Psalm 88
Let’s hear God’s word together.
This is Psalm 88, and it says at the heading, it’s a song,
a psalm of the sons of Korah to the choir master, according
to the Mahalath, Lenaoth, Emaskil of Heman, the Ezraite. And he
begins by saying these words, O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before
you. incline your ear to my cry, for
my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to shale. I am counted among those who
go down to the pit. I am a man who has no strength,
like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie
in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they
are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths
of the pit, in the regions dark and deep, Your wrath lies heavy
upon me and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have
caused my companions to shun me. You have made me a horror
to them. I am shut in so that I cannot
escape. My eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call upon you, O Lord. I spread out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead? Did the departed rise up to praise
you? In your steadfast love, Or is
your steadfast love declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness
in Abaddon? Or your wonders known in the
darkness? Or your righteousness in the
land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry to you. In
the morning, my prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you
cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from
me? Afflicted and close to death, from my youth up, I suffer your
terrors. I am helpless. Your wrath has
swept over me. Your dreadful assaults destroy
me. They surround me like a flood
all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved, my
friend, to shun me. My companions have become darkness. Amen. This is God’s holy and
inspired and inerrant word. Despite it being strange, despite
it being dark and odd, it is the Word of God and it is useful
for teaching and rebuking and correction and training in righteousness
so that we, the men and women of God, may be fully equipped
to do God’s holy will. Yes, even from Psalm 88. Well, 15 years ago in October, I was first ordained a minister
and about 18 years ago is when I first started preaching. And
in our training for preaching, we were taught to have an introduction,
say something really catchy to get everybody’s attention. And
back in those days, it was usually something from, Lord of the Rings. I got so tired of hearing Lord
of the Rings sermon illustrations. I’ve never read them, never watched
them, don’t get them, don’t understand them. Patrick has, but I don’t
get it. And so if I heard another sermon,
I could do without ever hearing another sermon about Gollum and
whoever else is in those books. But we were taught to have an
introduction, have a theme, have points, support those points
with scripture, and then have a conclusion that was a lot like
a one-two punch. So you kind of realized you were
sitting under the word of God and you left knowing that you
had been in the presence of God. Well, what would you do with
Psalm 88 with those instructions? Because the only points you could
have in Psalm 88 are, I’m miserable, point one. I’m still miserable,
part two. I’m still miserable conclusion. And so what do you do with a
Psalm like Psalm 88? Well, another thing that we were
taught when we were trained to preach was to be careful streamlining
the truth of God and applying it to everybody equally. For
example, you are a young preacher and you get out of school armed
and dangerous with your Bible and you decide to preach through
Genesis. And you decide when it comes to the passage on be
fruitful and multiply, just to talk about how wonderful it is
to have children. And yet you’re young and you forget. Or maybe
you’re completely unaware that some in the congregation may
not be able to be fruitful and multiply. Or another tough time
comes when it’s Sanctity of Life Sunday. And you know, we good
evangelicals, we get on our little hobby horses and we don’t like
abortion too much. And so we preach a good sermon
on the sanctity of human life. And all the people who made before
they were redeemed who’ve had an abortion feel really second
class as Christians. And on and on you can go, you
can go through the covenant promises of God that God promises to those
who love him and keep his commandments, he will give grapes and grandkids,
right? The covenant promises. He’ll give you land, he’ll prosper
you, he’ll give you children, he’ll give you offspring. You’ll
have the same promises of Abraham. But what about when life deals
a deadly hand? to a family of God-fearing people.
You see, life isn’t always rosy. Yes, God does make promises. God does give us generalities. He does speak in the word about
times of blessing, times of prospering, but you have to be careful. You
have to be careful because sometimes the Bible simply teaches us to
understand that, well, I am miserable. Point one. I am still miserable,
point two. And life hasn’t gotten any better,
point three, like Psalm 88 seems to show us. But there are times
when the people of God face utter hardship. And it may to them
not seem like grapes and grandkids. It may to them seem like God
has withheld his hand and his pleasure from them. And so a
psalm like Psalm 88 reminds us And maybe some of us have been
in Psalm 88. It seems a little bit worse than a country song,
doesn’t it, Psalm 88? It’s a difficult place. It’s
a hard place. And as we’ve made our way through
87 other psalms, you’re now aware that when you read Psalm 88,
that it’s not like all the other hard psalms. The other hard psalms
say hard things just like this, but there’s just one more verse.
And it begins usually with the word but. But I hope in God. But God will save me. But God
will make all things better. But that’s not attached to Psalm
88, is it? Psalm 88 just ends, darkness
is my companion. My only friend is darkness. And so I want us to take a peek
at this unique psalm. And thank goodness it is unique.
There is not another like it. But it’s a psalm that speaks
of despair. It’s a psalm that shows us in little glimpses,
the psalmist has knowledge of who God is and what he’s capable
of, but he also is fainting in his heart because God has given
him no sign yet of his goodness. There’s a handful of movements
in this psalm. I’ve got six counted out here. And if you follow through them,
you’ll see that in these six themes, in these six movements
through the Psalm, that it just stays dark. It stays difficult. And it’s a hard place to be for
Ethan, the Ezraite. or Heman, the Ezraite. Ethan
is the next one, Psalm 89. So let’s look first in verses
one and two at the timing in the psalm. Notice how he says
in verse one, this may be the only positive thing he says,
Oh Lord, God of my salvation. If he would have just stopped
there, we would have been pretty good, right? It would have been
a positive psalm. But he goes on to say, I cry out day and
night before you. And so the timing of this Psalm
is day and night. It’s all day, every day. It’s morning, noon, night. And no doubt when the man is
laying in bed on his pillow, he is having a hard time and
God has not yet determined to do any work in his life. Now,
sometimes we get a little impatient. We tell God our request and we
put a little time stamp on it. I’d like this to be done by noon
tomorrow, as if we’re the supervisor, as if we’re the boss, as if we
can give God orders. And so in some cases in our life,
we can ask God for a request. We can pray to him, we can come
to him, we can ask him for these things, and maybe give it a day
or two, and we say, God hasn’t answered me. Well, that’s just
real tough on us, isn’t it? But this is a psalm where a man,
if you read through it, it appears that his whole life has been
hard. His whole life, not just a week
here and there, or a bad month, or a rough patch, but this is
his entire life, it seems, from his youth up to his present age. And so day and night, he cries
out before God, and God hasn’t yet determined to work. Now,
this man hasn’t seen God work yet, and maybe at some point
in his life he does. But this is a protracted, this
is a prolonged series of difficulties. And so there’s a timing of his
day and night crying out before God. He says, let my prayer come
before you. incline your ear to my cry.”
These are words we hear pretty often from the pen of the psalmist,
or the quill, I guess we might should say, or whatever it was
they used. So that’s the first movement, timing. The second
one, verses three through five, I have titled, It’s That Bad. You ever go through something
and Maybe you’re telling somebody about it, and they’re kind of
nodding. What do we do in America, or
in the church in particular, when somebody says, oh, I broke
my arm? What do we immediately say? Oh, I broke my arm once,
too. We have no room for empathy, right? We have no room for, oh,
poor you. Right, y’all experience that.
Somebody says, I’ve got a cancer diagnosis. Well, I have a friend
whose uncle’s cousin once had cancer. We always have to one-up
the story. We just can’t hush and listen. We’re not good at
that. But the psalmist here is saying, It’s as if he’s told
somebody his problem, and they’re in disbelief, and maybe they’re
telling about their grandmother’s friend’s cousin once removed
who had the same problem. They’ll hope nobody else ever
had Psalm 88 problems. But it’s as if the psalmist has
to say, yes, it’s that bad. You can’t believe my troubles. And there’s a sense in verses
three through five where the psalmist is dying, he’s dead,
and he’s envisioning being laid out, as it were, in his grave
clothes. He says, for my soul is full
of troubles, my life draws near to shale. That’s simply the word
for death. I am counted among those who
go down to the pit. I am a man who has no strength,
like one set loose among the dead. and like the slain that
lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for
they are cut off from your hand.” It’s not a real happy spot to
be in. This is a person that has no
hope. I am dying, I am dead, and I have envisioned myself
in my grave clothes laying out in the grave, no hope. Now, if
we’re good Christians, what should we understand? We should understand
that Christ has conquered sin and death. And we should understand
that in our deepest, darkest moments, in our hardest places,
when all hope seems to be lost and no brightness of a new day
seems to be on the horizon, we can hope in the resurrection.
We were talking this week, the kids in our family were talking
with my mom, about her parents. Her father was born in 1905,
and I think died in 1976. My mom’s mother was born in 1907,
and we had her till about 1989. But we were talking about what
they must have experienced, and all the different things, life
experiences they went through. My grandmother Cook used to have
this saying. She said, don’t worry, they can
kill you, but they can’t eat you. And what she meant by that
was, life may get you, but you’re going to end up in heaven. It’s
not final. Whatever happens to you in this
life is not final. And we have to have that viewpoint.
You might not say it as interestingly so as my grandmother, who had
a lot of other interesting sayings, as did my grandfather. We learned
one of those this week. It was rather interesting. But
it’s that bad is what the psalmist is saying. But we have to be
reminded that there is hope in the resurrection. And that’s
what we find in verses three through five. It’s that bad.
But a vision of Christ and the resurrection sure would help
him. Well, in verses six through nine
in this third movement of the psalm, I’ve got this one called
the suffering of Job. In verses six through nine, you
see a lot of words just like the ones that come from Job’s
mouth. In fact, the words are so similar to those of Job, some
wonder if Heman, the Ezraite, is the one who wrote the book
of Job. Don’t know, but it’s a good guess. Look at verses
six through the first part of nine. He says, you have put me
in the depths of the pit. You have put me in the regions
of the dark and the deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me.
You overwhelm me with all your waves. It’s an impossible situation,
isn’t it? I mean, who can get out of the
depths of the pit? Who can come from the regions
of the dark and deep? Who can withstand the wrath of
God, which lies heavy upon him? And who can withstand being overwhelmed
by all the waves of God? He says in verse eight, you have
caused my companions to shun me. It sounds like Job, doesn’t
it? You have made me a horror to them. Remember Job? Some of
you men, this may be your life verse from Job. My breath is
a stench to my wife. It’s a good reminder to brush
your teeth. But it simply means nobody, even my closest ones. It’s not a bad breath statement,
is it? It’s that no one, not even those most intimate with
me, even want to be near me. That’s how bad life has gotten. You’ve caused my companions to
shun me. You’ve made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that
I cannot escape. My eyes grow dim through sorrow. What a hard place. What a hard
place to be there at the beginning of verse nine. My eyes grow dim
through sorrow. I don’t know what you guys have
experienced in your life. You know, we laugh and joke sometimes
about things that are difficult. You know, some of us, our favorite
football team lost a game and we may have felt a little sorrow
over that. We may have experienced some
sort of setback. We may have had some temporary
feeling of pain. But have you ever gotten to a
place Like the beginning of verse nine,
my eyes grow dim through sorrow. You don’t have the strength to
open your eyes. You don’t have the strength within you to have
hope. You don’t think life is worth living. You are so overwhelmed
with sorrow and pain and difficulty and maybe despair and even the
grave is all that seems to give you hope. Well, that’s where
the psalmist is headed next. In verses nine, the second part,
all the way through 12, We’ve got the fourth movement of the
psalm, and it’s, at least in my silly titles, it’s called
Dead Men Praising. Look at what he says. Every day
I call on you, Lord. I spread out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise
you? Is your steadfast love declared
in the grave your faithfulness? Is it declared in Abaddon? Are
your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the
hands of the land of forgetfulness? What’s he saying there? If I’m
dead and gone, do you care? Can I praise you? Can I bring
glory to your name? Can my chief end be to glorify
God and to enjoy him forever? If you have left me for dead
and now I’m dead and gone and in the grave, can the dead praise
you? There’s no view of the afterlife,
is it? Maybe some of you understand the Old Testament view of the
afterlife was extraordinarily limited. Many thought that when
you were dead, you went to Sheol and it was kind of a holding
place. And at some point in time, God took you into what became
known as the bosom of Abraham. And so the view of afterlife
wasn’t as sophisticated as it has become in light of the New
Testament and in Christ. And we can say, well, maybe Ethan,
the Ezraite here, or I’m sorry, is it Heman, the Ezraite? They’re
cousins, I guess. His view of the afterlife isn’t
so sophisticated. He’s just in despair. He’s lost
all hope. And he knows that if he’s dead,
it might just be possible that God may not get glory. And so
we have dead man praising. Well, there’s a fifth movement
and it’s simply silence. And it’s in verses 13 and 14. He says, but I, O Lord, I cry
to you. In the morning, my prayer comes
before you. O Lord, why do you cast away
my soul? Why do you hide your face from
me? Can you imagine what it would
be like to not have the voice of God,
to not have your Bibles, to not have the word of God in your
mind and in your heart, to not have preaching, to not have teaching,
to not have discipleship, to not have your podcast on your
telephone or your television preaching that you enjoy watching. Could you imagine if you just
lived in the world without the word? If you lived in this world
where Satan, the prince of darkness, was the only word of authority.
If you lived in where the world and its systems was the only
thing you knew of, no voice of God, just silence. Can’t you
sort of feel the angst of the psalmist here? He’s in a sense
saying to God, aren’t you gonna speak? Aren’t you gonna say something?
You ever been in a situation like that where just a grunt,
just a nod, just a something to acknowledge your existence.
your weariness, but he gets silence. Well, he said earlier that this
Psalm is basically a bunch of points. I’m miserable. I’m miserable. I’m still miserable. Well, the
last one, he’s still miserable. Verse fifteen through eighteen. He sort of looks around him.
Sort of, I’ve got this one called he double checks things. He looks
back He looks forward and he looks around and basically says,
I look back and my life has stunk. I look forward and it’s only
gonna get worse. And I look around in the present and it’s bad as
well. Notice how he puts it in verses
15 through 18. He says, afflicted and close
to death from my youth up. How’s that for an autobiography?
I suffer your terrors. I am helpless. Your wrath has
swept over me, your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround
me like a flood all day long. There’s the past, there’s the
present. They close on me together. You have caused my beloved and
my friend to shun me and my companions have become darkness. Maybe he’s doing a little reality
check. Is it really this bad? Is it really this awful? And
he looks back, he looks forward, he looks around. Yep, it’s that
bad. So what do we do with a psalm
like this? Do we just go out of here in silence and say, well,
what’s that song? Que sera sera, whatever will
be will be. What do we do? What’s our worldview
tell us? This is an odd psalm. This is
a psalm of life without Christ. This is a psalm that is dark
and hopeless. Well, there’s a couple truths
that come to mind. And some we even had this morning in our
morning message, our morning sermon. The first thing that
this psalm can teach us is life is tough. I mean, you all probably
have experienced that. Life is just plain hard. Life
is tough, and if you don’t have a Christian worldview, a Christian
life view, a Christian philosophical view of things and know the truth,
you will not be able to handle a tough life, and you will live
in depression. You will live in fits and stitches, as they
say. But we need to understand that
because we live in a world that is cursed by sin, even for Christians,
life is tough. What did God tell Adam? He said,
you will work hard, you will bust your fingers, you will bloody
your knuckles, and you’ll be lucky to have some fruit to show
for it. It’s just hard life. Your relationships will struggle. And so we learn that life is
tough. We also learn that sin has marred
this world. We talked this morning about
how the kingdom of God introduces us to the new heavens and the
new earth and the future. And how when Jesus is doing miracles,
he’s healing, he’s exercising. He’s teaching. He’s giving the
world, in a sense, a down payment on the new heavens and the earth,
and he’s saying to them, yes, I created the world and everything
in it. It’s your ancestor, Adam, that messed it all up with sin,
and I’m gonna come make all things new. And just so you’ll believe
me that I’ll come make all things new, watch this lame guy walk.
Watch this deaf guy hear. Watch this blind man see. Watch this dead man live. Watch
the water be still. And so we have to understand
that though this is a tough life, though that creation has been
subjected to futility, and the cosmos is under the curse of
God, that God will make all things new. Another thing we have to
understand is sometimes we have to be like, was it Jacob? And his attitude was this, I
won’t let you go. until you bless me. And so Psalm
88, though it ends at verse 18, it could go on for verse after
verse after verse. The Psalm is saying to God, keep
listening to me, because I’m gonna keep talking. Don’t go
away, I’m miserable, life stinks, you’ve made my life hard, but
I’m gonna keep talking to you. I’m gonna keep doing what I do
in verse one. Oh Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you, let my prayer be heard. Here’s one last thing we should
remember. God is sovereign. He has a plan. God is sovereign. He has a plan and you fit into
it. God is sovereign. He has a plan and you fit into
it and your misery, this may sound strange, is tailor made
by God so that you will look up at him and so that he can
form and fashion your life, removing what is impure and making you
into the image of Christ so that you can be effective for him.
That’s a tough pill to swallow, isn’t it? But that’s the pill
of the scripture. And we thank God that we don’t
find ourselves in a place like him in the Ezra height, uh, that
it is so bad and we have no view of Christ. We take these hardships
and we run them through the cross. knowing that the worst of evil
has been done to our faithful Savior. And whatever He has,
or we’re going through, He’s been through worse. And He never
leaves our side. He is with us to the bitter end,
actually to the glorious end. Let’s pause and give thanks.
Our Lord and God, we give you thanks and praise that in our
hardships, in our struggles, in our difficulties, it may seem
dark, it may seem depressing, it may seem hopeless and endless,
it may seem futile, but we have to look at life through the lens
of the cross. We have to realize that our hardships make sense,
that the Master went through these things and so will the
students. You’ve promised us not a life
of ease, but one of suffering. And so we want to take our suffering
in stride knowing that it can make sense in light of Christ.
So give us hope, give us help. Help us to be of encouragement
to others. And we thank you that in this dark and dying world,
we can live with the light of Christ Jesus, knowing that he
will come and make all things new. And we bless you for these
truths. And we pray it all in the name
of Christ. Amen.