I. Psalm 30:5b “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
II. God created the day & the night, & He created a light to rule the day, & lights to rule the night.
A. The light He created to rule the day was the sun, of course. Too bright to even look at, too powerful to even get close to, larger than a million earths.
B. And then there’s the night.
1. Night is when the sun is hidden behind the earth.
2. Night is dark, and often cold.
3. Some nights last longer than others. There are some places on earth where almost half the year is one long night.
4. But nowhere on earth is night a permanent state. It may last long at times, but eventually day comes.
III. The followers of Jesus knew what it was like to experience night.
A. Think about the night before the resurrection.
B. The darkness of loss, the darkness of dashed hopes, the darkness of witnessing human sin.
C. It was a very dark night!
D. We who know the story want to yell at them: “Don’t despair! He’s coming back from the dead!”
E. But they had no idea what light and hope were just about to burst into the darkness.
F. But we have what they had. They had to survive the darkness with only a promise to cling to.
1. They didn’t do so well. And sometimes neither do we.
2. But for us, like for them, the light of the morning is just around the corner.
3. And like them, when it dawns, we will see what hope could have been ours all along.
G. But God makes sure the darkness doesn’t go on too long.
H. Why the third day, just practically-speaking.
1. Long enough to prove He was truly dead. If He had risen after one hour, people would say He wasn’t really dead.
2. Short enough to prevent His followers from complete abandonment of their faith. Imagine if Jesus had risen a year after His death. His followers would have moved on with their lives. They would have completely given up on Him. But on the third day there were still some warm coals of faith to rekindle. Matt.24:22 says this of another dark time: “If those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.”
3. He knows just how long the night should last and He knows at just what moment the sun should rise. Our God has impeccable timing.
IV. After going through a very hard experience himself, and also being delivered by God, the author of Psalm 30 says, “Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
A. For this psalmist, the night represents the time of weeping. And the day represents the time of joy.
B. When Jesus died on the cross and then was raised from the dead, it was THE epitome of joy coming in the morning.
1. It looks like sin and death have won. But then Christ bursts forth from the grave!
2. And so it is! “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
3. This is the gospel!
4. Mankind lived weeping in the night of sin.
5. But now Christ has come signaling the beginning of a new day.
C. And we live in this in-between age. It is not night — that was the time before Christ. Nor is it day — that is the time after Christ returns. The night is passing. The day is about to dawn.
1. As it says in Romans 13:12 “The night is nearly gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
2. We can’t see the sun, but we believe in Him, and we have His word.
3. Listen to this testimony of Peter about the Scripture:
a. “We have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention..., until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” (2Peter 1:19)
D. Dawn is a strange time of day. It’s part night and part day. It has characteristics of both.
1. It’s so easy to moan about the remaining darkness instead of rejoicing in the dawning light.
E. This moment of history may seem to be lasting a long time.
1. But think how long the night lasted before Christ came, from Adam&Eve to the coming of Christ.
2. And think how long the day will last once the sun (Son) appears.
F. God knows what He’s doing. And He does it just right!
1. He lets us weep. When God plans out every day of our lives, He schedules days of weeping, some days when you feel like your heart is being ripped right out.
a. He collects our tears in a bottle, but He doesn’t prevent us from weeping.
2. Some people think a good God would never let us experience pain.
3. But they don’t know that God is such a master engineer of the affairs of our lives that He is able to use our pain for our good.
4. We tend to get bent out of shape over the little disappointments, failures, and deprivations of life.
5. But God has bigger things in mind – much bigger.
6. He’s setting us up for great triumphs, not just little ones. We need to trust Him.
G. Maybe your life seems more like nighttime now. That shouldn’t be surprising.
1. Even though in the coming of Christ the day is dawning, there’s still a lot of nighttime around.
2. Nighttime is hard. Nighttime is cold. Nighttime is scary. At night you can’t see very clearly.
3. The question is, When it’s night, do you still believe in the morning? When it’s dark, do you still believe in the sun?
4. How do you get through a hard night?
a. By remembering that the darkness lies to us. It tempts us to believe that our God is not a good God — that He mistreats His children. It tempts us is to think that the night is all there is.
b. The only way to get through a dark night well is to believe in the sun.
5. The night isn’t so dark, the night doesn’t seem so long, the night isn’t so pervasive when you believe in the sun.
6. The night still lasts longer than you want it to, sometimes longer than you think you can endure.
7. But the story doesn’t end with night. The sun can be hidden, but it’s never erased.
H. We want to see what’s up ahead, God wants us to trust Him.
1. He wants us to remember that, though we can’t see Him, He is a very big God Who is acts on behalf of His people. And He proved it by sending Jesus to the cross and then raising Him.
2. He wants us to remember that we have a triumphant Savior who never forgets His own, and who never loses in the end.
3. It doesn’t matter how dark life gets. It doesn’t matter how hopeless things look.
4. The sun is just as real during the night as it is during the day. It’s just hidden.
a. What we need in human development terms is object permanence.
I. There’s nothing wrong with weeping in the night. But while weeping in the night, we need to remember that joy is coming in the morning.