Psalm 102; Honest with God: A Psalm for the Afflicted

Martin Wagner June 14, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL 

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Transcript

A Public Diagnosis And A Shared Clock

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On December 23rd last year, a former Nebraska Senator and University of Florida President Ben Sass uh wrote this. Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized stage four pancreatic cancer, and I am going to die. Advanced pancreatic cancer is nasty stuff. It's a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week, too. We all do. Ben Sass is 54 years old, been married for 31 years. He's a dad of three children. And since December, he has been dying in public. You may have seen an interview or a podcast with him in a popular 60 Minutes interview. He appeared, his face was badly bloodied, and he revealed that due to some experimental treatments, that it's bought him more time than they initially thought. Well, you may not know about Ben Sass is that he and his family are members of a PCA church. They're part of our denomination. He is one of our own. And as I've watched his interviews over the past few weeks, oftentimes tears fill my eyes as I witness what he is saying. His honesty and courage and theological depth are just amazing. He cries when he talks about the daughters that he will not be able to walk down the aisle. He laments over the fact that his 14-year-old son will grow up without a dad, and that he wishes for more time with his son. In the middle of a life that's being turned upside down, he is clinging to the only solid thing in his world, a God who does all things well. This summer we are looking at how the Psalms teach us to be honest with God about what we are facing. The psalms we have covered thus far, you couldn't classify them as light beach summer reads of the Psalms. These are pretty heavy stuff. But the heaviest Psalms I've learned are the most necessary ones for us because that's actually where you and I live in a broken world. Psalm 102, our psalm this morning, it reads like the prayer of a man who was diagnosed with metastasized stage 4 pancreatic cancer. In fact, Ben Sass says almost exactly that. In his 60 minutes interview, he was asked about his diagnosis, and he says this having a terminal diagnosis really isn't that unique. We're all, always on the clock. Some of us just have the benefit of knowing that our time is finite and defined. We are all, always on the clock. It's a heavy topic. We're not going to be swimming in the shallow end this morning. But the question I want us to think about today is what do you and I do with a life that is running out? Every one of us here today, we are people whose days are numbered. Ben Sass just happens to know a little bit more concretely than most of us do. And what we need is not just a longer life. What we need is hope that extends beyond that life. And that psalm shows us exactly who this hope is. But before we read the psalm, I want to uh draw your attention to something that will help us frame uh this psalm. Derek Kidner, in his commentary uh on this psalm, picks up that there is a single contrast uh that really gives the shape to the entire psalm. It is the psalmist's days, his days compared to the Lord's years.

The Contrast That Shapes Psalm 102

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My days versus your years. What is he what is short and fragile and running out is compared with what is eternal and permanent and never ending. And so look for that contrast as we read uh Psalm 102. It'll be on the screen behind me. It's printed in your bulletin, and on page 505 of the Pew Bible in front of you. So hear God's word to us today from Psalm 102. A prayer of one afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord. 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 is withered.

Psalm 102 Read Aloud

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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 house top. All the day my enemies taunt me. Those who deride me use my name for a curse, for I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink. Because of your indignation and anger, 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 throughout 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, for 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 to be created may praise the Lord, that he looked down from his holy height. From heaven the Lord looked at the earth to hear the groans of the 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 kingdoms to worship the Lord. He has broken my strength in mid-course, he has shortened my days. O my God, I say, Take me not away in the midst of my days, ye 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. Your years have no end. The children of your offspring shall dwell secure, their offspring shall be established before you. Let's pray together. Our Father, we gather together this morning as people whose days are numbered. And some of us feel that more acutely than others. Some of us are carrying things that make the shortness of life very real and close to us. And so we ask that this morning that you would meet us where

A Prayer For The Afflicted

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we are as we read and consider this psalm, that you would give us the courage to be as honest as the psalmist was, that you would give us hope that goes beyond death. And Lord, we confess that we don't have it all together as we come and gather today. We come as those who are afflicted, as people who are weak and needy, and we come because we have nowhere else to go. You are the one who has the words of eternal life. And so open our eyes to see that in your word today. We pray it in Christ's name. Amen. We're going to look at this psalm uh in three parts. So here's where we're going this morning. The first point is the darkest point. Verses 1 through 11 are marked by the words that we read, marked by the words my days. The psalmist tells us the truth with no editing and no silver lining. The second part is the turn. What changes in this psalm, and we see that in verse 12. The entire direction of the psalm changes with just two words, but you. And the third part is the resolution, and we see that as in the final verses in verses 23 to 28. The my days of point one turn into your years in the last part of the psalm. The psalmist returns to his suffering, his days are still short, but now those days are considered in light of something that cannot run out. So my days, but you and your years. So that's where we're going this morning. Let's start with my days. Look at the heading of the psalm: a prayer for one afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord. Unlike a lot of Psalms, the author is not given to us. The heading reads more like an invitation. Because the author is not given, this psalm can belong to anyone. This psalm can be for anyone who suffers. Anyone who is faint can take this prayer as their own. But the psalmist wastes no time telling us what the affliction that he is feeling actually feels like. The first eleven verses are really gruesome. He reaches for the most visceral images he can find, and he stacks them on top of each other to tell us exactly what life is like. He begins with saying that his uh bones are like a furnace, that there's something burning within him, inside of him, that he can't touch and he cannot put out. He says his heart is not just discouraged, but it's struck down. His heart is like withered grass in the August heat. The life within him has gone out. Then says he's that he stopped eating. He didn't stop on purpose. Verse 4 says he forgets to eat. This is not his diet strategy. Uh his suffering is so consuming that the thought of eating just doesn't register with him anymore. He groans loudly and constantly. This is not just a bad day here or there, but groaning is the soundtrack of his life. And by verse five, he's barely there. He's just bones that are held together by skin. Verse 7, I he can't sleep, I lie awake. There's not a more helpless feeling than staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, not being able to sleep. Your mind goes to dark places. The exhaustion that you experience doesn't lead to sleep, it just leads to compounded exhaustion. He's burning, he's withered, he's wasting away, he's awake in the dark, and on top of all of it, people are kicking him while he's down. Verse 8, his enemies taunt him all day long. They use his name as a curse word. Whatever he's going through, the people around him are enjoying seeing him go through it. Verse 9 says, His food are like ashes and tears. One translation says, his meals are a casserole of ashes, and he drinks from a barrel of his own tears. But cheer up, it gets worse. Look at verses six and seven. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste place. I lie awake. I'm like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. There's three birds that are mentioned, and each picture of the bird gets progressively lonelier. A desert owl in the wilderness, far away from everyone, a bird in the wastelands. And the last painful image is a lonely sparrow on a housetop. The sparrow is not out in the wilderness, it's on a roof, it's in the city, it's near people, it's close enough to hear the sounds of what is going on around it, but yet it is completely alone. It is visible yet unknown, suffering and silence. There is loneliness on top of the affliction. And I know that in a gathering this size, some of you might meet the description of a lonely sparrow. You're carrying something with you that no one else in the world knows about. Yet you're always around people at work, at church, around the neighborhood, but you feel like you're just right on the roof above where the rest of life is going on. You feel completely alone in the affliction that you carry. That is a story that I've heard more than I would like to admit. It's a story that our pastors and our elders and deacons and staff have heard more than we would like. We know that you're not alone, that other people suffer through the same things. But in your suffering, what you're made to think, what you believe, is that you are the only one who is going through it. Suffering has a way of isolating you so that you think that you are the only lonely sparrow out there. And so this fall, what we aim to do, what we hope to do, um, is to create something uh that may help that, a type of grace groups called side-by-side groups. And we want to find ways for people who experience the same kind of suffering to walk side by side through it together. Uh, groups for things like those who suffer

The Lonely Sparrow And Shared Suffering

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uh from addiction, grief and infertility, wayward children. There are a host of other things that we would love to have. And we're praying that the Lord would help us to form these groups and identify leaders. And if you've got an idea for a group, we would love to hear it. What we know is that these groups won't fix the suffering. They won't make the pain go away. But we do hope that lonely sparrows will find that there are other lonely sparrows to walk with them through it. You'll hear more in the weeks ahead, but just for now, know that we don't want you to walk through this alone. But there's another layer, another layer to the psalmist's pain. Look at verse 10. He says, All of this is happening because of your indignation and anger, for you have taken me up and thrown me down. He believes that God is the one who is behind his suffering. But he never says why. He never names a sin as why this is happening, never points us

When God Feels Silent And Why Pray

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to a reason. The pain that he is experiencing is unexplained. He's lying awake at night asking God, why is this happening? Why are you doing this to me? And all he hears is silence. When questions like this go unanswered, it's easy for our minds to assume something much darker. What we can assume, begin to believe, is that maybe there's no answer to suffering at all. Maybe all suffering in life is just random and meaningless, and there's nothing we can do about it. This Psalm does not teach us that suffering has no meaning. For the believer, there is no such thing as meaningless suffering. God wastes nothing. Everything is in his hands. But knowing that suffering has meaning is not the same thing as knowing what that meaning is. He just doesn't know why the suffering is happening. And most of us, most of the time, this is the gap of faith that we live in. Our suffering is not inexplicable, it's just unexplained on this side of eternity. Yet the profound thing is that he doesn't wait, the psalmist doesn't wait in order until he understands the suffering before he begins to pray. He prays in the midst of not understanding his suffering. And when the psalmist closes the section with verse 11, he says this my days are like an evening shadow. I wither away like grass. An evening shadow, think about what that means. The shadow at evening is one that is about to disappear. The sun is going down, the shadow stretches longer and thinner and fainter until it is just gone. And that's how he sees his life. Stretching and thinning and fading. The psalmist says, My days, my days are filled with pain and loneliness and confusion and fading light. There's no relief, there's no silver lining in this first section. Just a man telling God how bad it is. Being honest with God. If the psalm ended in verse 11, this would be a really bleak psalm, but it doesn't. Verse 12 But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever. You are remembered throughout all generations. Eleven verses of burning bones and sleepless nights and lonely sparrows, and then two words change the entire direction of this psalm. But you. The psalm pivots on those two words, but the change of direction doesn't mean a change of circumstances

But You: Turning Toward God’s Permanence

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for the psalmist. His pain is not resolved. His suffering is exactly where he left it in verse 11. Nothing about his circumstances changes in this verse. But what changes is what he is looking at, where he's looking. For 11 verses, he's been describing himself my days, my bones, my heart, my groaning, my loneliness. And then he stops describing himself and he begins to describe God. And that changes the rest of the psalm. That's not him in denial, that's not him sticking his head in the sand, but rather he is changing the object of his attention. If you've been here this summer, you've seen the same pattern play out. Psalm 73 that we looked at, Asaph was filled with envy. He's on the edge of losing his faith until he goes into the sanctuary. He sees things from a different perspective. If you hear last week we saw it in Psalm 62, David is under assault. And he preaching to his own soul to remember what is true about God. This is the lessons that the Psalm keeps teaching us that you and I don't get out of suffering because we understand it. We get through suffering by anchoring ourselves to something that cannot be moved by our suffering. And that something we anchor to is always the character of God. And so what aspects of the character of God is the psalmist appealing to in this psalm? He looks to God's permanence. O Lord, you are enthroned forever. For the first eleven verses, everything is temporary and fading, smoke and grass and evening shadows. And then he turns and he looks to the one thing that is not temporary. A God who sits enthroned while everything else around him is burning away. A God who sits enthroned before the psalmist suffering began, and a God who will be enthroned after his suffering ends. And that's a comforting thought for us in the abstract. But what does the permanence of God mean for you and me today? A God who doesn't change is a God who was not going to change his mind about you. When God set his love on you in Christ, he saw all of you. He knows all of your history. He knows every failure that you're still ashamed of. He knows every sin that you have yet to commit. There's no new information that's going to come up for you to God. Most of us secretly live as though God's patience with us is very close to running out. That one more fault, one more mess up are going to tip the scales out of my favor. But an unchanging God does not work that way. His love for you is not a response to your performance. His love was set on you with the full knowledge, the full knowledge of who you are and what you have done. There is nothing that is left for him to find out about you. And that unchanging God is also a sovereign God. Ben Sass was asked in an interview whether he believed that God had a plan in the midst of this diagnosis. And he answered without hesitating, he said, Absolutely, there are no maverick molecules in the universe. He was saying that there's nothing

Sovereignty No Maverick Molecules

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running loose in all of God's creation. Nothing is outside of the hand of God, not the cancer, not your suffering. There is not one molecule in all of creation. That is Maverick. And if that's true, if he really is unchanging, if he is really sovereign over every atom in the universe, including the things that you and I can't explain, then what is left for us to do? We are withering grass. We are passing away like an evening shadow, already disappearing. And the question that the psalmist is asking us, forcing us to answer, is where else are we going to go? Ben Sass was asked if he was ready to die. And he said, This I don't feel ready, but to whom would I go? We get to approach the Almighty, we get to approach the divine and call him Daddy, Abba Father. That's pretty glorious. And I know that's what I need. What he's saying in that quote is not look at how strong my faith is, not look at all that I have done. He's saying the exact opposite. He's saying, I've got nothing left. This is the only option I've got. Where else could I possibly go in life? To whom would I go? He's pointing us to John 6. Jesus had just preached a hard sermon and the crowds were leaving him, and he turns to the 12 and he says, Do you want to go away as well? And Peter answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Peter saying to Jesus, Following you is not easy. But what other options do we have? What else is there? What other viable option do I have? You alone have the words of eternal life. Peter had nowhere else to go. Ben Sass testifies he has nowhere else to go. The psalmist has nowhere else to go. And neither do you and I. And when we have nowhere else to go, the good news about that is there's nothing we have to bring. We don't have to arrive to God with something to offer with a bargaining chip. We don't have to have impressive faith. Look at verse 17. He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer. The destitute is a person who's been stripped of everything. They're one who has no resources. They have nothing to offer. I want you to hear this, especially if you feel like you have nothing to offer God this morning. You don't have strong faith. You don't have any answers for what's going on in your life, and you actually don't even have much hope left. Verse 17 is a reminder that he regards you anyway, that he doesn't despise the prayer that comes from someone with nothing left. That you were invited to bring your burning bones, your sleepless nights, and your unanswered questions to him. He regards the prayer, the destitute. We started with my days. We looked at the second part, but you, and let's look at the last part, your years. After everything we've just seen about God's permanence and God's sovereignty, the psalmist comes back to his own suffering in verse 23. He says, He has broken my strength in mid-course, he has shortened my days. And in verse 24, Oh my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. His bones are still burning, his days are short, nothing's been fixed, but something has changed. He knows that his days are going to be cut short. He's

Your Years: Jesus And Endless Life

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praying not to die before his time. He's a man that is staring at the end of his life, asking God not to take him yet. But I want to zoom out from Psalm 102, pull back a little bit, and for us to take a look at another afflicted man in the Bible, one who prayed something a lot like verse 24. And his days were cut short too, not by an illness, but cut short at a cross. In the garden the night before Jesus died, he asked the Father if there was any other way. Can you take this cup from me? And the answer was no. And he went to a cross, and his strength was broken, his earthly life was cut off in its prime, not because his mission had failed, but because this was the way he was going to accomplish his mission. And Jesus cried out into the darkness, and he did not get the answer he asked for. The cup of wrath was not taken away, but it was poured out in full on him. But yet three days later he got something better, not an escape from death, but a conquering of death. And so what that means is that when you pray, verse 24, when you say, Oh my God, don't take me yet. I'm in the midst of my life. My days are too short. You are not praying something new. Jesus has already prayed this. You are praying inside of a story that has already happened, a story that already has an ending. And death does not have the final word in this story. And verses 25 to 27 tell us why it doesn't have the last word. Of old you laid the foundations 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, and your years have no end. One day every star in the sky is going to fall away, will stop shining. The stars are on their deathbed just like you and I are. The mountains will be discarded, thrown out like an old t-shirt. The things that feel the most permanent in the world around us will eventually pass away. But this psalm says that God remains. He is the same, his years have no end. Your days and my days are short, but his years have no end. And that is the answer to verse 23. We don't need more of our days. We actually need his endless years. This is the point where I want you to stick with me. It gets a little more technical and complex, but it's an amazing thing that we see. When we look at Hebrews chapter 1, the writer of Hebrews does something really interesting with verses 25 to 27, and it changes the way we interpret the passage. So when we read 25 to 27, when we read it this morning, it's natural for us to read it as though this is the psalmist speaking to God. He is saying, I am dying, but Lord, you are the one who is forever. But the writer of the book of Hebrews attributes the words of verses 25 to 27 as God the Father speaking to God the Son. He's saying verses 25 to 27, they are words about Jesus. So I'm going to reread these verses. I want to read them as though Jesus were the subject, these verses. Jesus, of old, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but Jesus, you will remain. They will wear out like a garment, but you will change them like a robe and they will pass away. But Jesus, you are the same, and your years have no end. The permanence that the psalmist finds when he turns away from himself and turns to God, that permanence is not just a good feeling. That permanence is a person. Which means that Jesus is the one who both prayed the psalm and he is the one to whom this psalm points. Jesus prayed, verse 24, don't take me in the middle of my days. Yet his days were cut short at the cross. But in his resurrection, his years will have no end. He will remain. And so the good news for you and me this morning is that if we are in Christ, then what is true of Jesus is now true of you. If you are united to Christ by faith, then his endless resurrection life is now your life as well. And so no matter how hard your days are, no matter how short your days may be, even if they feel like an evening shadow passing away, they are not the last word on your life. One day every star in the sky is going to stop shining. They will run out. The tallest mountains are going to wear down like an old pair of shoes. The whole universe, everything that we see, everything that feels solid and permanent, will be thrown out like an old garment. They will all perish, but he will remain. The stars are not everlasting. The mountains are not eternal, but the Son of God is. And if you belong to Him, if your life is hidden in Him, your days may be numbered, but your years have no end. And because you are in Him, death will not get the final word in your life. And so this is the solid hope that burning bones, that lonely sparrows and fading shadows can cling to. My days are numbered, but you, O Lord, your years never end. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word to us today, of how it points us to beyond what we see and experience here. And so, Lord, we will leave this place and we will go back into lives and go back to bodies that are failing us and go back to grief that just will not lift. We go back to loneliness

Holding Fast Until Days Give Way

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that doesn't have an obvious solution. We are people who are still like withering grass and evening shadows, like sparrows on a housetop. But yet, Lord, help us to go as those who are anchored and connected to that which does not wither. Lord, you are the same. Your years have no end. And so we pray that you would hold us fast until our days give way to yours. And so, Lord, hear us in the name of Jesus our Savior. Amen.