The Anger Of Grief

Transcript

Well, I want to bring you greetings from Hinson Baptist Church. You’ve probably..I think you’ve heard that the last two weeks from Todd. I’m sure he hasn’t failed to tell you how much our church loves your church, how much we have been praying for you and continue to pray for you. We just had a members meeting this morning, and they would have spent some time praying for you, your congregation specifically at that meeting. And we will continue to pray for you. I must say, I wish I were here under happier circumstances. Nevertheless, it is a joy, even if it is a sad joy, to gather with you this morning, to hear from God’s Word, and to worship our Savior. A couple of months ago, I preached a series at Hinson through the Book of Lamentations. People wondered, why are you doing Lamentations? It’s such a downer of a book.

It’s true. I’m not sure why the Holy Spirit led me to it. It did mean though, amongst other reasons, that I was prepared for today and for you. In 1969, the Swiss psychiatrist, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, introduced to the world this idea of the five stages of grief. Now, her concept, that idea of five stages and you move linearly through them, that progression has largely been proven false. But one good thing that her theory did is it identified and legitimized aspects of grief that are often ignored or misunderstood. And one of those aspects, one of those stages is anger. According to Kubler-Ross, anger in the midst of grief might be directed towards others, it might be directed towards the cause of the loss that you’ve experienced, it might even be directed at yourself, but often, it is directed at God. And that anger says to God, it’s not fair.

It’s not right. It’s just wrong that this happened. Anger doesn’t come first with grief. There’s often denial, shock, but it almost always comes. I experienced this a couple of months ago in the midst of preaching this series through Limitations at Hinson as I had to travel back east to bury my nephew, my sister’s oldest son. He was 27 years old. Yet another casualty of the Iraq War. And there were a bunch of his buddies there at the funeral and widows of buddies that hadn’t made it and they were angry. But grief and the anger of grief does not just come in the loss of death. I dare say that many of you are experiencing anger even now. You are angry at what happened. And I understand because I am too. David Pallison has described anger at its core as the expression, I’m against that. It’s opposition to something that you’ve assessed as both important,

so it’s worth feeling something about, and wrong, and so it’s worth condemning. This is why I think we cannot describe the shape of grief without anger. When something important is lost that shouldn’t have been lost, a job, a marriage, a ministry, trust. Oh, and that happens, we instinctively respond, that is not the way it’s supposed to be. This is not the way the story was supposed to turn out. And yet I want to ask in the midst of what you may be feeling, this is not supposed to happen, this is not the way it’s supposed to be, where does that sense of what’s supposed to be come from? Why is that sense of injustice so strong in you? Well, according to the Bible, it comes from God. We’re made in His image. We feel that things are wrong because He has declared things to be wrong.

The Lord’s Anger

And we reflect that, however imperfectly. Of course, what that means, in any situation that arises our anger, we might not be the only one who’s angry. What’s even more unsettling is that we might actually be the object of God’s anger. So in a fallen world that is filled with suffering and grief and wrong, what do we do with our anger? And what do we do with God’s? So I want to invite you to turn with me to Lamentations Chapter 2. Lamentations Chapter 2. As you’re turning there, let me just explain a little bit about it. Lamentations Chapter 2 is the second of five chapters in the book of Lamentations. Traditionally, it’s accorded to Jeremiah as the author, but we don’t know that for sure. I’m just going to refer to the author as the poet because Lamentations consists of five distinct poems. The first four, including the one we’re going to be looking at,

the first four are acrostic poems. So every chapter just has 22 verses, there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. So this is acrostic poem. It is a way, I think, of giving some structure to some very chaotic emotions, some very powerful emotions that get expressed in this book. How do you read and how do you study and think through poetry? Well, it’s not the same as working through narrative. It’s not the same as working through one of Paul’s epistles. We’re going to be paying attention to different things. One of the important things to notice is the voice of the speaker. In each of these poems, the voice changes and that alerts you to the fact that something new is happening. Here in this second chapter, it begins as the first chapter begins with a third-person observer to the tragedy of the fall of Jerusalem.

It ends with the voice of the city of Jerusalem herself personified as Lady Zion crying out. In between though, something happens in Chapter 2 that didn’t happen in Chapter 1 and that is the first-person voice of the poet himself speaks out. God’s Word is given to us to instruct us, to teach us. And so we should read this in order to understand, but this is given to us in the form of poetry. And poetry does something that epistles do not. Poetry is intended to make us feel and understand. I think this is why God has given us this book. So as we consider the anger of grief this morning, I want us to just consider each of the voices, the three voices of this chapter in turn. And it begins with the Lord’s anger. Look at verse 1, how the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with the cloud

of his anger. He has hurled down the splendor of Israel from heaven to earth. He has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. Without pity, the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In his wrath, he has torn down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He has brought her kingdom and its princes down to the ground in dishonor. In fierce anger, he has cut off every horn of Israel. He has withdrawn his right hand at the approach of the enemy. He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that consumes everything around it. Like an enemy, he has strung his bow. His right hand is ready. Like a foe, he has slain all who were pleasing to the eye. He has poured out his wrath like fire on the tent of the daughter of Zion. The Lord is like an enemy.

He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the daughter of Judah. He has laid waste his dwelling like a garden. He has destroyed his place of meeting. The Lord has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and her Sabbaths. In his fierce anger, he has spurned both king and priest. The Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his sanctuary. He has handed over to the enemy the walls of her palaces. They have raised a shout in the house of the Lord as on the day of an appointed feast. The Lord determined to tear down the wall around the daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line. It did not withhold his hand from destroying. He made ramparts and walls lament. Together, they wasted away. Her gates have sunk into the ground.

Their bars he has broken and destroyed. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations. The law is no more and her prophets no longer find visions from the Lord. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have sprinkled dust on their heads and then put them on a sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. We’ll stop there. But given from the perspective of an outside observer, the opening section of the poem is all about the Lord. He is the subject of the first eight verses of this section, and the description of his anger towards his people is unrelenting, like waves pounding against a seashore. Twenty-eight different verbs are used in this section to describe the destruction that the Lord has rained down. It begins at the cosmic level in verse 1.

Twice we’re told there in the opening verse that the Lord’s anger is against Israel. He’s hurled down the splendor of Israel from heaven to earth. The language of those opening verses is reminiscent of Isaiah describing the fall of the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14, and that’s not accidental because it means that before judgment ever arrived in Palestine in history, it had already been rendered in heaven. And then as the verses proceed, the march of God’s wrath follows the path of an invading army into Palestine. First, the villages, the outlying towns, the military garrisons are destroyed in verses 2 and 3. Then as they approach the city of Zion, the archers from a distance take aim. They are taking aim at Jerusalem. Zion, the place where God has put his name. Then in verse 5, the palaces, the fortresses all around the city begin to fall.

And then verses 6 and 7, we’re at the very center, the temple itself, the altar, the king’s palace. And we’re left standing on Mount Zion, on the temple mount. And the observer turns and he surveys the scene. What does he see? The walls of the city and its ramparts are destroyed. They are sinking down. The gates are broken. Verses 8 and 9. And then he looks a little closer and he sees verse 9, the exiles, the leaders being taken off captive to a fate maybe worse than death. And as he surveys the rubble, all that’s left there at the end in verse 10 are the old men and the young women on the ground in silence. Now, while the Babylonian army is finally mentioned in verse 7 for the first time, the real enemy, the named enemy is the Lord. Did you notice that? Twice, in verses 4 and 5, the Lord is described as an enemy,

which means what we just read about, this invasion, this march of God’s wrath, this was no rash act. This was planned. Like an enemy plotting an invasion and then carrying it out, so God planned this destruction and then methodically executed it. Six times in these first 10 verses, we’re told of the Lord’s anger or of his wrath, which is cut off, burned, consumed, slain, poured out, laid waste, rejected, abandoned, handed over, torn down, and broken, the daughter of Zion. And for instance, that language, daughter of Zion, that is what makes this event so cruelly hard to bear. For in the Old Testament, the language of Zion was the language of election. It was the language of love. God had chosen Israel. God had chosen Jerusalem. He had placed his temple and his name there. And throughout the Old Testament, and particularly in the Psalms, there’s so much language that celebrates that fact, that rejoices in the fact that

because God has chosen us, we are safe, we are secure, his love is on us. I think of Psalm 48, verses 1 to 3, great is the Lord and most worthy of praise in the city of our God, his holy mountain. It is beautiful in its loftiness. The joy of the whole earth. God is in her citadel. He has shown himself to be her fortress. God was their fortress. But now, her splendor is thrown down, her walls destroyed, because God has become her enemy. The reason for God’s anger at his own people is not given in these verses that I’ve just read. It’s found actually in the next section. So, skip ahead to verse 17. The Lord has done what he planned. He has fulfilled his word which he decreed long ago. He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you.

He has exalted the horn of your foes. God has done what he planned. What did he plan? Well, this is a reference to Deuteronomy 28, which you might take time to read later this afternoon after this service. Ahead of time, God had planned, God had decided what the judgment would be and how it would fall on Israel should they break the covenant that the Lord had made with them. That is why God is angry because, friends, Israel was not the way they were supposed to be. Israel had been rescued from slavery in Egypt, created as a new nation, given every advantage in order to be in a relationship of love and obedience and worship with God, but they wouldn’t have it. They would rather love and worship other gods, gods of their own making. Actually, it was worse than that. They didn’t just abandon God.

They were spiritual adulterers. They gave lip service to their relationship with God, their true husband, while they went out and worshiped other gods. And in this, the nation of Israel is a picture of all of us, the entire human race. None of us are the way we are supposed to be. All of us have turned away from God. All of us have given our lives to gods of our own making, maybe not idols that you would stick on a shelf like Israel did, maybe other kinds of idols like our family or our career, maybe idols of sex or money, maybe idols of popularity and the esteem of others or just my own convenience and ease. We make lots of idols and God is rightly angry for it because we are important. We are made in his image and we are in the wrong. What happened to Jerusalem in 587 BC at God’s own hand was like judgment day

being brought forward into time and so it stands as a warning for us. And friends, so do the events of the past few weeks here at Trinity. We like to think of God as merciful and that’s right. He is merciful. But friends, God’s patience has a limit. He describes himself as slow to anger and quick to show mercy. Absolutely true. But God will not be mocked, least of all, by his own people’s sin. Once his anger is aroused, once his pity comes to an end, friends, there are no second chances. There’s no tempering justice with mercy at that point. To have God as your enemy is worse than you can know, is worse than you can even imagine. Jonathan Edwards got it right when he said, it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Not only is there no defense physically, we’re no match for him,

there’s no case to be made morally. The elders sit in silence. Young women with their faces on the ground, on the last day, when our judgment day comes, every mouth will be shut. There will be no appeal. God’s judgment is final. And at the heart of the judgment that we see described in these 10 verses is loss of access, loss of fellowship with God. At the climax of this section, the temple is destroyed by God. The altar is rejected by God. The law, meaning not a bunch of rules you got to follow, but the description of the covenant relationship that they had with their Lord, it’s over, it’s no more. The covenant is broken. Visions from the Lord are no more. The worst exile that they experience here isn’t from the land. It’s not from health and prosperity. It’s not even from life itself. No, the worst exile that they experience is an exile from God.

The Poet’s Pain

The irony, of course, is that they had trusted in other nations to try to save them so that they wouldn’t lose their land, so they wouldn’t lose their temple, so they wouldn’t lose their place amongst the nations. And having trusted in something else, they lost all of that plus God. To lose God in his mercy and in his love is to be left only with God in his just and righteous wrath. God is angry because we are not the way we’re supposed to be. And we’ll never understand our own anger until we come to terms with his. But God is not the only one who’s angry in this poem. We need to look also at the poet’s pain, the poet’s pain. Look at verse 11. My eyes fail from weeping. I’m in torment within. My heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed,

because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, where is bread and wine as they faint like wounded men in the streets of the city, as their lives ebb away in their mother’s arms? What can I say for you? With what can I compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you? The visions of your prophets were false and worthless. They did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The oracles they gave you were false and misleading. All who pass your way clap their hands at you. They scoff and shake their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem. Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?

All your enemies open their mouths wide against you. They scoff and gnash their teeth and say, we have swallowed her up. This is the day we have waited for. We’ve lived to see it. The Lord has done what he planned. He has fulfilled his word, which he decreed long ago. He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you. He has exalted the horn of your foes. The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let your tears flow like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, your eyes no rest. Arise, cry out in the night as the watches of the night begin. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children who faint from hunger

at the head of every street. In verse 11, the voice switches to the first person, and it is the poet weeping over Jerusalem. He can no longer simply stand there as a third-party observer and dispassionately, as it were, report on what’s happening. No, he is overcome with torment over what he sees. But he’s not just heartbroken, he’s angry. Verse 11, my translation, the NIV reads, my heart is poured out on the ground. It’s literally my bile. My bile is poured out. There’s a bitterness in his response. You could almost sense the growing protest in verses 1 to 10, but now it just breaks out. He is sick to his stomach. He is angered at what he sees. And what does he see? He sees children dying in their mother’s arms. They cry out for food and drink, the vernacular of the day, bread and wine, but there is none.

He sees his people destroyed, and he is overcome. The destruction, he says, is too great to comprehend. The wound is as deep as the sea. It is too horrendous to endure. Should mothers have to see their own children lying dead in the streets? I think of the images that we’ve seen on our screens coming out of Syria or Lesbos. We get to turn our screens off, and the poet could not. His anger builds because he knows it need not have happened. Verse 14, the visions of your prophets were false and worthless. They did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The oracles they gave you were false and misleading. Had the prophets been faithful, perhaps, he knows, perhaps, the people would have heard their message, repented, and avoided captivity. But the prophets were not faithful. They offered worthless and misleading visions of peace when there was no peace.

And so the result is the nations are scoffing and mocking as they quote Psalm 48 back to the suffering people in verse 15, the psalm that I read earlier. And to make it even worse, in the midst of all of the wailing of his people, the poet hears laughter, laughter as their enemies gloat over Israel’s defeat. In verse 16, the poet takes it all in, horror upon horror upon horror, and with no words to comfort, he has none. All he can do is bear witness to the suffering. He doesn’t shut his eyes. He acknowledges the depth of it. I wonder if we’re willing to bear witness to the suffering of those around us. I can think of lots of ways our culture does this. Over my lifetime, the AIDS quilt, the Vietnam War memorial, civil rights marches, Black Lives Matter, hashtag Me Too. I know none of those things are perfect, but all of them in their own way are this

world trying to bear witness to the suffering of others. I recently read about the opening of a memorial, a new kind of national monument in Montgomery, Alabama, to the victims of all of the racial lynchings that have happened in America. Why is the world better at bearing witness to suffering and injustice than we are? Because I don’t think we conservative Christians tend to be that good at it. Could it be that we’re too quick, too quick to explain the suffering, too quick to justify it as temporal judgment, too quick to condemn the suffering for having brought it upon themselves? There’s a very real sense in which my presence here today is a statement of bearing witness to your suffering. I would much rather be with my own people this morning. I’m sure you’re wonderful, but I’d rather be with my own people. But it is important that fellow churches and pastors who share the same gospel

with you, who share the same theology with you, who share even to a great extent the same philosophy of ministry with you, do not shut our eyes but stand with you and bear witness to the reality of your suffering. And what I find so striking in this section, as the poet is giving expression to all of his anger, is that even though he is able to give this just sort of eloquent and heart-wrenching witness to their suffering and he’s angered by it, he is also simultaneously able to acknowledge the justice of it, right? The just judgment of God that it represents. We saw that there in verse 17. So it is horrible that it happened, and he bears witness to it. And it is just that it happened, and he gives full acknowledgment to that. You know, I think if there’s a typical failing of conservative Christianity,

it’s that we are quick to judge, slow to bear witness and understand. There’s a typical failing of liberal Christianity is that they are quick to bear witness, very slow to admit sin. Biblical Christianity demands both. It demands both. It demands that not only with respect to our deserted sin, it demands it with respect to yours. Are you as angry at your own sin as you are at Art’s? And if you’re not, have you understood the cross? Do you understand what it means that you are important, so important that your decisions to worship that which is not God is just as worthy of God’s anger as art’s decision is? What would need to change today, this week, about your understanding of your own life so that the anger that you rightly feel toward Art also finds an appropriate object in yourself? And if I could just speak briefly to fellow elders, pastors,

leaders here in this church, let us not be guilty of giving our people worthless and misleading visions by denying with our lives what we say with our mouths. Paul tells Timothy, 1 Timothy 4, 16, watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. We had two different meetings at Hinson this last week. Even as we grapple with what you’re grappling with, the ripples spread far. This is a place where we spend a lot of time with our female leaders, with our seminarians, our elders, our deacons. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. We need to understand there is no office of preacher in the New Testament. Someone who stands up and proclaims but does not pastor, who is not himself

pastored in a plurality of shepherds. Now, the office is pastor-teacher. Elders who are shepherds who live and walk with the flock under our care and are ourselves shepherded. Well, almost as soon as the poet has acknowledged Israel’s guilt, he’s once again overcome with emotion. There in verse 18, suffering, even deserved suffering is not an intellectual exercise. It’s a profound expression that things are not the way they’re supposed to be. And so beginning in verse 18, the poet turns to the personified city, the daughter of Zion, who sits there in just numbed silence. Remember, that’s kind of where we left them. In verse 10, the elders and the young women just sitting there in silence. Now, he imagines the whole city sitting there in numbed silence and he pleads with her, cry out. Cry out in the night. Cry out with your grief. Pour out your heart, he says to the Lord.

And if you will not cry for yourself, then cry for your children. Cry for your dying children. For what else can they do? What other hope does the city have? He had asked her, who can heal you? And the answer is, only the one who destroyed you. There’s their hope that the Lord will hear when the city cries out. Lamentations 2 doesn’t give us any hope. Lamentations 2 doesn’t give us the answer. Lamentations chapter 2 isn’t the end of the story. But there was another judgment that the Lord had planned, that the Lord executed, even more horrendous to behold. When God rescued Israel out of Egypt, he called Israel, my son. The day would come when God would send his son, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, to take on flesh and live the life that Israel should have, that we should have, but have not.

And though that son did not deserve God’s judgment like this son did, nevertheless, he took it anyway. He took it in our place. I find it striking that lamentations is not quoted even once in the New Testament. It’s barely even alluded to. But in Mark chapter 15, verses 29 to 32, as Jesus hung on the cross, bearing our judgment, what does Mark tell us happened? All those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads, mocking him. It’s the clearest allusion in the entire New Testament to Lamentations 2, and it’s a reference to chapter 2, verse 15. As the true son, the true Israel, the true Zion suffered our judgment. As Isaiah declared, it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. The son has borne our judgment. The son has been raised from the dead to fulfill his word that by his wounds,

not by our wounds, not by our suffering, not by our repentance, not by our penitence even, but by his suffering, by his wounds, we are healed. And so, I just need to remind you what you already know. No matter what your sin, no matter what suffering that sin has brought into your life, cry out to the Lord. Stretch out your hands to him. For the sake of his son, he will not fail to hear that prayer. Christian, know that having poured out his wrath on Christ, there is none left for you. If you are in Christ, what does that mean? It means to be living a life of repenting and believing. Not I did that when I was 10, and I haven’t thought about it since. Not I did that last week, but I’m really kind of secretly going on with my own life. No, to be in Christ is to be living a life of repentance and faith.

The City’s Cry

If that is you, your judgment day has already come and gone. It happened at the cross, and there is no more. But do not deceive yourself as Israel did, for if you are not in Christ, if your life is not characterized, not by perfection, not by never sinning, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a life of repentance and faith, a life that has lived in the light, a life that is accountable. If that is you, then you have nothing to fear, for the Son has taken your judgment for you. We need to consider finally the city’s crime. Look at verse 20. Look, O Lord, and consider, whom have you ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? Young and old lie together in the dust of the streets.

My young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of your anger. You have slaughtered them without pity. As you summoned to a feast day, so you summoned against me terrors on every side. In the day of the Lord’s anger, no one escaped or survived. Those I cared for and reared, my enemy has destroyed. This isn’t the first time that the city has cried out, look, O Lord, and consider. This was her cry in Chapter 1, but in Chapter 1, it was different. In Chapter 1, it was a cry for pity. This isn’t so much a request for pity. This is an expression of anger. She has three sharp questions that she wants the Lord to stare at and then have to answer. Who do you think you’re treating? She’s not comparing herself to others. She’s reminding him, don’t you remember who I am?

You’re covenant bride. You’re people. Appealing to the covenant. Should women have to eat their own offspring? Yes, that’s what happened in a siege in the ancient Near East, but a siege that God brought? She’s appealing to God’s goodness. Should, in the holy place of the Lord, both priest and prophet be killed? The holy place. She’s appealing to God’s holiness, his concern for the sanctity of his own name. Taken together, this appeal to the covenant relationship, to God’s goodness, to his holiness, taken all together. The answer to her question is, no, this should not have happened. It is not right, least of all by God’s own hand. You can hear her in these cries. God, you who govern the whole universe, how could you? How could you? How could you let my marriage fail? How could you let my child be born with a disability? How could you let my mother die of cancer?

How could you let me be abused as a kid? How could you leave me unable to provide for my wife, for my kids? How could you leave me without spouse for so long? How could you give me a spouse and leave me without children for so long? How could you let me suffer so long? How could you let my pastor betray me? How could you? It’s too much. It’s too hard. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. We can relate to the daughter of Zion. No answer is given to her questions in Lamentations chapter 2. The silence of heaven is the response. And so she reviews the horrors, the dead in the street that you killed without pity, Lord, the terrors on every side that you summoned, Lord. And finally, one last time, the children that I loved, that I reared, that you destroyed.

And so the poem ends with the Lord who has become my enemy. Those words are shocking. We recoil as if they’re impossibly impious. And yet for any who have suffered deeply in this life, they are uncomfortably familiar. For in the day of our grief, if there is a God and if that God is in control and we know he is, then it seems as if he has indeed become our enemy and so we are angry at God. Anger is part of grief and it’s appropriate because our anger is a response to that which is wrong, that which should not be. It is right to be angry that children die in warfare. It is right to be angry that loved ones are taken from us in death. It is right to be angry when illness, and pain, and suffering, and disability, and discrimination, and exploitation take and destroy what they

had no right to. And it is right to be angry at years of deception and betrayal. We are not to make our peace with death. We are not to make our peace with the fallen nature of this world or the fallen nature of our lives. Even when the judgment is deserved, it’s not the way it’s supposed to be. And so we are angry, not only at the suffering, and the death, and the loss, we are angry at the sin that demanded that God bring the curse with all of its suffering into this world. And the book of Lamentations gives you the language of that anger. So do not be afraid to bring all of your grief, including your anger, to God. As one theologian put it, his shoulder is broad enough to cry on, and his chest is strong enough to beat on. And then having cried your tears, and having beat out your anger,

Our Response

ask more questions. Should the innocent have suffered for the guilty? Should the father have put to grief his own son? Surely behind the anguished cry of the poet over my people, surely behind the bitter cry of the city over my young men and my maidens, surely over both of those cries, we hear the voice of God over my people who are called by my name. God knows the anger of your grief because it is his own. Would you pray with me? Lord, we confess our anger, and betrayal, and deception. And we also confess that in our own ways, we are all guilty of the same. And so often our own deception and betrayals do not elicit the same kind of anger in us. Lord, give us insight into our own hearts, help us to see the rightness of your judgments, and help us to know the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice.

For my sin, for our sins. Lord, we ask that in the tumult of emotion, in the discouragement, the fear, and the anger, that your spirit would be at work in us individually, in this church in particular. That we might not die in the self-deception of our sins, but that we might find the grace that brings light and life. And we ask this in Christ’s name, amen.