Psalm 88: I Cry to You

 I had like to invite you all to begin to return to your seats and as you make your way back. Slowly but surely, uh, you can go ahead and turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 88, Psalm 88. We are continuing our series in the book of Psalms, and I think because of the content of our psalm today, it's important to remind you that the Psalms were once a songbook used in worship for Israel, and it was used to sing together in worship ways to form God's people.

How to corporately express joy and anguish and Thanksgiving requests, celebration, and even the history of Israel. And our Psalm today is a song of the sons of Quora who were descendants of Quora, as you might tell from the name, who attempted. If you remember, Cora attempted to lead a rebellion against Moses back in number 16.

And these descendants of Cora were of the tribe of Levi. And many had tabernacle responsibilities. And then when King David came along, he gave them worship responsibilities of songwriting. Haman, the author of today's Psalm, is one of the sons of Cora, and in one Chronicles 6 33, he's identified as his singer and as the grandson of the Prophet Samuel.

He's not only credited, he's only credited with writing this psalm. He, he doesn't write anything else in the Bible. Not much else is told about him in the Bible, but Psalm 88. The one that he wrote and the one that we're talking about today is bleak. It's bleak. When I found out I'd be preaching this Psalm months ago, I remember reading it and thinking, well, thanks Blake and Mark, you guys gave me this one.

And the more I researched this psalm and the more I read what people said about it, the statements were also bleak. It was sad. It's the only chapter in the Bible without hope, people would say it's the saddest psalm. It's full of angst and anguish and grief. And yes, Psalm 88 is dark and it's sad, and yet it is God's word.

It's God's word written for us. It's good for teaching and equipping us for good work, and it is just as necessary as any other Psalm that we find in the Bible. And so we have to treat it that way. So if you would please stand with me for the reading of God's word from Psalm 88.

Oh 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 shield. I am counted among those who go down to the pit. I'm 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're 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 of 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, oh 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 or your faithfulness in abbadon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

But I Oh Lord, cry to you in the morning. My prayer comes before you. Oh 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 assault destroys me. They surround me like a flood.

All day long. They close in on me. Together you have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become. Darkness. The prophet Isaiah tells us that people are like grass and beauty, like the flowers of the field. Well, the grass withers and the flowers fade, but this, the word of our God will stand forever.

This is the word of the Lord. Thank you. See God. You may be seated.

I hope you see now what I mean when I say this, Psalm is bleak. But I do believe it serves an incredible purpose in scripture, and I hope today that you see that Psalm 88 demonstrates that we must turn to God in our anguish, even if it's all we have to give him. We must turn to God in our anguish, even if it's all we have to give him.

And I have three points that will help us walk through this Psalm Point one, a realistic prayer point. Two lessons from the pit. And 0.3 light in the darkness. So that's one, A realistic prayer. Two lessons from the pit, and three light in the darkness. So first, a realistic prayer. I am so thankful that this psalm is in the Bible.

I know it reads as harsh. And sad, and I know it doesn't sound very hopeful or redemptive, but it's honest. And unfortunately it's relatable and it's realistic for so many of us in this room. And we don't know for sure what kind of suffering that Haman was going through. Uh, scholars debate on this, but uh, many say it's some kind of physical suffering.

Uh, in verses four through five, it says, I'm a man who has no strength. Like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, and that possibly points at some physical suffering, or his body is failing him. Some scholars point at verses eight and 18 where our author says, 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. And verse 18, you have caused my beloved and my friends to shun me. And those scholars point out that whatever the source of the suff suffering, Haman has become isolated from his community. And that is in itself a terrible kind of suffering.

He is alone. He is lonely. But what we can say now is that no matter the kind of suffering that Haman is facing, it's not a stretch for me to say that many of us in this room have found ourselves in similar areas or times of hopelessness and anger in our own suffering. Last week I was sitting in the Grove, our offices with a couple other people, and we were talking about the worst pain that we'd ever felt before.

And it was clear from our answers. They ranged everything from a sprained ankle to horrible surgical operations that we've gone through. But it was clear and true from the conversation that everyone had experienced pain on some level. Everyone's experienced it. And no matter the severity of the suffering that we've all faced in our lives, we've all suffered, we can all recognize how wounded this world is and how awful life can be.

Sometimes it is a truth. It is a truth. And many of you know my struggle with Crohn's disease. And the chronic pain that I have from it. I remember my senior year of college just being crumpled in a ball on the ground in my apartment, just screaming and angry and so sad and crying and bitter toward God about the, the state of my body and the darkness of my mind and the hurt in my soul.

And for you brothers and sisters in the audience. I hope, and I pray that that is never a place you find yourself, but I know if we're honest with each other, that many of you have been there with me. And though we may hope and pray against it, many of you will find yourself there someday. And when I suffer and when you suffer, well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that anger.

What do I do with that anger and that sadness and that grief and that darkness? Do I pretend like it's all okay? It's fine. Maybe you felt that way too. What do I do with this anger? But right there in that anger is why I am so glad, and I love that this psalm is in the Bible. I love that this Psalm is in the Bible because it sounds like so many of the prayers that I have prayed and to God in my life and my worst suffering, it sounds so much like them, and some of us might be led to think that prayers like this, like in this psalm, would make God mad, but this chapter did not slip its way past God when it made its way into the Bible.

This psalm is God breathed. It is God's word. Every word of anger and anguish and fear and trembling and sadness contained in this Psalm is God's word. And it, just like any of the other Psalms, teaches us how to pray. Now, why would God allow a prayer like this into the Bible? Why would he allow a prayer like this into the Bible?

Uh, well, let me put it this way, this time of year is really hard for me, and every year it seems to get harder and harder for me. Why? Well, it's the end of the summer, which means that the seniors in the youth group are graduating and they're moving away. They're about to leave the youth group for good and head off into the next phase of life.

And I'll miss them so much. And I mean, I still get to see them when they come home right from breaks, or if they continue to attend to Trinity. They come every Sunday and that's awesome. But I don't get to see them every Wednesday night. I don't get to hear how their weeks were. I don't get to bring them to camp in the summers and I don't get to watch them grow up as much anymore.

I don't get to walk alongside of them in their faith, and that has become really difficult for me. I opened up to to, to people about this recently. Like that is just really hard. It's a hard part, part about ministry, and I cannot imagine how you parents do it. I don't understand how you parents do it, because one day, right, you hold a baby in your arms and you watch them grow up in front of your eyes and become their own people, right?

They learn how to walk in front of you, and when they learn how to talk, they learn how to talk to you. And those days go by and you spend them with them. You spend their whole days with them. And then maybe they go off to school or daycare one day, and now there's a little part of the day where you don't know what's going on, but they come home and they're probably really excited to tell you about their day, all the things that they learned and did, and you're really excited to hear about it.

And later when they get older and they get their driver's licenses right, and now they have more freedom and they're hanging out with friends and you don't need to drive them to hang out, you don't need to drive them to school anymore.

You know, a little less about this human that you raised. You get to see them a little less and talk to them a little less, and life for them becomes more busy and exists more away from home than ever has. And then one day they leave home and they live apart from you. And I know how special those phone calls or those FaceTimes are because you really wanna know how they're doing.

You really wanna hear about their days, and it's hard because you've known them their whole life and you've known about their days and now you don't know as much anymore. You wanna know all the good things and you wanna know all the bad things too. You wanna laugh with your kids and you want to cry with your kids when, when they're laughing.

You wanna laugh when they're crying. You want to cry with them, and you want them to know that they're not alone and that you care about their stories. And that's beautiful and I think how much parents love to hear from their children, all the good and all the bad, and I think how much more our heavenly Father who loves us and made us from nothing wants to hear from us how much more the God who crafted us from nothing and knew us and loved us before we were born, the God who died for us.

He wants to know everything going on in your life. He wants to hear from you. And our and and his word. He asks us to pray to him. He wants to hear all the good and the bad. David says it this way in Psalm 18, in my distress, I called upon the Lord to my God. I cried for help from his temple. He heard my voice and my cried to him, reached his ears.

And so when we read Psalm 88. And we see this bitter and angry and distraught prayer. We understand this, that our God is not only big enough to meet us in our sorrow and our anger, but he also wants to meet us in our sorrow and our anger. He wants to hear from you and he listens. He wants to hear from you, and he listens.

You're gonna go somewhere with your anger. You will. You'll go somewhere with your anger. Let that place be to God in prayer. And let your prayers be honest, like Psalm 88 is honest. We don't need to make ourselves perfect and eloquent in our prayers. That's what makes the good news of Romans eight of what Reese and Sheldon read earlier, so amazing.

It says this, likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know how to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches his heart knows what is the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Sometimes our prayers are angry and sad and confused, and that's okay. That's okay. That's what Psalm 88 teaches us. Point one, a realistic prayer. It is okay to give your anger to God. It is okay to give your anger to God. Which leads us to 0.2 lessons from the pit. In our passage today, the author describes where he is twice as the pit twice.

He says it like the grave, once he relates his position to shield, and once his abbadon. Sheel. What sheel means is a matter of debate among many Hebrew scholars. We see it throughout the Old Testament, and this word exists as a proper noun throughout the Old Testament with two basic uses. It's used to reference both the literal grave like to be put into the ground, and then the other time it's used to describe the underworld, right?

Or, or hell, as you might understand it, right? Some place, some location for those people after. Death, that's a negative connotation. It's likely best to understand it as a proper noun, the grave and the literal physical meaning, but also the dominion. Um, for some souls of the bodies buried in the grave, it is usually best, has a neutral connotation, but sometimes often has this relation of fear of death or fear for the grave, or a negative interpretation of the afterlife.

And now abbadon, on the other hand, it literally means destruction or the place of destruction. And in Revelation nine, Abbadon is the name given to the angel of the bottomless pit, the king of the locusts who plague the earth. That's a negative connotation, right? That's a, that's a bleak and a dark thing.

And any of these terms, the pit, the grave, Sheol, abbadon, any of them, help us understand that the, the poet in this psalm, Haman, is using them as an analogy to show that he's about as low as he can go. He's about as low as he can go. He's dragged to the bottom of a pit. His suffering has dragged him low. He compares it even to being dead.

He's as good as dead. And if you felt this way, you, you get it. You understand that feeling. It's, it's empty, it's cold, it's crushing, it's a feeling of loneliness and fear when you find yourself at the bottom of a pit, and that's where he is. And I know that the temptation for us as Christians who know that God is sovereign over all things is to say to ourselves or to say to those who suffer as some kind of constellation prize.

Well, God has a purpose in your suffering. It's true. It is true. It has to be true that if God is sovereign over all things and he's indeed sovereign over all things, he's in sovereign over our suffering as well. That's good news. It's another incredible thing about Romans eight that we heard earlier, um, that God works all things together for the good of those who love him.

And that is a fact. And while that will always be true, it's not always a helpful thing to say to people when they are in the pit of suffering because there's very little immediate relief from pain in that fact. Even if we might trust that God has a plan and he, he does, we may never know that plan in this life.

We may never, and we probably will not know that plan in this life. And the knowledge of a future purpose does not change the hurt of a present pain. It does not often change the hurt of a present pain. And I think that's why in, in One Kings 19, which is one of my favorite passages in the Bible, it's the story of Elijah, right?

And what, what happened He, he finds himself in the desert. He goes into the desert because he's overwhelmed with depression and sadness and anger because there are death threats against him. And he feels alone in his worship of God. And he goes and he lies down under a broom tree, which is like a umbrella almost, of a tree that gives him some shade.

And he lies down there and God does what? He gives him food. He gives him rest, and he says to him, the journey is too much for you. It's not until Elijah has recovered that God calls him to Mount Horeb to teach him something, right? He allows him to rest and he comforts him and he acknowledges the weight of it all and what does that show us?

Right? For those who are currently in the pit, for those who are in that midst of suffering, what they need is comfort and help. And maybe we can provide that to them, and we can do what we can to provide that to them. But for those who are not there yet, or for those who have been there and who are not there, or for those who probably all of us at one day will be there again, what do we have to learn about being in that place in the pit at the bottom, what can we learn about God and ourselves in our suffering?

In other words, what does being in the pit teach us about our faith? Well, in 2021, a singer with the stage name of night bird auditioned for America's Got Talent and the clip of her auditioning went viral because she got the golden buzzer, which if you know anything about America's Got Talent, what that means is she goes from an automatic pass from, uh, those auditions to the live episodes later in the competition.

It's a big deal. Now, night Bird was a two time survivor of cancer and when her, she got cancer again, the third diagnosis, her husband divorced her. And eventually that third diagnosis did take her life. I mean, she's a Christian. She was a Christian, and in her online blog, she published what she called God is on the bathroom Floor.

And a guest preacher here a couple years ago used this example and I thought it'd be a appropriate example to use again. Um, we don't have time to read the whole thing. But, uh, I think there are a few excerpts that it shows that reflect her message in the passage. I'm gonna read it to you. Um, Nyberg wrote this about her experience with cancer.

As a Christian, I am God's downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at his door every day, sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses, sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. I have called him a cheat and a liar. And I meant it. I have told him I wanted to die and I meant it.

Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for him. These are the prayers I repeat. Night and day. Sunrise. Sunset. Call me bitter if you want to. That's fair. Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened.

But count me also among the friends of God, even on days when I'm not sick, sometimes I go lay on the mat in the afternoon light to listen for him. I know it sounds crazy and I can't really explain it, but God is in there. Even now. I've heard it said that some people can't see God because they won't look low enough, and it's true.

If you can't see him look lower. God is on the bathroom floor. I love this blog post from Nyer because it reminds me of a modern retelling or rewriting of Psalm 88. She's honest about her anger and she has every right to be right. Cancer three times, uh, divorce. She's honest about her sadness and she finds herself as low as she can go, and she's screaming out to God and it is right there in her lowest that she encounters him most clearly.

Because listen, if you can lose your health, if you can lose your community, you can lose your sense of safety. If you can lose all of that, and you find yourself as close to death as being in the bottom of a pit, a pit of darkness, when like Haman, you feel alone and abandoned. If all that can be true and you still turn to God, what an incredible demonstration of faith in God's love for us, even at our lowest, that God is there.

See, if you look through the Psalm, notice that that Haman is saying all of this to God. He's saying all of this to God and all of his anger and anguish, he still recognizes God as the only one that he can turn to. The measure of our faith is not our ability to always be happy and to hide the pain. The measure of our faith is whether we continue to go to God 'cause he's the only one that we can turn to.

With everything. With everything. It's the reason that Satan is the loser in the Book of Job. See Satan bets God that he could get job to turn away. If he sent job enough suffering, if only he suffered enough, then job will turn away. And job faces a lot of suffering if you've read it, you know, and job's friends show up and instead of comforting him, they, they try to figure out what job must have done wrong to deserve this.

And they offer flimsy platitudes to him. But in the midst of all of his hurt and all of his pain and his anguish and his unsupportive community. Never once does job turn away from God and so Satan loses Satan loses. Jonathan Edwards and his religious affections talks about how Satan can imitate every part of your faith, spiritual experience wise sounding teachings.

Satan can quote scripture at you, but he cannot fabricate one thing, and that's perseverance through suffering. Perseverance through suffering. If you're in the pit and you're at your very lowest, and you can still turn to your Heavenly Father who loves you, even with all that anger, even with all of that anguish and even with all that bitterness, you still turn to God and you place your faith in him.

How incredible of a testimony it is to the endurance of the faith that God gives us. How incredible of a testimony that is. It's the embodiment of what it says in Hebrews that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Because we are sure and certain that even when the world is dark and bleak, and empty and lonely and we're at the bottom of that pit, that our God still loves us right there sometimes.

It's right where he meets us most clearly. Is it easy to believe? No. No. Faith is not easy. Faith is not easy. Perseverance is not easy. But neither of those things are things that we have to produce on our own. So then how do we do this? How do we persevere through suffering? How do we continue to have faith?

That leads us to our last point, light from the darkness. So to quickly recap, 0.1 was a realistic prayer. It's okay to go to God in your anger. Point two, learning from the pit. God meets us at our lowest. And 0.3, a light from the darkness. One of the repeated theme words in this psalm is dark or darkness.

It shows up quite a few times. Um, verse six, you have put me in the depths of the pit, in the region's dark in deep. Verse 12 are your wonders known in the darkness. And then in the last verse, the word that the psalm ends on is darkness. He says, my companions have become darkness. That's the way the whole prayer ends.

Darkness. And this theme of darkness is something that we see actually throughout scripture. It is constant throughout scripture. Sometimes it's used to describe evil like in John three other times, like in Acts 26, it's used to describe the domain of Satan and other places. Like here in Psalm 88 and in Joe Three, darkness is used to describe that deep suffering that we've been talking about.

It's, it's dark, it's darkness. And altogether we might categorize this, view, this, this idea of darkness, this theme as the wound of sin and suffering on the world. The Bible talks about it often that from the entrance of sin in Genesis three, there's a problem that the world is cloaked in the darkness of man's rebellion against God.

It's a plague of sin. It's a plague of suffering. It's a darkness in the way that man walks. And I think darkness is the perfect illustration for this. I remember when I was in sixth grade in St. Louis, we took a class trip to go spelunking, which is means to go cave exploring, and I would never take sixth graders cave exploring now, but for some reason our teachers thought it was a great idea.

We got dressed up in our wetsuits and headlamps and we descended into this hole in the ground that opened up into a bigger cavern. And we walked further and further into the cave and we waited through water that was like up to here on me, and we crossed gaps and we had to jump across and we went deeper underground until we reached this larger area of the cave.

And the guide that took us down there told us, Hey, turn your headlamps off. Turn your flashlights off. And only he had his flashlight on and then he turned it off. I don't know if you've ever been in that kind of darkness before. There's literally no light at all. You can't see anything. The sun could not reach that part of the cave.

You could wave your hand in front of your face and you have no idea. It's that dark. You could feel it. Right. It's, it's almost oppressive, that darkness. If you ever, if you've ever been in that kind of darkness, you know what I'm talking about. And when you find yourself in that kind of darkness, you, you get it.

You get the, the use of darkness in this psalm. Um, we covered that. We can turn to God in that darkness. And we covered that. God still loves us in that darkness, but how do we persevere in that kind of darkness? Imagine being in that cave like I was. Right. You can't see your hand in front of your face.

Imagine thinking that, oh, if I just strained my eyes hard enough, I'll be able to see. Or if I just force myself to have night vision, right, E, everything's gonna be okay. I can, I can make myself see, it's silly. It's silly to think that way, right? Well, that's how we are when we suffer and we find ourselves in that darkness and thinking, well, if we just pulled ourselves up, if we just made ourselves feel better, if we just forget all the bad things happening, if we tried really, really hard, then we can lift ourselves out of this pit.

If we just gave enough money, if we just faked being happy enough, if we just send less, then maybe it won't be dark anymore. It's foolish. It is foolishness. What is the one thing that pierces darkness? Isaiah nine. Two. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness on them, light has shown.

Jesus enters into the darkness with us and brings light. He brings himself, he says it in John eight, two, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Not only does God see us in our darkness and draw near to us, but he entered into the darkness and experienced it as Jesus.

We have a God who knows what it's like to suffer. He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. And on the cross when he breathed his last, what happened? Darkness. Darkness covered the world. Jesus knows what that darkness is like, and he endured it out of love to bring light to you and to me.

And as the late Tim Keller once said, he did not abandon us in his darkness. Why would he abandon you and yours?

Your perseverance through suffering is not about your ability to be strong enough or to endure it, but more so about basking in the light of your loving God who is the author and perfecter of our faith. So then what does it practically then look to to, to lean on the light of Christ, to bask in that in dark times, I mentioned earlier how darkness is seen as a theme throughout all of scripture.

And how Christ enters into that darkness as light. Well, one incredible thing that we see in the New Testament after Christ's resurrection and the imputation of Christ's righteousness on those who love him and put their faith in him and the permanent indwelling of the spirit and believers is now we are called light.

We are called to be light. We'll talk more about this passage in the fall, but in Ephesians five, eight through nine, Paul says this, for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.

Now, there's a greater context to that that we'll talk about again in the fall, but it this pertains here, right? If we, we think about this idea of darkness being the totality of sin and suffering in the world, we are able to be light to one another and to the world because we reflect Christ's light to the world.

It's one of the things that Jesus calls us to in Matthew five and the sermon on the mat when he says, let your light shine before men, that there is a light in us now because of Christ. If Christ light shines in us as believers, that means that the one tangible way that we can persevere through the darkness of suffering and through the pit is together.

I think that's why Haman laments in Psalm 88, that he's alone. That's why that's a part of his suffering. That's why Paul commands in Galatians six to bear one another's burdens. It's not just a command to the church to care for and comfort those who are suffering, though that is true. It's also a command to those who are suffering to allow others to bear your burdens.

And I think this means something that none of us love to hear, especially me. You can't do it on your own. You cannot do it on your own. You can't get through it on your own. You're not brave enough. You're not strong enough, you're not smart enough. You're not wise enough to power through the darkness on your own.

You don't have the power to get yourself through. I have to preach that thing, that same thing to myself all the time. I have to tell it to myself all the time because I forget it, because self-sufficiency and individualism so easily becomes an idol. We don't wanna be a burden to others. We don't want to appear weak to others.

We say things like, I'm fine. It doesn't hurt too bad. I don't really care. Don't worry about it. And we say those things while inside, we're crumbling away at the darkness, right? We say those things. It's, it's an absolute lie. We have to let go of our pride. We have to let ourselves get the need, the help that we need from one another.

You need to allow others to live out their calling, to bear your burdens and be a light to you. It takes humility. When you find yourself in the pit, when you find yourself nearly in the grave of deep anguish and despair, remember this, remember these things. You have a God who wants to hear from you, even if all you have to give him is your anger.

You have a God who meets you at your lowest point. You have a God who cares about you and your suffering. You have a God who understands what it's like to hurt. You have a God who has brought light into the darkness and you have a God who has given you the church to bear your burdens so that you never, ever have to suffer alone.

Let's pray.

Lord God, I admit that I preach this and I say this, and when I suffer, I struggle. Lord, I struggle to be honest both with you and with others, Lord, and I know that many in this room do. And I pray, Lord, that you work in me and you work in people in this room to know that when we suffer, we don't have to do it alone, Lord, that we can turn to you with everything, with our anger, with our sadness, Lord, and that you'd love to hear it and that you do hear it, Lord, and that you respond and I know you get it.

Um, Lord, I pray that we never forget that, and I pray that we as a church can be those who bear one another's burdens Lord, and that we never have to feel like we are too much of a burden, Lord, to seek help. I pray this all in your name. Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.