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.
As we get ready to roll into the holidays, I thought that we would look at a few Psalms as we build up the Advent Season. Let’s begin with Psalm 88.
Suffering is not a respecter of persons. Kings, queens, princes, Hollywood actresses and great athletes are reduced to mere people when suffering…there are no classes, no races, no ‘better than you’ in such a vulnerable moment. There are just people. We live in an age where ‘being better’ is highly touted. Sadly, even in the church we see the “have” and “have nots”. We ironically have ‘Christian stars’ whatever that might mean. But there is an equalizing reality for mankind, a neutralizing circumstance that renders us all, merely human…Suffering.
Suffering doesn’t care how much money you make, what side of the tracks you live on, how beautiful or scared you happen to be. It renders us all the same…we are all people affected deeply by the sin in the world and in the sin in our own hearts.
In the Psalter, the song book for the people of God, we find prayers that bring us to encounter God. There are psalms giving praise to God, thanksgiving to Him, as well as those asking for help, relief and even rescue. Almost all the Psalms take us into deep water, they make real what we feel and experience and it is why Christians return to the Psalms over and over again. Nowhere is being human so powerfully set for us than in the poetry of God the Holy Spirit.
Almost all the Psalms end with a resolve…with a note of hope and expectation of God’s rescue. I say, almost all. There are two that do not. Psalm 88 and 39. When we read these psalms we say, ‘Yea…me too! I get that…I feel that…I know exactly what the psalmist is feeling!’ However, we are left in these Psalms, in the one we are looking at the next two days, without resolve. It does not end with a positive word.
Why? Why would God do that? Why would we be left without an immediate answer…left to wait in the darkness? And I am not exaggerating. Darkness is mentioned three times in this psalm, in verse 6, 12 and 18. The last word of the Psalm is ‘darkness’…we end…and there is no light. What kind of prayer, what kind of Christian communication with God, has darkness as its last word? At least one of the reasons God does this is…that life does this.
There are times where there is no clarity…there is nothing to be done, but wait and trust…wait and trust…in the darkness. This is true for some of you who are this morning reading this… today, you have pain, trouble, deep heart ache…I know this. I want so badly to tell you something, to give you something that “fixes” it all. But we both know…there is no such thing. The Lord says to sit in the darkness and to trust.
Saying all that, is not the same as saying that there is no hope, there is ALWAYS hope where Yahweh is…even hope in the darkness. Let me give you four things, two this morning and two tomorrow, that the sons of Korah would teach us in this holy song.
First, darkness can at times be protracted…meaning, it can last for a while.
We have all been in that place where we pray and pray and pray and do all the right things and are intentional about our liturgies and practices and still find ourselves in both external and internal darkness. Nothing seems to be working. The psalmist shows his faith, calling upon the God of his salvation. He is in prayer, lifting his hands in submission to the Lord, rising in the morning to pray…but nothing.
External darkness refers to the suffering that is ours because of sin in the world. This is where circumstances bring difficulty and it is outside of ourselves. Pressure, trial and suffering from ‘out there’. We don’t know what they are for the psalmist here in Psalm 88, but we do know that all his close friends are gone, and he is alone.
Internal darkness or maybe what we would call spiritual darkness is that which finds our suffering as the consequence of our own sin. Either we are not confessing and repenting of it and the Lord allows us to have what we sinfully desire…this brings great suffering. Or we are in the process of putting sin to death and finding it to be much more of a demon than imagined. In any case, as with the Psalmist, we can’t find God…we feel God’s disciplining hand and it seems, it feels, that God is nowhere, that we are rejected by God. The suffering makes us feel as though God’s love and presence has left us.
Sometimes if a problem is external only your faith can muddle through. The problem for us, as with the Psalmist, is not really the circumstance, but that he can’t find God in the mess. If you remember, that is Job’s dilemma. He has had all kinds of terrible things done to him by the hand of Satan, but what made his trial so unbearable was that he couldn’t seem to find the Lord in the midst of it. He prays and prays and yet is still in darkness. You can do all the right things and still find yourself feeling alone.
Perhaps you are thinking: “But doesn’t the bible say God is working all things out for good???” Oh yes, absolutely, but that doesn’t change the fact that you may go a long time and never know what the purpose is or what that good thing is that God is doing. There are all kinds of mistakes, false comfort that Christians take from Romans 8:28.
When bad things happen, we are not to think that Romans 8:28 is telling us, Hey guys, these are just blessings in disguise, these are not bad things at all. That is wrong, they are bad things. The promise is notif you love God you won’t have as many bad things happen to you as other people have happened to them. The promise is not that if you really love God the bad things really are not bad they are really good things.
But here is another mistake we make. We seem to be saying that because God is going to use my suffering for some noble reason, that makes it worth it. “If one person comes to the Lord through my trial…through my son’s death, through my illness…well then it will all be worth it.”
Ok. But what if no one comes to the Lord through your suffering? What if watching your loved one slowly suffer and leave this world, results in not one tangible “good thing” seen? So…it was meaningless? God didn’t use it for good?
One writer said, “Whoever tries to devise from this scripture a philosophy of life where everything always turns out right will have to tear this page out of the bible.”
Now, maybe you are thinking: What am I supposed to do with this? Well, because this can happen, our expectations have much to do with how we process things. Let me give you an example: Let’s say you are getting ready to go into a room and you are told it is the honeymoon suite, but when you go it, it is just average, not much different than a $39 room at Motel 6. You will conclude, well this is terrible, what a dump!
But if you are told the room you are going into is a jail cell, and when you get there, there is a nicely made bed, a television, internet access, a small little refrigerator and a window overlooking the river. You would then conclude; Hey this is really nice. Your expectations control how you experience things. If you think, “Hey I am a good person, good things have to happen because I love Jesus, things have to end the way I want them to…I don’t deserve this.” Then you could be in trouble.
You may remember that I Peter tells us that there is praise, glory and honor…for you…as your faith, more precious that gold is tested…but when? When do you receive this? What does it say? “At the revelation of Jesus Christ.” When does this all end? At the end. In this life the darkness might last a while.
Second, times of darkness are the best places to learn grace. The Psalm is a prayer, he is talking to God, but he really pushes the edges…he is speaking his mind, perhaps we could say, he is speaking his feelings. In verses 10-12 it almost sounds a bit dis-respectful as though he is cross-examining God!
I want to praise you and tell of your deeds and declare your faithfulness but how can I when I am being trampled? Don’t you want me to tell others, don’t you want me to extol you to the nations? Then why in the world are you doing this? Why are you not answering me…how am I supposed to do what YOU want when all of this is paralyzing me? And yet nothing.
Look at verse 15. From my youth…He is taking the difficulty of his present and characterizing his entire life with it, and what he is saying is; God, you have never been there for me, you have allowed me to suffer for years, even since I was little!
Some have said that this is blasphemy, an example of what we should NEVER do! In Ps 39, we read, ‘turn your face away from me so I have peace before I die.’ And then here in Psalm 88, darkness is my closest friend. In other words, “Darkness is a better friend than you, God”.
This is over the top language about real life! Derek Kidner comments: “The very presence of these prayers are a witness to God’s understanding that he knows how men speak when they are desperate.” God did not censer these prayers. He didn’t say I don’t want to be identified with this kind of speech. In fact, by leaving them in, he DOES identify with this man because this man is the Lord’s. That is the very reason God keeps these in our Bible is that He knows this is how we talk and feel, when things are difficult…He is still our God, verse one, the God who saves.
And God is saying: “I am your God not because you put on a happy face every morning, not because you say everything just right, not because you do everything right and always speak right, I am your God because I love you and I have and I will save you.”
We need that. In our dark times, that is when the grace and patience of God are made evident. That is when we most mean the words that Peter said to Jesus: “Lord…to whom shall I go?”
Prayer: Father, I confess that I often get lost in the darkness. I find it unsettling and I fail to wait patiently in faith and trust. Help me…help me to wait on You with hope that although I am at a loss, You have always proven faithful and will again. Do for me what such times are designed to teach that I might know that even when I can’t find the answers, I can and will find the comfort of the Savior and the Spirit of my God, in Jesus name, Amen.
Psalm 88