This Weeping Matters

"This Weeping Matters" – Psalm 34:18 Pain cannot be avoided. Anyone who thinks he can dodge it has not known the Bible: he is living in a fantasy. And because pain is unavoidable, so is weeping. The question is not whether we will weep, but what we will do with that weeping and where God will be when it comes. This study answers: God does not watch the broken from a distance; He draws near. "The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." That is why this weeping matters: before God it has a witness, a memory, and a meaning.

I. Pain cannot be avoided, and complaining is not the way out

A. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all" (Psalm 34:19). The text does not promise a life without affliction; it promises the Deliverer inside the affliction.

B. Whoever tries to avoid pain ends up wrapped in a sad and pitiful misery of complaint: much opinion, much advice, much boasting, but no contact with the reality of existence.

C. The difference between the strong and the weak is not in the circumstances but in the weapons: the one who prays, fasts, and reads the Word is armed; whoever neglects that walks into every battle unarmed.

D. The law of sowing and reaping governs the heart as well: if you sow love, the harvest of love is in you. What shows up today came from a sowing.

II. There is a weeping born of pain, and God does not withdraw from it

A. "The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit" (Psalm 34:18). God does not watch the righteous from afar: He comes close. And when He comes close, the chest tightens and the tears come on their own.

B. Weeping has a dangerous substitute: rebellion. When a person neither weeps nor humbles himself before God, rebellion rises —irritation, anger, wrath, haughtiness— and where there is haughtiness the Lord is not.

C. Another substitute is the pedestal: in order not to weep, a person begins to talk about everyone and accuse everyone. But the pedestal is gilded porcelain: one small gust and it falls and is nothing but dust.

D. "A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Psalm 51:17). That is the only heart in which the Holy Spirit can form anything.

E. On the day you have to weep hard you will probably be left alone, because people do not like to keep company in sorrow. That is where He stays.

III. The cry is born of pain, not of strength

A. "Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses" (Psalm 107:19). It does not say they had beautiful words: they only cried out. It does not say they were whole: they were in anguish.

B. God answers the wound, not the appearance. On earth we keep up appearances —"prospering," "in victory"— while carrying a thousand difficulties. He attends to what actually hurts.

C. The day of trouble, of the child's illness, of the marriage about to break, is the day the cry is born. The temptation of that day is to talk about everyone instead of praying; and where there is no prayer, there is no deliverance.

D. God delivers, but He is not cried to with rudeness or bad manners. Whoever is in an act of rebellion should not go up to the altar.

E. "He saveth them out of their distresses": He delivers the one who goes through the affliction and bows his back in it, not the one who hides, defends himself, or pretends.

IV. Jesus wept: He knows weeping from the inside

A. "Jesus wept" (John 11:35): the shortest verse in the Bible and one of the deepest. He did not weep for lack of power —He had power to say "Lazarus, come forth"— He wept because He would not stay distant from human pain.

B. He wept for Martha, for Mary, and for those weeping there. Their sorrow passed into His heart. He did not investigate, He did not rebuke the weeping: He shared it.

C. "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep" (Romans 12:15). Weeping over your own blood is automatic; the mark of the body of Christ is weeping over someone who is not yours.

D. "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26). That is love: not our own strength, but joining ourselves to the pain of the righteous.

E. So when you weep, you do not weep alone. Even when your faith seems small to you, your pain is not ignored: faith and tears can be on the same face.

V. God keeps every tear

A. "Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" (Psalm 56:8). The bottle was the small flask in which the ancients gathered tears at funerals and in moments of great sorrow: what was precious was kept there.

B. Not one tear of the righteous falls to the floor: they all fall into the hands of God. He sees them and He knows the reason for each one.

C. Not every tear is the same. It is not the tantrum of a child screaming for a treat: it is the tear of pain, and also the tear of worship, the one released at the altar.

D. None of your pain is wasted. Your weeping has a witness, a memory, and a meaning; that is why it is worth releasing before Him and not carrying it alone.

E. A warning for our time: a generation raised on indulgence does not learn to release a tear, and on the day it must, it will not know how.

VI. Weeping is for a night; the morning comes

A. "For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). The verse does not deny weeping: it acknowledges and validates it.

B. The night stands for pain, anguish, uncertainty: the time when the soul feels heavy. The morning stands for the change: relief, breathing room, restoration, new hope.

C. Weeping is temporary; His favor lasts a lifetime. God is not against you: He reproves through the Holy Spirit, but He does not grow weary of you, even knowing your frailty.

D. "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up" (Psalm 5:3). A heart that weeps but does not give up: faith is not always felt; sometimes it only waits.

E. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes" (Revelation 21:4). Your tears have an end, your pain has a limit, sadness will not be eternal.

VII. Application

A. Do not run from weeping or disguise it as toughness. The hardness that saves you a tear today costs you God's nearness tomorrow.

B. Turn complaint into a cry. Before you discuss your pain with everyone, take it on your knees to the One who delivers out of all afflictions.

C. Sit beside the one who weeps. Be capable of weeping for someone who is not your own blood: that is the mark of the body of Christ.

D. Seek God in the morning. Bring your burden early and wait, even when faith is not felt.

E. Remember where the weeping of the righteous ends: it is counted, it is kept in His bottle, and one day it will be wiped away by His own hand.