Psalm 88 | Good Grief
Well if you were paying attention during our fellowship and generosity break, that’s what I’m calling our 5 minute break we’re just coming off of. If you were paying attention to the music at all and it’s ok if you weren’t, you may have noticed that a popular Christian song from a few years back was playing.
It’s a song by a guy named Tauren Wells called Hills and Valleys. Just in case you missed it the chorus goes like this - video.
First off, you’re welcome for cutting that video so you could listen to Tauren instead of me sing that song…
But aren’t those lyrics good though?
The God of the hills and valleys!
We know what those are. The mountains of life, they’re special, aren’t they!?
When all things are good and beautiful, but more than that, all things are good and beautiful and we feel close to God! The mountains are great! We love the mountain top experiences of life.
We’re like Peter, James and John, when they go to the Mountain top with Jesus and see Him glorified speaking with Moses and Elijah, if you remember the story, you’ll know what their response was… Jesus lets set up camp up here! Let’s build homes and just stay up here forever, this is amazing!
Ahhh, yes wouldn’t that be amazing to live life only up on the mountain tops!
Sadly, you know, life isn’t just mountain tops, it is valleys as well and some of them are very deep and very dark.
On the mountain tops of life God is close, food tastes better, colors are brighter, joy abounds, but in the valleys, often times we find ourselves feeling alone. We question God’s presence, perhaps even His goodness. Food looses its taste. We don’t want to eat. Our friends don’t want to be around us and honestly we don’t really want to be around them or anyone else for that matter. Darkness becomes our only friend.
You don’t have to raise your hand, but I know many of us, if not all of us have faced days, weeks, maybe even months or years of our lives, living in a valley. A valley of grief, whether it be from death, divorce or a break up. A valley of depression from loss of employment or relational abuse and dysfunction; maybe a diagnosis or perhaps even from persecution.
The reality is, valleys come. Despair and darkness creep in and cloud our ability to feel and sense God’s presence.
And so, this morning we’re going to go down to these depths together and see how in the world we are to navigate life when the walls of the canyon close in and the sun sinks beneath the horizon so that we cannot see our hands in front of our face or sense the presence of God.
The Psalm we’re going to read this morning is bleak. It’s not completely hopeless, but just to give you a heads up, it ends with the line, “darkness is my closest friend.”
Not exactly positive and encouraging KLove. While it’s true Psalm 88 does not end on an up beat, I would invite to pay close attention to the very beginning! This is a raw Psalm, and honestly a psalm from someone who is really struggling but it is not without hope. The first verse clues us into that, as do a few other things I will point out once we finish reading it together.
So let’s do that.
Again, if you’re not in the habit of getting our your own Bible whether it be in print or on a device, please do so now! You need to make sure that what anyone behind this pulpit puts up on the screen is in fact what God has put into His word. So get out your bibles.... I’ll wait. :)
Alright, let’s read Psalm 88 together.
Psalm 88 (NIV)
A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 1 Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you. 2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry. 3 I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death. 4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like one without strength. 5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care. 6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. 7 Your wrath lies heavily on me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. 8 You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, Lord, every day; I spread out my hands to you. 10 Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you? 11 Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction? 12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? 13 But I cry to you for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you. 14 Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? 15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death; I have borne your terrors and am in despair. 16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. 17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. 18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor— darkness is my closest friend.
Wolf… kind of a downer this Heman (He-mun) the Ezrahite. Isn’t he?
We aren’t told what’s going on in this dude’s, life, but at least from his perspective, he’s lived a hard life.
Look at v. 15, from youth I have suffered and been close to death, I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
Despair, now that’s an easy word to say, but can I just say, it’s a really horrible word to live out!
To live with despair is to live with little to no hope. There is no light at the end of your tunnel. Whether it be a tunnel of grief, sadness or depression, to despair is to see no light at the end of that tunnel!
If you are despairing, you’ve resigned to make your home in that darkness. As Heman says, darkness has become your closest friend.
Think with me about that. For darkness to have become your friend, think what this person is saying. Life has been so hard, so harsh, so unrelentingly bad, that he has resigned to settle in there and just try to make himself comfortable.
Church, I’ve counseled people who live here. They’ve known darkness for so long, they’ve known addiction for so long, they’ve known abuse and hardship for so long, they’ve known a tough marriage, an unrelenting health issue for so long, that they’ve lost all strength to even want to see or look for the light at then end of the tunnel.
It’s been dark for so long, they’re eyes have readjusted and while it may not be the most pleasant, they've lost interest in lifting their eyes to the hills to look for help, because time and time again when they’ve looked before, when they’ve hoped before, those hopes were dashed on the rocks after another wave of darkness overpowered them. And so, rather than live with faith and hope, they’ve settled in and made darkness their friend.
Now I’m not being critical here. I’m not being critical of our man Heman here and neither is God.
You say, Levi how do you know that God is not being critical of Heman.
Man when I’m down, sometimes it feels like Christians just want me to put a smile on. They just give me another Bible verse to quote, like that’s supposed to brighten up my darkness and I’ll just flip a switch and be happy!
Honestly, Pastor, sometimes it doesn’t feel like I can be sad or depressed in Church? And on top of that, there are these voices in my head that tell me how upset God is with the way I feel!
They tell me, how bad of a Christian I am! If I were a better Christian, often times I think I wouldn’t be feeling this way! God wouldn’t be so disappointed with me for being such a downer!
Loved one, Heman’s words have been preserved by the God of Heaven for you! For the depressed and downtrodden in life!
Would God have saved and preserved our man Heman’s words if he were displeased with Heman for writing them? Of course not.
From a Crossway article I read this week, “Consider the astounding fact that this psalm is in the Bible. Imagine being able to speak to Heman the Ezrahite and telling him that his lament is part of Scripture, preserved for thousands of years in God’s word so that other followers of the Lord might know how to bare their soul to God. What might Heman realize? He would realize that the Lord did hear him! The Lord not only heard these words, He inspired them so that other Christians might sing them in the coming ages to express their own sorrow to God. Heman would also recognize that other followers of the Lord share the same troubles and carry the same burdens. Consider just how many believers since Heman’s time have sung these words, sharing their grief with his.
Friend, your life may be filled with far more suffering than my own, but Scripture teaches that your troubles don’t belong to you alone. God placed psalms of lament, like this one, in Scripture so that we could all learn how to cry to the Lord in our sadness and grief together. Psalms like this one teach us to share in one another’s suffering and to bear one another’s burdens.”
Contrary to what you might think or believe, this Psalm is not a condemnation of depression, this Psalm is an invitation for how to deal with depression when it visits it’s ugliness upon your step!
God is not offended by your feelings! He does not wish for you to take a quarter and go tell some else who might care! He does not wish for you to stuff it, put a smile on and present yourself to Him with a mask of fake happiness! Quite the contrary, Psalm 88 clues us in to the invitation God gives us permission to vomit on Him and on our community of faith!!
I apologize for the mental image here but that is what Heman is doing. He is horizontally on his community of faith and vertically on the Lord.
Vomit is not pleasant. It smells bad. It tastes bad. There’s not much that’s good about it, other than once we can get out the sick, sometimes we start to feel a bit better.
The reality is that you and I can almost make ourselves more sick by stuffing our emotions and pretending like everything is fine when it’s not!
And Psalm 88 is an indictment against fake-ness from the Lord! He does not desire for you to wear a mask when you enter into His presence!
Can you ever truly get to know someone who is fake? Do you enjoy being around fake people? Can true friendship happen when people are fake. Of course not. Intimacy is not built by people who are fake! No, intimacy is built through honesty and vulnerability! When we bear our weakness before one another and before God and that weakness is treated tenderly, and received with grace and love, comfort is found! Grief for all it’s sorrows can be made bearable, good even.
Heman is not being fake. Quite the opposite. He’s baring his soul. Let’s briefly look at what he says a bit more and see what else we can glean from it.
He says a lot of heavy hitting things.
He’s overwhelmed with troubles.
He feels like he’s going to die.
In many ways he feels like he’s already dead, like life has been drained from him.
He’s weak.
He’s like a corpse, isolated and alone in a casket.
He feels cut off from God, and he feels like God is responsible!
You put me here in this pit he says.
Your wrath lies heavy on me.
You have overwhelmed me.
You have made me repulsive to my friends.
And for why he wants to know.
He’s got questions for God that aren’t the nicest. There’s a bit of accusation going on!
And suffering has a way of making us ask such things. Which I’ll point out to you again because we know God preserved this text and others like it, God is not offended by such emotions and questions!
However, let me also point out, while Heman is comfortable to express his emotions and even level some accusations against the Lord, he also roots them in truth. Before he launches into his laundry list of emotions Heman begins with some bedrock truth of God’s Character! While he may feel that God has abandoned him, while he may feel that God is the cause of his current situation, he has determined in his heart to remember the bedrock truth of God’s character. Only God can save. God is His only Hope! God is the God of His salvation. And this God who can save is the one He’s crying out to! While He may question why God has allowed this darkness to visit him, he acknowledges that God is the only source of help and hope.
Church, You’re allowed to question. You’re allowed to level accusations at the Lord with raw emotions, but can I encourage you, do not allow yourself to forget where your help comes from! While your emotions may be strong they do not always tell the truth. Heman felt alone and abandoned, but He wasn’t!
And while it is true that God is sovereign and in control, I wonder sometimes why believers are so quick to accuse the Lord rather than point the finger at sin and/or Satan for the suffering they experience! I realize that God is sovereign and that all things pass through His hands, but the Bible is clear not all things that happen are good or by God’s direction. God does not tempt anyone to evil (James 1:13) and He does not cause evil! Beings with free will are left to make choices that God allows and many times those choice fly in the face of God’s good design. So while you are free to question and level accusations and even blame upon the Lord, (he’s got broad shoulders, he can take it) while you are free to do so, perhaps you would be wise to consider another source for your suffering! Satan is real and mankind is sinful.
Also, while you are free to question and even accuse as you face the raw emotions of your despair, I would like to remind you also from Scripture that many have done the same and not received the answer they wanted. We like to ask the question why! How could you!
And often times when others, in their despair call out the Lord, rather than receiving an explanation of His providence, He visits them with His presence!
Even a small glimpse of God’s glory can do wonders for the anguished soul!
Elijah fleeing for his life. Accuses the Lord of mistreatment! He pleads for death and do you know what God does. First off he feeds Elijah. Because hangry is real.
Then he makes him take a nap, because sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is sleep. Tiredness has a habit of taken us to dark places as evidenced by every 2 year old ever who misses their nap time!
And while that helps, Elijah is still despairing before the Lord, so what does God do? Tell Him a Bible verse? Explain His plan? Nope. He shows him a bit of His glory, not in the wind and the fire or the storm but in the still small voice that passes before Elijah’s cave!
And what of Job, as Job is crushed in the valley of life. Like a bad country song, Jobs dogs, sheep, cattle die. His servants die. His kids all die. He’s diseased and his wife is real nag! His friends blame him for his current state. Surely you must’ve sinned to have deserved this lot in life!
While Job is righteous and He doesn’t curse God in his despair, he is not happy with the Lord! He demands an explanation! God, how could you! Explain yourself, explain why I was made to suffer this much!
And what does God do! Does he rebuke Job for the baring of his soul. No. Does he explain himself and his ways to Job? No, God doesn’t do that either. But what God does do, is show up. And that my friends, is enough!
God shows up in splendor and in power and I believe also in tenderness and He questions Job. Job. Child, do you know where I keep the lightning! Do you know the depths of the ocean, have you stretched out the seas. Do waves stop when you tell them? No. Trust me. Son. Trust me. See my glory and trust me!
Church Psalm 88 invites us to bare our souls before God in honesty and vulnerability. You’re allowed to feel what you feel, but do not let your emotions over shadow the character of God!
And like Heman do not loose your eternal perspective.
The reality of this Psalm is a tough one for us to admit this morning together. But it’s very existence, clues us in to the truth that sometimes even mature believers suffer and sometimes that suffering is permitted to continue for way longer than any one of us thinks it should or thinks is fair.
But the Psalm also reminds us that the presence of suffering is not an indication of God’s disinterest or anger or ambivalence towards you! We’re not told what Heman is going through, but what he was going through compelled him to write this beautiful lament which God has preserved to encourage those of us he feel much like Heman!
I guarantee you Church, that what this Psalm is about, I would bet my life on this, then when you and I get to glory and we ask Jesus, Jesus, I’d like to meet Heman. I’d like to tell him how his word encouraged me and helped me. I’d like to hear more about his story. Can you introduce us! I guarantee you that Heman would declare emphatically that whatever it was he went through was worth it for the glory He is now experiencing!
We’re promised as much in Romans 8:18-27.
We know this, and yet, even still, suffering often times catches off guard. Do you know why that is? Because deep within everyone of us is a knowledge that things are not as they should be! Despite the fact that, Jesus, God with flesh on, warned us to prepare for suffering and we’re told in places like Rom. 8:18 and Philippians 1:29 that God even appoints suffering for us at times for our good. Even still we’re surprised, offended and confused when it lands on our door! We say can this be! If God is there, if God is good, how can I be made to feel what I feel right now!
And Church, when that happens I invite you to remember Heman, to remember Elijah, to remember Job but most of all to Remember Christ! More specifically to remember the Cross.
If God himself allowed His son to suffer for the greatest good ever, don’t you think that He’d invite His followers to follow suit?
While we are never promised a pain free, or suffering free life here on this earth, we are promised an end to it eventually. And as we face it down we are promised companionship with God who will walk with us until we see that fulfillment of all things!
Church, as we were reading this Psalm I hope and pray that the image of Christ on the cross was called into your imaginations. Do you remember what he said on the Cross? Father, why have you forsaken me? Where are you? Why is this happening!
Jesus Christ understands your despair! And because He did not stay dead, because He was forsaken for us, we never will be!
Take comfort from the fact that the sufferings of this life are the worst you will ever endure. As I’ve said before, for the Christian, this is the closest to hell you will ever be. If you know Christ and have come to him in faith and repentance, then your suffering has an end. The trials of this life are the worst things you will ever endure. For the believer the dark tunnels of life have a light at the end of them.
But folks, hear this, hell has no light at the end of the tunnel. If you don’t know Christ, then you are alone in your suffering. You are in a far, far worse place than this psalmist. The hopelessness experienced by this psalmist was only apparent and temporary. But those who die without repenting of their sin will know true hopelessness, that which is real and eternal.
Thanks be to God for His Son Jesus!
This week I received a text message from someone here who felt like God really wanted us to know a truth from 1 John 2:1
1 John 2:1 NIV
1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
We’re gonna do something a little different to close this morning.
I want every to close their eyes for a bit. And as you do, I want you to think of walking into the throne room of Heaven. It’s just you in there. You sense the Father’s presence. You see Jesus.
He’s speak to the Father on your half. You can’t hear what’s being said, but you know they are talking about you.
Now I want to think about whatever it is you’ve been struggling with. Maybe it’s sin. Maybe it’s an emotion, despair, doubts, questions. Whatever thing that’s been pressing upon your heart and soul. I want you to think of that thing.
And now, You over hear Jesus. He’s pleading your case. Advocating to the Father for you. And the Father is listening intently, Because of Jesus’ words, the Father agrees, you’re accepted. You’re loved. You’re welcome in His presence! He’s glad you’re there! He sees your weakness, you’re struggles, your pain. He knows. He’s wants you to know He’s glad to with you. Jesus wants you to know He’s on your side, even when it comes to your struggle against sin, he’s on your side! Not that your sin is not offensive, but that His sacrifice was enough to cover any and all of it!
Would you pray with me.
Father, life has a way of making us feel dead at times, at times it has a way of making us wish for death. Lord Jesus, by the power of your Spirit I boldly request that you would never allow the pain of life to cloud our eyes, our ears, our senses from experiencing your presence and if that every happens may your voice and the word of your promise be the bedrock upon which we rest our souls. I ask that everyone in here, for those listening online that you we would all be allowed to take off our masks, to stop pretending we’re fine, when we’re not and to come in openly and honestly into your presence. When we do Lord, may we discover grace. May we see Jesus pleading our case and cause. May be we find tenderness and mercy.
And if the suffering we’re enduring is for our good and allowed to persist, do not let us be crushed or consumed by it, Spirit! Gird us upon under it with hope. Reveal to us the light at the end of the tunnel that we might persevere and finish strong in the faith! For your glory and our joy we pray. Amen.