Psalms 88 Sermon by Brother Jeremiah Shipley

Psalms 88 and the Cry of a Desperate Soul

Good morning, everybody. You could please open your Bibles to Psalms chapter 88. That will be our text for this morning, Psalms chapter 88. Please open your Bibles there. We are going to read this chapter.

It's not too long, but we need to read this and have understanding of this chapter before we move forward. Let us read. Oh, Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night 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 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 of your ways. 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, Yahweh. 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 destruction? Are 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 terror. 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 and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness.

Why Psalm 88 Is So Uniquely Dark

This is the only, this in Psalms 39, are the only Psalms in the entire book that have no light at the end of the tunnel. There's no positivity at the end. Usually in the Psalms, we see, you know, David would say, my enemies have surrounded me.

You know, I have no strength, but you, O Lord. But you are my God of salvation. But you will remember me in the land of the living. But you will save me. You will, there's none of that here. The only thing of this positivity is in the opening line.

You are the God of my salvation. The God of my salvation. The author of this name was Heman. That's the author's name. You don't know, not every psalm was written by David. This is a collection of psalms.

There's one by Moses. There's some by the sons of Korah, which this is one of them. There's multiple authors. This one is by a man named Heman. And in some ways, he was a blessed man. He was a servant of King David.

I mean, he was in the king's palace. We know that he had many children, and those many children were successful and good. We don't know all that much about him, but we know that he was a blessed man in some regard, but that's not how he sees it here.

He is not looking at the graciousness and goodness of God in his life right now. And part of what we wanna answer today is a couple things. One, what is our response? What should our response be to when we're in a time like this and a place like this in our own life?

What is our reaction? Second thing we're gonna also look at is why is this even in the Bible? Why this right here? Do you think this is a righteous prayer? Do you think this is a formula for how you should be praying?

Probably not. So we're also gonna look at that as well. And those are kind of the couple of the questions that we want to answer. We don't know exactly what Heman was going through. And in some ways, I'm happy that we don't, because the lesson we have from this is transcendent, meaning it goes above just one circumstance.

It goes above one situation. What we're to learn from this, the reason God has this in scripture applies to any and every situation in your life. This is something we live through and live in. So in some ways, it's better we don't know exactly what he was going through.

We do have, however, a couple of hints. He talks about his sickness. He talks about his pain. He obviously believes that he's about to die, that he is on his way to Sheol, which means the grave, that he is on his way to death.

We also see that his friends, twice he mentions that all of his friends have abandoned him. It's possible that he had leprosy. It's possible that he had leprosy. Oftentimes in scripture, leprosy is seen as an affliction given by God.

So this could be symbolic, it could be literal, but the horror and the darkness this man's feeling is as real as anything can be. There's a darkness within and there's a darkness without, meaning you can have darkness and pain all around you, and yet the peace of God can still be within your heart.

You can have peace and joy through the darkest of times. In the heat of the battle, you can have confidence of staying strong. And other times, life can be going actually kind of decent, but for some reason in here, there's an unsettled restlessness of the soul.

There's no peace, there's no rest. You just have this anxiousness. The stomach is in a knot. And even though everything around you's fine, this man had both. His life outside of him was going into a complete wreck and his heart and soul cried out to God daily, but found no warmth.

The theme of this whole psalm, if you will, is similar to that of Job, when Job says, though you slay me, yet I will praise you. That's kind of the whole theme of this. This is very much like a Job psalm.

Job almost could have wrote it, he didn't, but it was almost as if he could have. And we're gonna even talk about Job a little bit more later. But he prayed day and night. That's the first thing we need to realize.

Day and night, he was going before God in prayer. And he knew that he's a Christian. This is not a man, this is not a pagan who did not know the Lord, who didn't, he says, no, you are the God of my salvation.

That is the first thing he speaks, the first words out of his mouth. God, you are still my God. You are still the one who saves me. You are still the one who carries me. That's his first word. But the darkness, the word darkness appears three different times in this chapter.

And there's a line I wanna read to you. Even though he had no peace, even though he had no warmth, even though he had no comfort, but yet to address God as the God of his salvation, to discern his hand in the affliction of sorrows is the working of true, the weak faith.

Though his faith may have been weak and feeble, it was still faith nonetheless. So here's kind of one of the first things that we need to, and I do warn you, this can be tough. Some of this can be tough to grab, tough to wrestle with, tough to accept.

But Christian, you can be in darkness for a long time. For a long time, we can be in a place of pain and darkness and trial. And we don't necessarily have to know why. Take John chapter nine. The disciples and Jesus are walking and they see a man blind next to the temple complex.

This man had been there, Lord knows how many years. I mean, he was a man. He wasn't a child, he wasn't a boy. And the disciples say, Jesus, this man's been blind since birth. Who sent him or his father?

And you see the friends, I'm sorry, the disciples had the same kind of mindset the friends of Job did. They wanted to look for the cause and effect of this pain. If he's blind since birth, somebody had to do something.

There had to have been a reason here. That stuff just doesn't happen for nothing. Job's friends gave accusations. They kept trying to reason of what did Job do? Where did he mess up? Where'd you mess up, man?

That God would allow this pain to come on you. They had a similar reasoning and we do the same thing, but that's not the case. For all we know that blind man could have been as righteous and obedient of a Jew as Moses or Abraham could have been.

Very well could have been. We know for a fact that Job was a righteous man. And the thing with Job is God is the one who declares him righteous. It wasn't Job's friends, even Job himself originally that said, no, I'm righteous.

God is the one who looked at Satan and said, look at my faultless servant. And yet pain and darkness still came. And so here's the takeaway I want you to have. Just because you're going through a hard time doesn't mean you did something wrong.

Not your fault, necessarily, it can be. There is such thing as punishment from God. There absolutely is. But that's a sermon for a different time. It's not necessarily that you did anything wrong. It's not, it doesn't mean that.

Jesus answers the question directly. We don't have to guess, we don't have to think. The reason this man was blind is that the glory of God can be displayed. That's it. And that's tough. That's tough.

It's a lot easier to read, but we have to live that human experience. Why did he have to die? Why did they have to get cancer? Why did the baby not, wasn't able to make it? It's a tough. It's the things that we all have to deal with.

Sometimes we have answers and sometimes we don't. Sometimes it's that the glory of God can be seen. Sometimes that's it. And trying to always reason and ration, it's not wrong inherently, but it can lead you to a wrong place.

Here's kind of the way I tell people. It's okay to ask God a question. It's not okay to question God. Do you understand that difference? God, why did that happen? Versus God, why would you let that happen?

Why would you let that happen? That tone difference. One is an inquiry of the Lord, seeking an answer. And one is an accusation. One is accusing God that he's not good enough or he wasn't wise enough or the idea that, oh, well, God will work it out for good.

Work it out? You mean he couldn't have stopped it? He had no power of it beforehand? See, that's where we get mixed up. God is sovereign over all things. It doesn't that he, oh crap, that happened. Oh, let me fix that and make it work out.

No, no, no. See, we say that statement, well, God will work it out, but that almost limits God. And what it does is it kind of takes his power away and it also hurts your hope. See, if God has to come in on the back end and work it out, that means there wasn't a real purpose of it from the beginning.

Don't sell your hope short. God's bigger than that. So we can be in darkness for a long time and that really is something. That really is something. I'm gonna coin the term for you, unconditional trials or unconditional pain, meaning that it is not dependent on your sin, nor is it dependent on your obedience.

The pain didn't come because of your sin and the relief won't come because of your obedience. It is on God's time and his calendar. And that, I mean, take a minute and soak that in. That's a tough reality to accept.

A very tough reality to accept. This is not, this is one of those Potter and Clay lessons. That's what that is. You come into the reality that God has allowed in your life to allow you to go through darkness, to put you through a hard time, and you have to have faith.

That's one of the Potter and Clay lessons. That's one of the Potter and Clay lessons. When you have to say, God, I'm your servant. You're not in this relationship to get something out of God. You're in this relationship to be a slave and a servant to him.

Suffering, Sovereignty, and the Purpose of Scripture

In both Psalms and Job, we see that God's not giving us a fake reality though. And that's one of the reasons this psalm is in the Bible. There's not a false narrative, a fake reality that scripture gives you.

Scripture tells you in this world, you will have trials and tribulations. It says that the rain falls on the just and the wicked. It says in 1 Peter, in this, you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, will be found to result in praise and glory and revelation of Christ Jesus.

He tells us that we will have trial. He tells us that you're gonna have a hard time. And it's not a trivial thing either. You ever heard people, you ever thought, oh, I'm a Christian now, so nothing really bad will happen to me.

I mean, it might be hard. Yeah, you know, it might get a little hard, but I mean, nothing really bad. I'm a Christian now. That's not what Psalms 88's saying. This man had serious hurt, serious darkness, legitimate, authentic darkness.

The scripture's not trying to give you a whitewashed, sugar-coated depiction of what life's gonna be. It is a reality check. Do not flip through the scriptures, oh, well, we'll skip that chapter and read this one.

No, read it all. Read it all. Job was not a fictional character. He was a real guy with real pain. And God can make you that same piece of clay that he made him. But pain blinds us and skews our sight and our ability to reason correctly, which is why you need people around you.

You look at verse 15. He says, afflicted and close to death from my youth, I suffer your terrors, I am helpless. This is almost assuredly an exaggeration. I mean, this is almost assuredly an exaggeration.

To say that from his very youth, from his whole life, he was close to death. We've all done this. When you're in pain and you're hurting, you're having a bad day, you just, oh my gosh! My whole life is horrible.

My, I just, my whole life is horrible. I'm hurting, I'm in pain, my kids are crazy, my wife is crazy, my husband's stupid. It's, everything just goes up in a whirlwind. We do the same thing. We do the same thing.

We are blinded by our pain. Our suffering makes us have a Messiah martyr complex. Can I get an amen? No one understands me. I'm alone. You don't understand, you don't, you've never been there. You can't relate to what I've been through.

You don't have any sympathy. You're unsympathetic to me. These are lies. These are lies. They're not true. And one of the reasons, another, one of the reasons God has us in here is because he knows the prayers of a desperate man.

He knows the cries of a heart in despair. He knows what that sounds like. And so, one of the reasons the psalm is here is for you to know you're allowed that space to pray your honest, genuine heart. Even if it's not exactly what you should be saying, you're allowed to say it.

God is a gracious and merciful God. But let's take the scenario for a second that he wasn't lying, that he wasn't exaggerating. What if he had leprosy for his whole life? He got it as a young man. That's possible.

Does that change the goodness of God? Does that change what his response should be? He says in the very last line, check this out, he says that darkness is my companion. Darkness is my closest friend.

Actually, in the Hebrew, the last word of the psalm is darkness. So the more literal translation would be like, and the closest friend I have is darkness, which in some ways might be true. In some ways, but it's also an insult to God.

He's insulting God by saying that darkness is a better friend to me than you, God. Darkness has been my companion more than you. You've abandoned me, God. You've left me. He says, why have you cast your spirit away from me?

Why do you turn away my prayers? Darkness is a better friend than you. That's insulting to God. Insulting. What an accusation to cast before the king. I mean, he's got some bravery talking to God like that.

But here's what I want you to remember. He was saying it to God. And that's one of the biggest lessons for you to have. In his anger and in his despair, he addressed his anger and despair to God. To God.

He did not leave him, abandon him, forsake him. He addressed to God. You look at Job. He did the same thing. In all of Job, Job, in the torrential downpour of accusation of his friends, he might've said some things that he regretted.

I'm sure he regretted, but he always spoke to God. And I want you to grasp that. He never forsook God. He was angry at God. He said, God, I don't understand why this is happening. I'm mad. But you are still God.

In your pain and in your hurt, you pray to God with authenticity. Now, let me put a little caveat in here for you. It is not okay to be angry at God. God is a holy, righteous judge. He's a holy, righteous, sovereign God.

He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and everything he does is good. He does, as the scripture says it, all things well. He does all things well, period. So it's not okay to be angry at God.

You have no right. He is too holy and too high to be angry. But at the same time, it is better to be angry at God than to forsake him. Most people, and I'm talking about, I cannot count how many people have left this flock, left this family, because they came into hard times, and they said, all right, God, I'm done with you, and left.

How many people do you know that have left the faith? Some of you are new Christians. Maybe you haven't experienced that. Some of you have been around for a long time, been in the faith, not just at this church, been a Christian for a long time.

You've seen people spend 10, 15, 20 years walking with the Lord, and then give it all up. They turn their back. They forsake the goodness of God. It is heartbreaking. People you walked with, people you ministered with, people you shared the gospel with, they give it up because they got hurt by somebody, because something's gonna go their way in life.

Someone got sick and died. And so because they experienced some pain, now that just throws everything that scripture says up and on. My experience supersedes the authority of scripture. My experience and my pain is more than the goodness of God.

And so they leave. They forsake. They abandon. That's why I'm telling you, it is better to pray to God in anger than to not pray at all. He says, opening scripture, day and night, I came to you. Day and night.

Even in his anger, day and night. Even in his pain, day and night. Even in his sorrow, day and night. Even in his loneliness, day and night. You notice that last line? He says, my beloved, my beloved has abandoned me.

It wasn't just his friends, it was his family, possibly his spouse abandoned him. He is alone. What does he do? Day and night. Day and night. Day and night. He goes to the Father again and again and again and again.

Do we know the account, the parable Jesus gives of the widow? The widow comes to the judge and the judge shoots her away. The widow comes to the judge and the judge shoots her away. The widow comes to the judge and the judge shoots her away.

The widow comes to the judge and the judge says, all right, fine. Fine, I'll give you what you want. And Jesus says, is this not the same persistence that you should have with God? Not saying that God is a judge that just shoots you away, but the persistence of the woman again and again.

I'm gonna pray to you, God, till I get an answer. If that's 20 years, I will pray to you every day till I get an answer. That's faithfulness. That is long suffering. And I mentioned this last time I preached.

We need to see more. I love that we have such a young church, but there's detriment to that. There are cons to having a young church. You need to see gray-headed people who have been in the faith 50 years and are still in it.

They can exemplify perseverance. You need to see perseverance. The very name of God that raises people from the dead and raises souls from the depths of depression and pain was the name he was calling to.

Yet he felt no warmth, no comfort, and no peace. He knows that it is God that is putting all of this on him, and yet he still calls out. All the more admirable, then, the persistence of his cry, and all the more precious, the lesson that faith is not to let present experience limit its conception.

God is nonetheless the God of salvation, and nonetheless to be believed to be so, though no consciousness of his saving power blesses the heart at that moment. Job did the same thing as Haman did. He was a righteous man before God, but he stayed faithful.

The victory that you're seeking for is not in the perfect attitude, but it is in that perseverance. Perseverance is the goal you are seeking for. You do not treat God like your spouse and give them a silent treatment.

That is middle school stuff. That is quite literally middle school stuff. It don't work when you're in relationships. It certainly doesn't work with God. Can I get an amen? Don't try it with your spouse.

Definitely don't do it with God. Why would you give him a silent treatment? What good could that possibly bring? Whether joy, pain, anger, despair, take all your cares and burdens and lay them at the feet of Christ.

Does he not say, bring your yoke to me, and I will give you mine? Is that not his command? You have to ask why God would put this in the Bible. Jesus does not model this prayer. When we see the model prayer in Matthew, it looks nothing like this.

We see this tone nowhere in Christ or in Paul's letters, but the Lord knows how men speak when they're desperate. He wants you to know, I am your God in your desperation. Remember how I said in the beginning that the kind of theme of this is in Job when he says, though you slay me, still I will praise you?

Part of the reason God has this in the Bible is because he's telling you, though I slay you, still I am your God. It's the same thing. God's letting you know, yes, I've put you through hard times. Yes, I allow that.

That doesn't change, I'm still your God. I am your God in your sorrows. I am your God in your anger. I am your God in your pain. I'm not just your God in your obedience. He is such a gracious and understanding God.

He is your God in your anger, even at him. He is faithful and you are faithless. Last thing, are you in a transactional relationship with God? That's a fancy way of saying, are you a Christian just so you can get something out of God?

Now, in the infancy of your Christian life, that is exactly the case. That is exactly what happens. You have a problem, God has a solution. You are dying and going to hell. You are born into sin and God offers peace and grace and salvation to you.

Sounds like a good deal here. But that cannot be the story of your Christian life. That can only be the infancy of it, the beginning, the origins of it. If you're a Christian for five, 10 years, and you're still a Christian because you are getting something out of it, you might not actually be saved.

You are not here to be served by God. You are a Christian to serve God. You are the slave, you are the servant, you are his. It's not transactional, a give and take thing. It is a, you say whatever you want, I salute and say yes, sir.

That's it, guys. Do not be a Christian in order to get something out of it. Be a Christian because he's God. That's the maturing thought process. That's the maturing way of thinking. Music people, you can go ahead and come on up if you want.

Perseverance, Repentance, and Serving the Lord

A couple weeks ago, Pastor Jeff and Pastor Josiah started teaching on ecclesiastical history. And in this handout, Pastor Jeff was trying to show the historical figure of Christ, that he's not just a good teacher, but he was an actual historical person, right?

And there was an account he put in there of Pliny the Younger, it's a quote by a guy named Pliny. And Pastor Jeff used it to prove that Jesus was a real historical guy, but I'm gonna do it to show you something else.

He says that there are these people called Christians. And my job, he's writing to the emperor of Rome, he says, and what I've been doing is I've been putting them to the sword and saying, deny Christ, burn this instance to the image of the emperor, and curse Christ, and I'll let you live.

And he says in there, and it is said that true Christians can never do this. And that's cool, but the next part, everyone kind of forgets and leaves out. He says, but there were some who were Christians for 20, 10, 25 years, and cursed Christ, burnt the instance to the image of the emperor, and bowed down before him.

Where are you with your perseverance? We are not under persecution right now. But if you can't persevere through pain, you will never persevere through persecution. If you can't persevere through the inconveniences of your easy life, if you cannot persevere through the darkness that God has before you now, I can tell you right now what's gonna happen when you're tested with the greater.

You have to persevere. Life gives you hard things. God gives you hard challenges, because it strengthens you. It sets you up for something greater. I remember as a young man, I used to be like, all right, God, look, if you would just show me what you have for me over the next few years, it would just help me prepare and be ready.

That's not true at all. If God showed me what my future woulda had, I woulda turntailed and run. I woulda gone in the other direction. Be like, you want me to do what? And that same thing is true for you.

Five years from now, God woulda show you your life, and all the pain you'd go through in the next five years, you'd quit. You'd give up. And so the blindness that you have is actually a blessing. The blindness, the ignorance of your future is a blessing, because God incrementally, one at a time, puts you through these hard things, because he knows what's ahead.

Heman has been a blessing to mankind for 2 ,500 years. His pain has blessed all of us this morning. Stop questioning the Lord. Start giving more faith. Be a faithful Christian. Persevere through pain.

Persevere through what you have now, and serve the Lord. This is the time of repentance. Some of us need to repent for being angry at God. Being angry at God is a sin. Some of us need to repent for being so much in a transactional relationship with God, and not maturing to the place of complete, humble servitude.

Some of us realize we're not Christians in here. We've just been in this to get out of hell free card. You need to actually come down here and get saved. Whatever it is that you have to do today, now is that time.

If you will, please stand with me, and let us serve the Lord.