Finding Hope Through Psalm 30: Embracing Joy After Weeping

Join Don as he delves into the 30th chapter of Psalms to explore the themes of weeping and joy. Through a heartfelt sermon, Don reflects on personal struggles, moments of despair, and the unwavering hope found in God's promise that 'joy comes in the morning.' This session is a touching reminder of God's presence in our darkest days and the transformation that faith can bring.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
01:18 Reflecting on Life's Contrasts
02:14 Exploring Psalm 30
03:44 David's Honest Reflections
04:15 Reading Psalm 30
05:56 The Depth of Weeping
08:38 Endurance Through the Night
12:28 The Woman with the Issue of Blood
17:56 Joy Comes in the Morning
20:14 Jesus as Our Hope
25:12 God's Response to Our Prayers
33:31 Conclusion and Call to Faith

Transcript

Well, good evening. Good to see everybody tonight. You have a Bible this evening. We're going to the 30th, Psalm 30th division of the Psalms is where we will spend virtually all of our time tonight, Psalm chapter 30. And so I'm gonna ask you to open your Bibles there, if you will, and be ready to read along with us in just a moment or two.

And while you're doing that, we're certainly joining The welcome you received already. So happy that you're with us tonight if you're visiting with this church family. As I am this week, we are especially glad that you are here and we hope that you'll have occasion to come and be with this good church again.

We hope you can do that soon and do that often. You encourage us by your presence. I appreciate that. I mentioned last night, I love coming back to this area. I've been. Coming to this part of East Texas for a long, long time. And so I've met so many brethren from so many places and many of you're here visiting tonight, and I want to tell you how good it is to see you and how much you encourage us by, by being here.

Hope you had a good day today. As I said last night, I know that you live very busy lives and I know that, and I appreciate you carving out the time to be with us tonight. And I hope and pray that when our hour is spent, that you'll not regret having made the decision too. Be with us this evening

when I was a boy in, in pre cable television days, trying to find sports to watch on television was, was just almost impossible. And so every Saturday, I anxiously awaited ABC's wide world of sports, and it began every week with the words that scanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports.

And then it had the two word phrase. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, and it had the visuals to go along with that victory and defeat. Success and failure, joy and sorrow. Such is the stuff of life. Solomon was right ladies and gentlemen, when he said there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

As much as on occasion we might try to turn back the hands of time and. Or on other occasions, try to entertain ourselves out of reality. The fact is that weeping and mourning are always on the sideline, waiting to check into the game of life, which takes us this night to the book of Psalm chapter 30, and a simple phrase in verse number five, that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy. Comes in the morning in the context of Psalms 30. David David, of course, was not always able to alter his circumstances, but he makes it very clear in the Psalms that he was able to alter his perspective and his actions. We don't know very much about this Psalm.

Psalm 30, the heading speaks to the fact that it was at the dedication of David's house, but honestly, we don't know which house that was for David. And we really don't know the events that in David's life that inspired the Psalm. We do know from reading the Psalm that God evidently was not pleased with David at this point in his life.

The song speaks of God's anger and David being rescued from death. But it's a beautiful song. It's a song of both Thanksgiving and the reality of living in a fallen world. And so in the 30th Psalm, David pours out his soul in Thanksgiving to God. He says in verse one, I will exalt you, oh Lord. And in verse four, sing praise to the Lord.

Give thanks to his holy name. My soul sings praises to you. And in verse 12, I will give thanks to you forever. But when you read the Psalm, David is very honest about the contrast of life, about the difficulties of life and how they are conjoined with the times where you are on a mountaintop as well. In this one very simple and brief psalm, he will talk about being lifted up and falling down.

He talks about sickness and death, about the grave, and yet life and God's anger in God's favor. He talks about weeping and rejoicing. Night and morning. He talks about mourning and evening. He talks about moments and lifetime. Sec and glad you have your Bible. Let's read a little bit in Psalm 30. We'll not read the entire Psalm, but we'll read a good bit of it together.

Psalm 30 beginning in verse one. David says, I will extol you. I will praise you, oh Lord, for you have lifted me up. You have not let my foes rejoice over me. Oh Lord, my God. I cried out to you and you healed me. Oh Lord. You brought my soul up from the grave. You have kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit.

Sing praise to the Lord you saints of his, and give thanks into the remembrance of his holy name. For his anger is, but for a moment, his favor is for life. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Verse eight. I cried out to you. Oh Lord. And to the Lord I made supplication. Verse 10, hear me, oh Lord.

And have mercy on me, Lord, be my helper. Verse 11, you have turned for me my morning into dancing, and you have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness. To the end that my glory may sing praise to you and not be silent. Oh Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever. This is, again, an amazing Psalm at once, brutally honest and yet faith filled.

And so tonight, I want to take just a few minutes, if I may, and simply, simply talk about this very simple phrase from verse five, that weeping may endure for a night. Enjoy. Joy comes in the morning. I truly believe, I do believe that there will be something in this very, very simple lesson for everybody in this room tonight.

This simple verse has three or four very critical elements. It begins with the idea of weeping. Weeping may endure for at night. When the psalmist uses the word weeping, he tells us that we're dealing with a significant matter. Here we are talking about something that has moved into the depths of his soul.

This is not merely a nuisance or a distraction or minuscule matter, but this is something of significance that has caused him now, not just to cry, but to, to literally weep. David was honest about this in the Psalms. He said, I'm worn out from my groaning all night long. I fled my bed with weeping and drenched my couch with tears.

In Psalm 42. He would say, my tears have been my food day and night. While people say to me all day long, where is your God? And so David said, I'm so distressed and I have weak, I have wet, and I am so consumed with this that the enemies of God look at me and they say, where is your God? If there truly is a God in heaven and he is the Hebrew God and he is your God, then why would he allow you to be in this circumstance?

Where is, why doesn't he extricate you from this and make you rise above this? Where is your God? It's interesting to me that the Holy Spirit was brutally honest about the human condition, about the hurt of the human condition. And so at the Tomb of Lazareth, the Holy Spirit says that Jesus, we, he grieved at the tomb, at the loss of his friend on the road to the cross.

It was said. And there were women who were following Jesus and they were crying and Jesus turned around to them and he said, daughters of Jerusalem, do not wait for me, but wait for yourselves, for if these things are done in a green tree. That is when God is offering, when God is offering you life through the manifestation of Messiah, what will be done in the drive when God withdraws his favor?

And so we, we for yourself, when David's men were at war and while they were at war, the enemies had come and stolen their, their families. One Samuel 30 in beginning of verse four, when they came back and they recognized what had occurred, the text says that David and his men wet aloud until they had no strength left to weak.

We read the tears of David when his baby died in Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the Christians who buried Stephen. No wonder, no wonder one of the blessings of heaven, ladies and gentlemen, is that God says it is a place where he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. We look at all of that and say, well, that is an ancient world.

But I want to tell you, the tears of the modern world are just as real tears of pain and tears of sorrow, tears of loneliness and tears of regret and neglect, tears of being hurt by others, tears of mistakes and failures, tears of disappointment, tears of loss, and sin weeping, ladies and gentlemen, is a part of living in a fallen world, weeping and weeping.

Secondly, may endure. It may endure for a night. Weeping, sometimes endures. And it seems to me that Psalmist is implying that there is a weeping sometimes that we endure that is not, that is not quickly resolved. And I'll tell you, that's antithetical to the way we think is Americas, isn't it? I mean, think about what we see on television.

If you watch a, if you watch a sitcom on American television, you will always find that no matter what the issue is, no matter what the problem, no matter how complicated or convoluted the issue may be, whether we're talking about addiction or rebellion, whether we're talking marital infidelity to serious disease, it is all cured in 30 minutes or less.

But you and I know that real life is not like that. Sometimes the night can seem so long, and the darkness so desperate. It's easy sometimes to wonder if the night will ever end, weeping, endures, and sometimes in weeping, we wonder if in fact it's ever going to come to conclusion. Will I ever be happy again?

Am I ever going to be healthy again? Am I ever going to be employed again? Will I ever be at peace again? Will I ever be righteous before God again? Will the visits to the doctor, the trips to the hospital, will the treatments and the medicine ever in will my spiritually rebellious child ever come home to God?

It has been so many years and it has been so many thousands upon thousands of prayers to God, will this child ever come back? Maybe this is what God had in mind when he wrote in Isaiah 43 in verse two, and he said, when when you pass through the waters. I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you.

And when you walk through the fire, you should not be burned and the flames shall not concern you, consume you. I think there are two things about that verse that we probably don't like. The fir, of course, is the path. There are just some things that you have to go through. Sometimes you have to go through the water and through the river and through the fire.

We don't want to do that. We'd like to go around it. We'd like to go over it. We would like for God to extricate us out of that so that we don't have to endure it. And the second thing we don't like in the verse is the pace. Sometimes ladies and gentlemen, you have to walk through fire. Nobody wants to walk through fire.

We will run through fire. We want to zip through fire. We wanna fly through fire. Nobody wants to walk through fire, but sometimes you have to do that because weeping sometimes. We would like for everything to be easily and quickly resolved and taken away. And yet that's not the reality of life. Weeping endures for a night, for a night, and we use that vernacular, don't we?

We will. We will talk about, we will talk about difficulty sometimes, and we will say, you know what? If we can just make it, if we can just make it through this night, or sometimes we will talk about the dark. Night of the soul. And what we mean by that is a period of darkness and pain and difficulty that shakes us to the very core of who we are.

It is a pain and a difficulty and a circumstance that we cannot escape the pain or difficulty That job confessed when he said, when shall I arise? But the night is long and I, I am full of, of tossing until the dawn. In other words, job is saying, look how long the night, when shall I arise? When is this going to be over and done?

How long this night? And we have all said that if you have many miles on the odometer of your life, I will guarantee you, you have been in a circumstance where at some point in time you have said how long this night? How long this night of sickness, how long this night of unemployment, how long this night of brokenness, how long the night of this wayward rebellious child, how long the night I think about the woman in Mark chapter five we're, we're not gonna turn and take the time to read all of that tonight.

So let me, let me just give you the thumbnail version and in Mark chapter five, there is a woman whom Mark describes simply as having an issue of blood. She had an issue with hemorrhaging that had, that had plagued her, that it plagued her for a dozen years, for 12 long years. And as I think about this woman in, in March, chapter five, you, you know, the end of the story that she, she finally makes your way to Jesus, touch of the hem of his garment and is healed.

But I want you to think about the fact that for 12 long years, this woman had to believe that she was in the dark night of a soul that would never end. She is hurting, I believe, in every single way that a human being can hurt. The text says that over the course of 12 years that she hurt physically. In fact, she had the text says she had suffered many things from physicians.

I think you and I probably can't even begin to imagine the indignities that this woman has suffered in the hands of, of physicians who saw her simply as an object to exploit. Yet the text says that though she had gone to physicians for a dozen years, she was no better, but rather grew the worse. In other words, she had in that day and time, an incurable disease.

Is this not the world in which we live? Ladies and gentlemen, we're on an almost regular basis. Someone we know, someone we love, receives a diagnosis that is bad and a prognosis that is even worse. And think about a preacher friend of mine in California. Stringer. He's a wonderful young man. His daughter worships with us at Simple Terrace, and last Friday he received a suspected diagnosis.

It was confirmed that he has a LS, he has Lou Gehrig syndrome. He will die. This is our world, and this woman was hurting financially. Mark says that she had spent all that she had. Well, why did she keep going to doctor, after doctor, after doctor and spending every penny that she had because she is desperate.

And I will tell you, desperate people will, will do desperate things to try to, to try to get outta the dark night of the soul, and she was hurting socially. Think about that. This woman had an issue of blood for a dozen years. She had been hemorrhaging, which meant that she could not touch another human being, lest she would make them unclean.

Her uncles was contagious. So if this woman had children, she could not touch her children. She couldn't touch her husband. She couldn't touch her mom and dad. She could not touch her grandparents nor her friends. For 12 long years during the pandemic, we had introduced to our vocabulary social distancing.

But I will tell you, this was social distancing to the its degree. The isolation of that for a dozen years must have been absolutely crushing. Think about that. Think about back during Covid when we, when we had older, older family members and Saints who in nursing facilities had to be completely isolated.

We had an our church family, some members, older members in nursing facilities who for literally months on end could not touch another human being. Isolating the isolation was crushing to them. I mean, that's what we do to prisoners who misbehave. We put them in solitary confinement. This woman had lived in solitary confinement for a dozen years.

She could not touch another human being, and she no doubt was hurting spiritually. According to Jewish law, she was unclean. And so that meant that this woman could not go to temple to worship. She could not go to synagogue to worship. Imagine this, ladies and gentlemen, she was deemed too unclean to worship God.

You talk about being antithetical to the way that we think. We say that when you are unclean, that's when you need to come and worship God. Whosoever will may come, but not this woman. She had to be hurting emotionally. I can't imagine the toll it would take to be hurting physically and financially and socially and spiritually for 12 long years.

But I will tell you I'm persuaded tonight that that is not simply an interesting story that the Holy Spirit decided to include in the text. Why did he do that? By the way? You know, you come to the end of the gospel of John and John says, I suppose that if we tried to write all the things that Jesus said or did, even the world would not be able to contain the books.

And so that means that the Holy Spirit of God had to winnow, he had to sift, he had to decide what he was going to include. Why did the Holy Spirit of God record that story? So that 2000 years later on a night in left in Texas, we could talk about that story. Why did he do that? I am persuaded because there are probably individuals in this room tonight who've looked at that and said, you know what?

That's me. It may not be all of those, but I can see myself there. I'm hurting just like that. Weeping may endure for a night, but then the Psalmist changes course and he says, but Joy comes in the morning. Joy is an interesting English translation. It is not the best translation of the word. It more literally is rejoicing comes in the morning, shouting comes in the morning, praising comes in the morning, and so the psalmist to had good reason many times in his life to say, weeping, endures for at night.

In this occasion, he says, but rejoicing and shouting and praising come in the morning. Let me ask you, what changed, what changed for the psalms? What changed? What happened in that no man's land between night and morning that made the difference in this particular psalm? I, I, I don't think that it was because the psalmist just began to flip through his Hebrew hymnal that he had written and found a happy song instead of, I sing this happy song, it's all going to be, it's all gonna be okay.

I don't think it was that. I don't believe the psalmist said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna pull myself up by my, but straps and I, I'm just gonna make this self my work on my own. I don't think that it was that he found some entertainment escapism. Now I know exactly what it was. He tells us the psalm has turned his face toward God.

Lord, my God, I called to you for help and you healed me to you. Oh Lord. I call and to the Lord. I plead for mercy here, Lord, to be merciful to me, Lord, be my help. Assuming to me that that was a choice. It made all the difference in the world. He invited the Lord into the situation and God responded. God responded to his request just as he does to us.

And so the psalmist would say, you did not let my enemies rejoice over me. You healed me. You brought me up from death. You turn my morning into dancing. I would say to you, ladies and gentlemen, as New Testament Christians, when we, when we live on a few thousand years, on the other side of the psalmist, we can say the same things about Jesus Christ.

I want you to listen carefully for just a moment, if you will. I'll guarantee you in this room tonight that like, like the woman in Mark chapter five, there are individuals who are suffering physically or spiritually or financially or socially or emotionally. I would say to you tonight that for every hurt, for us, for every hurt, Jesus is our hope, and I know, I know.

I know that when I say that, there's always going to be a segment of the audience and their eyes are going to roll back in their head and say, you know what, Don, that's the problem. That's the problem with church. That's the problem with the religion. That's the problem with preachers. You want to give simplistic answers to complex issues.

Just pray a little more. Go to church a little more, read your Bible a little more, sing a little more, and everything will just be fine. Now, I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I say that, that for every herb, Jesus is our hope because of six words that are found in Colossians one. Six words that are found in Colossians one and verse 17.

When the Bible says, in Jesus, all things hold together. That's why in Christ, all things hold together. In Christ. All things hold together. Through Jesus, everything holds together. If Jesus were to take a day off, if Jesus disgus that one day, he was going to just lose interest in humanity that one day, he's not going to love us with a shepherd's love.

This world would disintegrate in an instant. And what does that mean? It means, ladies and gentlemen, that our hope is in Jesus Christ. We forget that sometimes our hope, ladies and gentlemen is not, is not in the mayors of our city or the governors of our state, or the president of our nation. Our hope is in the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

His kingdom, ladies and gentlemen, is not in trouble and it is amazing. It is amazing that just like in March chapter five with this woman, that when she touched him, Jesus stopped and he says, who touched me? And the disciples say, master the people that thronging you. Everybody is touching you. But I want you to notice that Jesus said, no, no, no.

Somebody touched me. Well, he knew. He knew who touched her in the book of John, in his said, or Luke, chapter two rather had said about Jesus that he didn't need for anyone to testify. Amen. Because he knew what was in man. So he knew who touched her, but I want you to notice that in the massive humanity, Jesus stopped for her.

And in the massive humanity, he stops for you. When I talk to the young people Sunday night, I, I said, you know, it's an amazing thing that I am only one. You are only one of 8 billion people on this planet. You are only one of 380 million people in this nation, and yet Jesus Christ stops for you. He stops for you.

Think about it this way. When you pray today, when you pray tonight, when you pray this week, you are praying to the God of whom it has said that God so loved the world. That is all of his human creation. You are praying to the God who gave his son Jesus for the world. And Jesus and God I believe are ministering to our world probably in millions of ways in which we are totally unaware.

But when you pray today, he is concerned about you personally and individually about you. He is meeting with you. He stops for you. He loves you, he ministers to you. Now, your needs may not be as urgent or life shattering or life threatening as somebody else, and yet he cares about you. No wonder Peter would say, look, cast all of your cares upon him because he cares about you.

And so whatever you're struggling with tonight. Whatever you're struggling with tonight, whatever is dragging you down, whatever it is that robs your peace and destroys your sleep, you have Jesus attention. He is not distant. He is, the Bible says with you, he cares about the elite, but he also cares about the outcast.

He cares about the rich, but he cares about the poor. He cares about the respect, but he also cares about the rejected. And the point of it is that the love of Jesus is totally indiscriminate and ours must be as well.

No wonder, no wonder the psalmist would say weeping may endure for a night, but joy, joy comes in the morning. In the morning. We need to be very honest tonight, ladies and gentlemen, that the morning will bring about one of three circumstances. When your asleep is wrong, LA robbed, and you are saying to yourself how long the night, the morning will bring one of three circumstances.

It may well be that God will rescue. God will rescue. Sometimes he heals, sometimes he restores. Sometimes he gives life. Sometimes his answer is yes. I mean, again, thinking about the woman in, in Mark chapter five, she is hurting physically and financially and socially and spiritually, but everything changed when she touched Jesus.

And so for the first time in 12 long years. She is physically healed, she is socially acceptable. She is spiritually available. She is financially rescued from those who exploit her. Sometimes we pray and we pray hard, and God says yes because after all, according to the Old Testament, we pray to the God whose name is Yahweh Rafa.

That is, he is the God who heals. We all, again, if you, if you live very long, you have, you've seen the answer to prayers where, where God has brought healing, where, where it seemed that no healing would ever come, and sometimes it is the most beautiful thing that you can witness.

I had occasion last year with one of the members in our church family who was diagnosed with cancer and when they were diagnosed with cancer, they, they're very private. So they told me and they told the shepherds of our church so that they would pray for them, and they told just a very close cadre of friends and no one else.

And they asked everyone, they told to not share it with another soul. And we all prayed for this person. We prayed hard and I had the, the amazing privilege. I was invited by this person. To go with them on the day that they would ring the bell indicating that their treatment was over and they had been pronounced cancer free.

And I stood and I watched this, I saw all these people who had been, who had been a part of their care for these months, and they all came and they were smiling and happy and they were hugging and they surrounded this individual. And they were shouting with, with joy, and I saw this individual step up to the bell and just ring it for all that they were worth and the, and the joy that just radiated from them.

And I thought, this is a yes, this is God's yes. Sometimes God rescues, sometimes God teaches. Sometimes prayers are not answered either in the timing that we would want or in the way that we would want. Sometimes the disease does not go away. Sometimes the prodigal doesn't come home. Sometimes the marriage doesn't get any better.

Sometimes the job, the workplace doesn't improve, and sometimes we're simply less with a question. What is God trying to teach me? What would God want me to learn here? Now, I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, on those occasions, the question really is do we mean what we pray? When we pray to God and we stay with his son, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done in all things.

Do we mean that

and sometimes. God calls us home.

Sometimes God calls us home. The question really is then, are we okay with that? Are we okay with that? Do we believe what we sing? That, that this world is not my home? I'm, I'm just passing through. Do we. Do we believe we can honestly say what the apul of Paul, I, I have a desire to depart and be with Christ because that would be very much far better.

It's not that we have a death wish. It, it is not that, it's not that we don't pray for healing. It's not that, it's not that we don't pray for many tomorrows. It's, it's not that we don't pray that God will give us a Hezekiah moment and give us more years to live in this world. But, but the question is, if the answer to that is no, can we accept God's will in that?

I would say to you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, that that whether God rescues or God teaches or God calls, that perspective is everything. Listen carefully, please. When I was preparing this lesson for home a few weeks ago, it dawned on me that I need to remember that morning starts not when the sun comes up.

Morning starts at 12:01 AM and what that means is that it can be morning while it's still dark. And so the question really is, can we rejoice? Can we shout? Can we praise? Can we see the light when we are still surrounded by dark?

Jordan Shalls is a young preacher in Dallas, Texas. Jordan is the son of one of my best friends, Roger Shalls, who preaches in Indiana. Jordan is an amazing young preacher. In the spring of 2023, Jordan was told. That he had stage four liver cancer and colon cancer.

At the time that Jordan was told that there was a boy in the Campbell Road Church in Dallas where he preaches, who was also diagnosed with cancer. Now, for Jordan, when all the testing was ultimately done, he was told You don't have cancer at all. You simply have two tumors and he underwent surgery and they removed the masses and he is completely fine.

He's completely healthy.

But the little boy in his church that was diagnosed with cancer at the same time

while he went through treatment, God called him home.

In the surgeon's office where Jordan went in the surgeon's foyer, he has two statues. I know that you can't see this very well, but this statue is of Michael the Archangel, and he is crushing the head of Satan.

Right next to that statue is a second statue, which is of Michael the Archangel, carrying a soul home to God.

And the surgeon told Jordan that that's his way of saying to his patients that he is not God. Sometimes God says yes. Sometimes a soul goes home for summit will be one statue for summit will be the other for summit. It will be another day, another week, another month, another year. Maybe another decade to serve God for Summit will be time to depart and to be with Christ.

But ladies and gentlemen, please don't miss this tonight for all of us, everyone in this room. At some point, it will be the angel carrying our soul home to God. Weeping may endure for a night. Brokenness may endure for a night. Disappointment may endure for a night loss, may endure for a night. Pain may endure for a night.

Fear may endure for a night. Listen to the language. It may. It's possible. It's plausible. Maybe even it is probable. But the psalmist said, joy comes in the morning, deliverance comes in the morning, renewal comes in the morning, hope comes in the morning, and it is not merely possible. It is certain.

Sometimes God calms the storm sometimes. God calms his child. In either case, whether his will is healing or his will is bringing you home. Again, as Peter said, you can cast all of your cares upon him because he cares for you. No wonder we sing, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

I. Dare not trust the sweetest frame. But holy Lee, on Jesus' name, on Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is sinking sin. Someday you and I will exit this world. We must make sure that our life is built on something that will last Jesus blood and righteousness. If you've never been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ in the water of baptism, you can do that tonight.

We hope you'll let us help you. Let's stand and let's sing.