Psalms 88-89: Suffering Servant, Supreme Sovereign, Scorned Son
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A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 1 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.
A Maskil of Ethan the Ezrahite. 1 I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. 2 For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.” 3 You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: 4 ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.’ ” Selah 5 Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones! 6 For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, 7 a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him? 8 O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you? 9 You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. 10 You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. 11 The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. 12 The north and the south, you have created them; Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name. 13 You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high your right hand. 14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you. 15 Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your face, 16 who exult in your name all the day and in your righteousness are exalted. 17 For you are the glory of their strength; by your favor our horn is exalted. 18 For our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel. 19 Of old you spoke in a vision to your godly one, and said: “I have granted help to one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from the people. 20 I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him, 21 so that my hand shall be established with him; my arm also shall strengthen him. 22 The enemy shall not outwit him; the wicked shall not humble him. 23 I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him. 24 My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him, and in my name shall his horn be exalted. 25 I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers. 26 He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ 27 And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. 28 My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him. 29 I will establish his offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens. 30 If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, 31 if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, 32 then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, 33 but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness. 34 I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips. 35 Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David. 36 His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me. 37 Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.” Selah 38 But now you have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed. 39 You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust. 40 You have breached all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins. 41 All who pass by plunder him; he has become the scorn of his neighbors. 42 You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice. 43 You have also turned back the edge of his sword, and you have not made him stand in battle. 44 You have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground. 45 You have cut short the days of his youth; you have covered him with shame. Selah 46 How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? 47 Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man! 48 What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah 49 Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? 50 Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations, 51 with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed. 52 Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.
Let’s pray.
Welcome to week 4 of our series on lament — I hope it’s been edifying for you so far. I know it has for me.
As we start a new cycle, we’re going to address our second major question of the summer: What does Jesus have to do with lament?
Except, I want to change it up a little bit. The way this is phrased, it seems like lament is really at the center of what we’re doing, and in a way it is, but in a way, it’s really not. Instead, the question I want to get at first, and the question you should all be asking all summer is — what does lament have to do with Jesus?
Sure, creation is cursed and our bodies are broken and life is hard, and we need to do something with that, but none of those things are ultimate. Creation isn’t always going to be cursed and one day our bodies will be glorified, so lamenting will be a thing of the past and, theoretically, we could get by if we just grit our teeth hard enough instead of crying out for relief.
Jesus, on the other hand, is ultimate. And so if we’re doing something that doesn’t have him at the center of it, we’re off the mark, and that’s not good for anybody. So first, what does lamenting have to do with Jesus?
I submit to you that lamenting is extremely valuable to us not only as we deal with our own suffering and the sufferings of those around us, but because it gives us an insight into who Jesus is in a very personal way. Think of it this way — we can know a lot of right facts about someone without really knowing them on a personal level quite easily. And usually in a relationship that goes on long enough, there’s a turning point, when one of the people in the relationship lets their guard down a little bit and reveals something painful or embarrassing about their past that makes you say, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know that about you! I feel like I never really knew you before now,” because that experience so shaped the other person’s life.
And the texts we’re going to look at today and next week are, in a way, Jesus letting his guard down so to speak, and giving us a glimpse into his inner life during his most horrible experience — specifically his death and the events leading up to it. How I’ve arrived at this conclusion is a long and winding road, but I’m going to try to highlight some of the waypoints along the way.
In the meantime, if you’re not convinced that meditating on Jesus’s sufferings is valuable, don’t hear it from me. Hear it from the apostle Paul, who knew a thing or two about suffering.
7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Simply put, the more you dive into Jesus’s sufferings and his thoughts about those sufferings, the more you’re going to be able to value everything that isn’t Jesus accurately — namely, garbage, if it gets in the way of knowing him and the power of his resurrection better.
Let’s get going.
Today’s text divides into three sections, Psalm 88, Psalm 89:1-37, and Psalm 89:38-52.
But first, you might be asking, “Hey preacher! Why are you preaching so much text and why are you reading these psalms together?”
Well, I’m glad you asked! You may remember a couple weeks ago, when I said that the superscriptions and ordering of the Psalms are actually really important, and how the week after I said that, Pastor Hayden completely ignored the superscription of Psalm 44 but still preached an excellent sermon anyways.
Well, this week, I am vindicated. Look at the titles. They’re both Maskils, or songs which are meant to be chewed on and contemplated deeply. They’re by Heman and Ethan, both Ezrahites — the only Ezrahites who write Psalms, by the way, and there’s something quite special about both of these men. They’re among the very wisest Israelites of all time. Look at 1 Kings 4:31
31 For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations.
The person or people who put the Psalter together make it abundantly clear — these Psalms go together.
So in Psalm 88, we Jesus as the suffering servant. In Psalm 89:1-37, we see Jesus as the supreme sovereign. And in Psalm 89:38-52, we see Jesus as the scorned son.
First, Psalm 88.
We obviously don’t have time to go into a whole lot of detail, but I hope you observed this much as I was reading it — this Psalm is dark from start to finish. There’s really no note of joy or happiness, and the only thing even resembling hope is that Heman hadn’t given up, and he was hurling his prayers in the right direction — towards Yahweh, the god of his salvation.
Furthermore, I hope you observed that a few of these phrases sound a little familiar from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ passion and eventual crucifixion.
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,
37 And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.”
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;
73 After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you too are one of them, for your accent betrays you.” 74 Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man.” And immediately the rooster crowed.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.
49 And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.
Now, I want us to consider something. We have no reason to doubt that Heman was a righteous man — after all, he’s incredibly wise, and one of God’s inspired authors of Scripture whose words serve as a model for worship for all God’s people. Yet, his suffering at God’s hand was lifelong and, to his knowledge, without purpose.
One righteous man suffering God’s terrors and wrath from his youth up led to the penning of this deep lament under God’s inspiration. Why?
Perhaps, to give us a glimpse into what it looks like for one righteous man to suffer God’s terrors and wraths — but not only to suffer them, but to fulfill them.
Friends, if God’s wrath poured out on a righteous man over the course of his entire lifetime is this deep, this terrible, how much worse would it be for Jesus, who suffered God’s wrath against all sin for all time so that no wrath remains for those whose lives are hidden in Christ?
If the Spirit intercedes on OUR behalf with groanings too deep for words, even words like we find in Psalm 88, how deep must Jesus’s torment have gone as he became an object not merely of scorn, but the target of God’s otherwise unquenchable hatred of sin?
Friend, if you are in Christ, take this moment to consider how costly your salvation was. As difficult as it is for normal people to imagine what it would be like to have a billion dollars, how much more difficult is it for us to imagine what it would cost not only to make atonement for our own sins, but for the sins of the world?
Indeed, when Isaiah speaks of the LORD’s suffering servant in Isaiah 53:3-6
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
we do well to pause and reflect on not only what this means for us, but what this meant for Jesus.
For his part, I’m sure that Heman blushed when he came face to face with the Son of God, and the purposes and extent of his suffering were made known to him. I think we have here a man operating under the principle of 1 Peter 1:11-12
11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
If Psalm 88 gives us insight into Jesus’s sufferings on the cross as God’s suffering servant, Psalm 89 gives us insight into why that suffering is so central to his identity as the King not just of Israel, but as King of the Universe.
Psalm 89 divides largely into two sections, verses 1-37 and verses 38-52. Truth be told, we wouldn’t be the first people to sing verses 1-37 out of context if we were to put it to music — Ligon Duncan, to whom I’m deeply indebted for his insights into both of these Psalms, recalls growing up singing a song based on these verses in his youth group that he describes as being on the happier side. It wasn’t until many years later that he realized that the entirety of these 37 verses isn’t so much to praise the LORD for praise’s sake, but to praise the LORD in a way that makes verses 38-52 even more perplexing and painful.
In verses 1-37, we see the Lord’s unmatched sovereignty over all creation, physical and spiritual, as well as his promise to his people, and especially to his chosen godly servant, who is the fulfillment of God’s promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, one of the central passages to not only the Old Testament but to the entire Bible. In this passage, God makes a covenant with David that he is going to establish his throne forever, a throne that, as the promise unfolds, we see isn’t just a throne over Israel, but over all the nations.
This is a covenant that God swears to carry out by his own holiness — see verses 30-37 especially.
30 If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, 31 if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, 32 then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, 33 but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness. 34 I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips. 35 Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David. 36 His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me. 37 Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.” Selah
In other words, in these verses, we have the holy sovereign creator of all things, who upholds the universe simply by being who he is, swear by his own name that his servant, David, will likewise be sovereign over all the earth.
Hear some of the adjectives Ethan uses to describe the Lord: faithful, to be feared, awesome, mighty, strong, righteous, just, displaying steadfast love, glorious, exalted… well, you get the point.
How good it must be to have the God of Israel as your God and a son of David as your king!
Truth is, we’re a lot more comfortable with these 37 verses than we are with what’s about to happen — because Ethan has told us that contrary to expectation, things are not good for Israel nor God’s Davidic king. The supreme sovereign has become a scorned son.
Verse 38 starts out with a wonderful and extremely useful conjunction, “but”. Some of our favorite verses with the most rhetorical flair have a “but God”, usually followed by something like “rich in mercy” or “at just the right time” and then some description of our salvation.
However, what follows this but is quite the opposite. As with any good pious prayer, Ethan accuses God of being, among other things, an angry liar whose steadfast love and faithfulness are no more trustworthy than any of the gods of the pagan nations surrounding Israel.
Look at the pronouns, here. I want you to count the “yous” and “yours” that show up as I read verses 38-45 out loud.
38 But now you have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed. 39 You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust. 40 You have breached all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins. 41 All who pass by plunder him; he has become the scorn of his neighbors. 42 You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice. 43 You have also turned back the edge of his sword, and you have not made him stand in battle. 44 You have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground. 45 You have cut short the days of his youth; you have covered him with shame. Selah
Anybody got a number? (it’s 15)
To put it mildly, Ethan isn’t chalking whatever is going on around him that’s endangering the Davidic covenant up to chance. He’s placing the blame squarely at God’s feet. Now, to be clear, we don’t know exactly when this Psalm was written — it could have been as early as Solomon, which would be pretty shockingly early but not out of the question given how bad Solomon was as a king, or it could have been after the exile, when the Davidic dynasty was reduced to a pathetic shadow of its former glory. But the beauty of this is that, just like Psalm 88, it’s not ultimately about what was going on in Ethan’s time. Make no mistake. This Psalm is about the greater David, Jesus of Nazareth, and his death at the hands of wicked men as he bore the wrath of God’s hatred of sin.
Let’s not forget one of Jesus’s earliest temptations, in Luke 4:5-11
5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’ ” 9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ 11 and “ ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ”
— a kingdom without a cross, as it were. Rule over all the earth without even a stubbed toe, because God protects his chosen ones.
And hear the words of those neighbors who scorned him as they passed by, after he was plundered by the ones who nailed him to the cross as they cast lots for his garments:
39 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” 41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ”
Bearing God’s wrath when you’re a hopeless sinner deserving judgment doesn’t sound great, but at least it makes sense.
Bearing God’s wrath when you’re one of the wisest men in all Israel (but still a sinner) for the sake of your own growth in godliness and the teaching of all God’s people throughout all time as you are an author of inspired Scripture sounds a little better, but still not great — but it still makes sense.
Bearing God’s wrath against all humanity’s sin throughout all time when you yourself are perfectly righteous, and, by the way you’re the very beloved Son of God, who is well-pleased, and in whom God is going to bring all his plans to bless the earth to fruition? Not only does that sound awful, it makes no sense either.
Make no mistake. When Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, the greatest miscarriage of justice fathomable — and it’s only fathomable because God did it and has told us about it — occurred.
So, brothers and sisters, our suffering is great, and God deeply cares about it as our loving and caring Father, but let’s put it into perspective. Compared to Jesus’s suffering in our place, what we go through is nothing more than a light, momentary affliction, preparing us for an eternal weight of glory.
So, what do we do in light of this? A couple things.
First — ask yourself: how would you have counseled Jesus when he said his soul was very sorrowful, even unto death?
Would you have told him, “but God is so good! Just think about all he has in store for you if you just seek him!”
I really hope not.
Likewise, how are you at counseling people who are in the depths of suffering? If you’re prone to encourage people to look on the bright side ALL the time, why not add pointing them to Jesus’s sufferings to your arsenal?
Isn’t it so much more powerful to know that Jesus has been there and done that, and he can sympathize with you, than it is to basically tell someone else, or yourself, that you just need to think harder and do better about being positive?
Second — how offensive is the cross to you? Have you really spent time thinking about what Jesus when through in his suffering, not just for your sins, but for the sins of the world?
Catching a glimpse of Jesus’s sufferings is one baby step towards fully appreciating how wonderful is the power of his resurrection, developing an unshakeable gratitude for what he accomplished for you on the cross, and helping you realize that you can do absolutely nothing to make God love you any more or less if you have been crucified with Christ.
After all, how can you compete with Jesus’s offering of himself? God has already accepted that sacrifice. He doesn’t need anything else from you. You are free to live not as someone from whom God expects a return, but as an object of his unfailing steadfast love and faithfulness.
Third — if Jesus’s sufferings are this bad and uncomfortable, what about hell?
If you are a Christian and these texts make you a little queasy, sit in that for a little bit, and then consider that there are people around you who will be saying words like these, especially Psalm 88, forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, as they experience what it means for darkness to be their only friend and for God’s assaults to overwhelm them. I don’t know about you, but I would rather be annihilated and stop existing altogether than experience even one second of God’s unmitigated wrath, let alone an eternity of it.
And if you’re not a Christian — if you have not turned from your sin and trusted in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection for your salvation, these Psalms are for you, too. There are only two places for God’s wrath to go — either on Jesus, or on you. Hear it from Heman and Ethan the Ezrahites: you don’t want to be on the receiving end of that wrath. You don’t even want to be near anyone on the receiving end of that wrath because of how horrible it is to witness. Do not let one more day go by without ensuring that Jesus’s sufferings and death are the payment for your sin, and that his resurrection guarantees your future life with him.
Words do not do justice to the realities of God’s perfect character and deeds, except perhaps those in Psalm 89:52
52 Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.
Let’s pray.