
he is under inexplicable suffering, maybe like the suffering of Job,
in a sense. What is he saying to us? Well,
he’s saying, in a sense, if all you’ve got are organ problems,
hearts and big toes and lungs and whatever else, you’re either
lucky or you’re short-sighted. Don’t y’all agree? If all you
got are organ problems, you’re either lucky or short-sighted.
You don’t see past your own belly button, or you’re just very blessed
and don’t have anything else wrong with you. But after speaking
of the shortness of life, notice what he says about his sickness
in verse five. Because of my loud groaning, my bones cling
to my flesh. That’s a pretty desperate spot.
Sometimes we go to the nursing home to visit a loved one and,
you know, we make our way through the hallway. And if it’s a particularly
bad day at the nursing home, you might hear someone moaning.
You might hear someone groaning. You might hear someone crying
out. You might see people suffering and in such great pain. And so
that’s what the psalmist is sensing here. Then in verse six and seven,
he speaks of being alone. I’m like a desert owl. of the
wilderness, like an owl of the waste places. I lie awake. I’m like a lonely sparrow on
the housetop. And then in verse eight, he speaks
of being mocked by his enemies. All day, my enemies taunt me.
Those who deride me use my name for a curse. Then he speaks of
suffering like Job. In verse nine, he says, I eat
ashes like bread. I mingle tears with my drink
because of your indignation. Speaking to God, your anger,
you have taken me up and you have thrown me down. My days
are like an evening shadow. Life is short, it’s full of sickness
and suffering. And so we see in the opening
prayer, he machine guns God, if you will, hear me, listen
to me, I’m crying. He’s recognizing life is short,
it’s full of sickness and suffering. And then verse 12, you might
say is a turning point. It’s what we might call a but
God passage. Verse 12 says, but you, O Lord,
are enthroned forever. You are remembered throughout
all generations. We know in Ephesians, it talks
about our being lost. It talks about our being without
hope in this world. It talks about us being under
God’s wrath and curse. We’re doomed for an everlasting
life without God in this world. but God who is rich in his mercy,
but God who has loved us before the foundation of the world,
but God who has forgiven us through the work of his own son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. This is a but God passage. But for God, we would be stuck
in our sickness, stuck in our loneliness, stuck in our taunting
by enemies, stuck in our inexplicable suffering. Our prayers would
not reach past the ceiling, but God. This is a turning point
for the psalm, and this can be a turning point for us when we
think everything about our lives is falling apart, when our sin,
our sickness, our suffering, our hardship is all we see, unless
we get to this point, but God, we will wallow in our misery
and live a hopeless life. Our problems seem eternal, they
seem endless until we look at Almighty God who says to us,
be still and know. Who says to us, though the mountains
fall into the sea, I will be with you, I will be your God. Now, this takes time. for God
to reveal to us. We don’t just open up our Bibles
every morning and say, I think I’m gonna read a passage today
and say a short little prayer and all is going to be hunky-dory.
It’s usually not the way it works. It’s usually over time, it’s
through suffering, it’s through experiences, God’s Word, God’s
Holy Spirit, and our struggling and wrestling with God lead us
to the point where the psalmist is. But God, but eternity, be
still and know. Sometimes we think we are stuck
sick, we are stuck dying, we are stuck aging until we realize
God is strong and we are weak. We don’t know a lot of times
why we go through our sickness and our suffering. We don’t know
a lot of times why we go through these hardships. But it’s so
our eyes will be open to who God is and to what he’s done. but God is a perspective change. Then there’s a fourth section
in this passage, prayers for other and bigger things, verses
13 to 20. We’ve had the opening prayer,
verses one and two. We’ve had the life is short and
full of sickness and suffering in three through 11, the turning
point, but God. And now in 13 to 22, we have
prayers for other and bigger things. Things. We’ll go back
for just a second to the organ recital. Again, not the Diane
Bish type or the pipe dreams on NPR. Nope, but the big toes
and little toes and hearts and eyes and ears and necks and fingers
and Aunt Susie’s uncle’s friend. Those are things we should pray
for, right? In fact, in the Lord’s Prayer,
give us this day our daily bread, includes God providing for our
physical needs. But what else is in the Lord’s
Prayer that is surrounding give us this day our daily bread?
Well, how about hallowed be thy name? How about thy kingdom come? How about thy will be done? How
about for thine is the kingdom, thine is the power, thine is
the glory. And we have here the psalmist
praying for other and bigger things than just his big toe
or whatever it may be. He has a kingdom perspective.
Yes, he wants to be made well. Yes, he wants his enemies to
quit taunting him. Yes, he wants his prayers and
his cries heard by Almighty God. But his eyes are not on me. His eyes are not on his own navel. He’s not a navel-gazing prayer
maker. Yes, he wants his own personal
needs taken care of, but he has his eyes on the wider perspective. And in verses 13 to 22, we catch
four or five things that he prays for. Notice in verse 13 and 14
what he prays for. He prays for the state of the
religion, the state of Christianity, the state of Zion. In verse 13
he says, Maybe this is in the era where After the Babylonians came and
destroyed the temple, they came and laid waste to Jerusalem,
and hence the stones and the dust that people held dear. But
it’s time for them to come back and rebuild. And so, yes, while
he’s sick, yes, while he’s suffering, yes, while he’s enduring hardship,
what is he prayed for? He prays that Zion will prosper,
that the state of the Christian religion, that the people of
God will prosper. How often do we think of that?
when we’re praying for our big toes? Well, maybe not so often,
but the psalmist here sets an example for us. Then he prays
a second thing that’s not about his big toe, if you will. Look
at verse 15 and then 20 and 21. Nations will fear the name of
the Lord. All the kings of the earth will
fear your glory. That’s 15, then skip down to
20 and 21. Oh, 21 and 22, sorry. He prays
while his big toe hurts or whatever it is, he prays that the Gentiles
will come to faith in God. Who does that? while their big toe aches or
whatever organ recital they’re in the midst of. This is a different
way to pray, isn’t it? This is a kingdom-minded way
to pray. Yes, we want our needs met, but
we want bigger and better things prayed for as well. Then the
third thing he prays for in verses 18 and 19 is that the legacy
of the godly will continue, let this be recorded for a generation
to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the
Lord, that he looked down from his holy height from heaven,
the Lord looked at the earth. Sometimes we think life is all
about ourselves and our generation. But when we look back, we realize
how much others did for us. We look back and say, if it weren’t
for these who came before me, we wouldn’t have our nation and
our freedoms. Or if it weren’t for my parents
working hard and putting me through school or leaving me a little
inheritance, I wouldn’t be on my feet today. Or we say, if
it weren’t for our forefathers doing this or that, we wouldn’t
be where we are. But what about the generations
past us? What are we going to pass along? What will the heritage
we pass forward be? Sometimes we speak in government
terms of we’re leaving our grandchildren the national debt. Sometimes
we think maybe we make a gift or a donation to a school that
we’re leaving a legacy of education or maybe with church we want
to leave the church in good hands for the future. That’s the way
the psalmist is praying. Yes, he aches. Yes, he hurts. Yes, he’s lonely. Yes, he’s under
intense suffering and hardship. but he prays for the legacy,
for the future. And then finally, he prays for
those imprisoned. Look at verse 20. And after that,
he says, God looks down to hear the groans of the prisoners.
He sets free those who are doomed to die, that they may declare
in Zion the name of God. of the Lord when peoples gather
together. He wants the Gentiles to come
in. He wants his religion to prosper
while he’s sick. He wants the legacy of the godly
to continue. He wants those imprisoned for
their faith. Now, this isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free
card. Everybody who’s in jail gets
out. That’s not what it is. Sometimes that’s what we think
about, but these are people imprisoned or captured under Satan’s wiles
for, simply put, them being children of Almighty God. We pray short-sighted
prayers, don’t we? There’s nothing wrong with praying
for a big toe. My big toe hurts or whatever other organ. I’m
going to pray for it. I’m going to ask you guys to pray for it.
But what the psalmist is encouraging us here is don’t only pray short-sighted
prayers. because you’re short-sighted
people. Be kingdom-minded. Be kingdom-minded. This morning in Sunday school,
we asked the test question, and I realized the person who answered
wrong was not in the room, so he gets his get-out-of-jail-free
card, but there was a prayer request for someone’s son to
be saved. And then there was a prayer for
someone with cancer. And so I made the point after we watched our
video, which prayer was most important. And the person not
in the room said the cancer prayer was, because that’s all he heard.
And he would have been right if that had been all that was
said. But since he missed the salvation prayer, everybody else
got it right. It’s better to be a Christian
with cancer than to be a non-Christian cancer-free, wouldn’t you say?
Any day. Now I wouldn’t want to be either. I’d rather be a Christian who
is cancer-free, but given the other choice. And so sometimes
we need to make our prayers less short-sighted. Our Father in
heaven, hallowed be thy name. And then maybe we get on down
the line to our big toes. and our cousin’s uncle’s friend
who had an aunt that we once knew that has something wrong,
but we’re not quite sure what it is. We want to pray big, wide
prayers, and yes, include aching parts of the body, but we want
to be wide in our prayers and pray for other bigger things. And then finally, finally, the
last little section in verses 23 through 28 is what we might
Catch from the title of tonight’s message, My Problems in Light
of Eternal Realities, verses 23 and all the way to the end. The psalmist speaks here. God
has broken my strength in mid-course. He’s shortened my days. Oh my
God, I say, take me not away in the midst of my days. You
whose years endure through all generations of old. You laid
the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the work of your
hands. They will perish, but you will remain. They will all
wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe
and they will pass away. But you are the same. Your years
have no end. The children of your servants
shall dwell secure. Their offspring shall be established
before you. My problems in light of eternity. This week, I thought of my own
problems as I made my way through life. But I turned on the television
and I saw the plight of the Kurds under Turkish attacks. I saw
a young fellow this week who needed something that I recently
obtained very easily. He needed it more than I do.
You see others in their darkness. You see others in their struggles. And sometimes we need a perspective
change. And we think that we’re falling
apart. We think our sin, our sickness, our troubles are all
there is. But then we look at God who does
not change. We look at creation. We look
at, we look at people, even our own lives that fade away. And
we recognize God never changes. God never fades away. And we remember that the ultimate
goal of mankind, the ultimate goal of God’s church, God’s invisible
church as we confessed from our catechism earlier this evening,
is to have a people in Christ dwell secure with him forever.
That’s our ultimate goal, isn’t it? Surely we don’t want our
big toe to ache. For sure we want Aunt Susie’s
so-and-so and so-and-so to get better. For sure we want peace
in the Middle East, or peace in Turkey, or peace in Syria. For sure we want all that, but
what do we mostly want and need? to dwell securely with God forever
in Christ. And our problems in light of
eternity begin to fade away and they seem very temporary. But
that’s only if we trust in Jesus who causes us to dwell secure
in him. Let’s pause and pray together.
Lord, we thank you and bless you for your love and kindness
to us, to teach us in the midst of our looking in on our own
lives and being so introspective about what we have and what we
don’t have that we miss eternity. We miss the blessing of your
church. We miss the legacy of passing on our faith to others.
Help us to see our troubles in light of eternity and to trust
the God who never changes. the God who did not spare his
only son but gave him up for us and how then shall he also
give us all things that we need. Hear us as we pray and trust
you in Jesus name. Amen.