SERMON OUTLINE · FORM 1 (MINIMALIST) · EXPOSITORY · DEFINITIVE
Your Days Are Smoke; His Years Have No End
Psalm 102:1–28 · with Hebrews 1:10–12
Preaching Text: ESV · Ken Parmley
CENTRAL TRUTH
Because Jesus Christ the Creator remains unchanged when the heavens themselves wear out, the afflicted believer’s brief and broken life is secured in him and folded into the enduring life of God’s people.
INTRODUCTION
This is the only psalm in the Psalter whose title names no author. It names a condition — a prayer of one afflicted, faint, pouring out his complaint before the LORD (Psalm 102, superscription). God left the name blank so that the name could be filled in.
So the first question this morning is not what this psalm meant to somebody long ago. It is whether the title fits you. If you are faint this morning — if you have complaints you have not been able to say out loud in polite company — then this prayer was written and preserved and canonized for you, and Psalm 102:18 says so in as many words.
The psalm moves in three movements, and so will we. A man tells God the truth about his life. A man tells the truth about God. And then God tells the truth about His Son.
POINT ONE
Text. Psalm 102:1–11, especially Psalm 102:7 and Psalm 102:10.
Interpretation. The lament is physical before it is spiritual: days vanishing like smoke, bones burning like a furnace, a heart withered like grass, a body so wasted that bone clings to flesh. Then three birds — a bird of the desert, an owl among ruins, and a lone bird on a rooftop. Two of them live where nothing else will live; the third lives in the middle of town and is completely alone. That is affliction that isolates, affliction that makes you feel unclean, and affliction that is loneliest in a crowded room. And then, at Psalm 102:10, the psalmist says where it came from: because of your indignation and anger. He does not blame his enemies, though he has them; he does not blame chance. He takes the complaint straight to the God he holds responsible — which is exactly what faith does and what unbelief never can.
Illustration. A sparrow on a rooftop is not alone because the town is empty. It is alone because it is on the roof and everyone else is inside. Some of you have felt that in this very building — the pews full, the singing loud, and you on the roof.
Application. Stop editing your prayers. The Hebrew word in the title means complaint, musing, the overflow of a troubled mind — not a tidy petition. God has canonized an unedited prayer. Bring Him the complaint itself, and bring it to Him rather than about Him. Take Psalm 102:1–11 this week and pray it out loud, in your own words, until you have told Him the truth about your life.
Transition. But a man who tells God the truth about himself will not stay there. In Psalm 102:12 the psalm turns on two words — but you.