O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you.
2 Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!
3 For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5 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.
6 You have put me in the depths of the pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah
8 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;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call upon you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
13 But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.
Although this is one of few Psalms that does not resolve that is not to say that we can’t find hope in it. Yesterday we looked at the protracted nature of darkness but also that darkness is often the best place for us to find the grace of God. Third and related to the last point, darkness causes our trust and faith to grow as it does at no other time. When you are experiencing outer and inward darkness, when it seems you are getting nothing out of prayer, maybe even getting nothing out of worship, no benefit, when it seems that doing all the right things just doesn’t seem to pay off…that is when you are closest to a grace awakening.
The book of Job starts with Satan taunting God, he points to Job: “Does Job serve God for nothing?” He is pointing to us, to devoted Christians and saying; Look at them they are not really serving you, they are serving you because it pays.” We say, “No, I am serving God, I am serving the poor and my neighbor, seeking to be faithful to the Lord”. “No they are not”,accuses Satan, “they are doing this to feel good, to go to heaven, they are not loving You, for you, they are feigning love because they want the benefits of loving You. “That is what human beings are,” says Satan, “absolutely self- centered even when they look like they are serving others, or serving You, they are serving themselves and I can prove it!!!”
Plunge them into darkness and see what happens. Don’t answer their prayers for a while, don’t give them your presence, no earthly comforts. Make it so that being faithful to You pays them nothing. Do this and they will curse you because these so-called people of yours are not servants, they are mercenaries.
What an accusation! What do you make of Satan’s words? It is true, isn’t it? We almost always start with God this way. We have a need, a problem and we want something, but as soon as things get hard, he is not answering us, the way we want, or when we want… Then we start wondering and complaining: Why is this happening, look at all I am doing, I started going to prayer meetings and bible study, and even Sunday School, and what am I getting for this? Nothing good that I can see! Is it possible that Satan is right? Could he be correct about our self-centeredness and all the rest of it?
But if you read carefully, something has begun to happen in Ps. 88. Don’t forget, as bad as this is, who is he talking to? He is complaining to God, everything he does is prayer. Even at the end about the darkness he is saying it to God, he is still praying, still crying out about the darkness.
He is staying with God. He will not leave God and this means Satan is defeated. We may not be getting what we want, when we want, but we will not leave our God. We will cling to Him, all the more resolutely.
Something has happened to the psalmist in the darkness. He is staying with God, for nothing. And only when you go into dual darkness, outward and inward, where serving and praying gives you nothing, a great choice comes to you: We will see whether we got into this relationship to serve the Lord, or basically to get the Lord to serve us…now we will know.
If you, in the darkness, just hold on, and maybe all you can say is why, why, why, I don’t understand, I am downcast and can’t make sense of anything…But…but, I will not leave….I am going to pray, serve, and love not because I am getting from you what I think I need, but because you are God. You are who you are and I am who I am and perhaps, you are not just in the darkness, perhaps…you ARE the darkness…therefore, I will not leave.
If you do that, you have again defeated Satan and you are growing. When the darkness leaves, and it will, perhaps in this life, but with certainty in the next… if you have made the choice to lose everything but Jesus, then the pressure will turn you from a piece of coal into a diamond. It is only in the darkness that you can be changed into someone who serves the Lord…no matter what.
You will remember when Sam is with Frodo and they are going to the mountain and Sam realizes they are going to die. He realizes this and the thought comes, just to give up curl up in a little ball and die, just quit. Then the text says not the movie but the text: “But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned into a new strength. Sam’s plain hobbit face grew stern, almost grim, and his will hardened and he suddenly felt a thrill as though he was turning into a creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could ever subdue.”
I don’t care about the consequences, I don’t care that it looks like that hope is gone, I am going to do it. He turned into something, into someone else. It is in the darkness we are most able to become a great heart.
Last, I would ask you to consider that Darkness is relative. When you are in the darkness it feels absolute, you feel as though the misery is complete that God has abandoned you. The darkness feels absolute and permanent. The title of the psalm if you will look, Heman the Ezrahite.
We read in I Chronicles 6 that Hemen was a leader in poetry and a musician. We find him in Psalms 42-49 and then again in the 80’s. Heman helped write these…some of the greatest poetry in the world, his art has helped millions. Yahweh used the darkness to make him something he was not. The darkness was not eternal, it was not complete, it was subjective not objective.
Here is the question for us:
How can I know when I feel the darkness that it is not complete? How can I know that what was true for Hemen is actually what is true for me? Well, here is how:
We read in Psalm 39, “…turn your face away from me.” In Psalm 88, we read that “…darkness is my closest friend” Remind you of anyone? In Matthew 27:45, we read the words of a dying Jesus. We read that darkness covered the entire earth, nothing but darkness and Jesus asked the Father, why have you turned your face from me?
Jesus got the ultimate darkness that Hemen thought he had gotten but hadn’t. Jesus entered darkness as none other ever has, completely and utterly abandoned, why? Why the absolute darkness, why was darkness Jesus’ only friend? Because God wanted to forgive us, and when you forgive someone who has wronged you, you have to absorb all the darkness, you have to become the darkness. And so, for God to forgive us, he had to take the ultimate darkness.
Jesus was truly abandoned, God’s face was turned away from him, so that although it might feel that way for us, it is not that way at all. When Jesus was in Gethsemane and the darkness was coming, he didn’t abandon you, He didn’t walk away. He didn’t abandon you in HIS ultimate darkness. Why would you ever believe that He would abandon you in yours? This means there is an answer to the psalmist question that he asks in the middle of the Psalm: “Do you show your wonders, do the dead rise up and praise you”…and the answer is YES.
I remember hearing of a dying woman being asked how she was doing. She responded, oh not too well, but nothing that the resurrection can’t cure! My friends, I know what it often feels like, but you must remember, the Lord suffered ultimate darkness…so that we never have to.
Prayer: Father in heaven, help me this day and in the days to come as we begin our approach with Jesus to Jerusalem and to the holiest of weeks, to consider Jesus. Help me to see more acutely what He was made to endure, suffer and triumph over so that I might be free from sin, death, hell, guilt and sorrow. May His life, death and resurrection be set before my mind and heart that I might not wander nor grow complacent, but seek in all ways to give myself to Him who unreservedly gave Himself for me, in His name I pray, Amen.
Hymn: