Pray Like Heman

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, welcome to our worship service. It’s good to see you all here this morning.

I have a few announcements to mention as we begin.

The men’s croup will meet tonight at 6:00 with a focus on the first three verses of 1 Corinthians 13.

We’re also looking for volunteers to help out with our Eggstravaganza event on April 9. If you’re interested in that, there’s a sign-up sheet outside Jesyka’s office.

And our next game night will be held on Saturday, March 12, from 6-7:30.

Della, do you have an announcement about an outreach opportunity?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Merciful God, you heal the broken-hearted, and turn the sadness of the sorrowful to joy. Let your goodness be upon all you have made. Remember all those who are suffering this day. Lift up those who are cast down. Cheer with hope all who are discouraged and downcast.

Father on this day we ask that you come into this place and dwell with us, giving us your mercy and your grace and your abounding love. Grant this, O Lord, for the love of him who for our sakes became poor, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Lord’s Supper

Today we honor Christ as the fulfillment of every desire by celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

I invite any who know Jesus as their Savior to participate. Is there anyone who has not received either bread or juice?

As always, we begin with the bread, so have that ready.

Scripture teaches us that through Holy Communion, we connect with Christ not only in the memory of his death, but in the spiritual life he gives us. We have eternal life only with the life of Christ inside us.

Matthew writes that on the night of Jesus’s betrayal, he gathered his disciples in the very Upper Room where they would witness him resurrected. Each of the twelve were there.

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” By him, we are made one with him. By his blood, we are made eternal.

Let’s pray:

Father we are so thankful that You continually give all of Yourself to us every day. We are thankful for your love, for your guidance, for your wisdom, for your eternal promise of life to us. Help us every day to lay aside the things this world promises will heal us and grant us peace and instead embrace the eternal healing and peace that only You can bring. For we ask this in Jesus’s name, Amen.

Sermon

Last week we talked about how we should all pray like Hannah. Meaning we should take all of those things in our lives that haunt us, all those things that we are afraid of and worry over, and give them to God.

And then when we give those things to God, we should also trust Him—trust that He will do not just what is right, but what is best for us, because He loves us.

Hannah’s prayer is the prayer of trust. The prayer of faith that God is who He says He is. And who does God say that He is? A God of love. A God of mercy. A God of grace. A God of blessing.

When we have a need, we go to God. He is the giver of all things.

Everything we have we’ve worked for, but the ability to do that work and the blessings that come from being able to do that work come from God alone. God provides. God is always there, always looking out for us.

That is the heart of what it means to pray like Hannah.

However.

Sometimes life doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes we take a look around at our lives and we look into our hearts, and what we find is that God doesn’t seem to be there at all, and it sure doesn’t feel like He’s looking out for us.

So what is our model to pray by then? Who are we supposed to pray like when life turns into midnight and we’re left all alone?

We’re supposed to pray like Heman. And you may be wondering, Who in the world is Heman?

Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 88. For a lot of us, myself included, Psalms is their favorite book of the Bible, and it’s easy to understand why. You won’t find more poetic, more moving, more profound words in any language anywhere than in this book right here.

Every emotion you can imagine is addressed in these 150 chapters, every human need is laid bare, every hope, every fear, every worry. That’s why Psalms is also often called the Bible’s book of prayer.

Many of these prayers, the majority, are about people who are suffering in some way. People who need deliverance. And they’re asking God for help, they’re crying out to Him to save them.

Almost all of these types of Psalms end on a note of hope. These prayers start out with pain and anguish, but they end with blessing and healing.

Either the person praying begins to see God at work outwardly in their circumstances, or he begins to feel God working inwardly on their heart.

So there’s a general pattern that starts out with someone in trouble, and ends with that someone discovering hope because of God’s blessing and goodness.

But there are two Psalms that don’t end that way, just two Psalms out of those 150 that end not just with the same amount of pain and suffering, but with absolutely no hope at all.

One of them is Psalm 39, which we’ll be talking about a little. The other is today’s scripture, Psalm 88. Read along there with me:

O 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 Sheol.

I am counted among those who go down to the pit;

I am 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 your waves. Selah

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, O LORD;

I spread out my hands to you.

Do you work wonders for the dead?

Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah

Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,

or your faithfulness in Abaddon?

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 terrors; 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.

Tough one, isn’t it? Tough scripture to read. But guess what? This is still God’s word.

The word “darkness” is used three times in this Psalm—in verses 6, 12, and 18. This is the prayer of a man who has no light at all left in his life, a man drowning in depression. There is no happiness in his life, no hope, no love.

In fact, in my translation, the ESV, and in the original Hebrew as well, it’s the very last word of this Psalm. Darkness. What kind of prayer has that as its last word? Especially in the Bible?

I mean let’s face it, most of us have probably at some point prayed something like that. We’ve said prayers that end without any hope, without any faith.

But to have a prayer like this printed in the Bible? To have these words, this condemnation of God, printed out and included in God’s Word, the holiest of books?

That strikes us as wrong on a deep level, doesn’t it? And do you know why? Because a lot of us have fallen for a huge lie. A lie that’s been spread by preachers, by churches, by Christian writers, by television and radio stars, by artists and musicians.

And that lie is this: if you have enough faith, if you do all the right things, then you won’t suffer.

And that’s just not true.

You know that, don’t you? Of course you do. Because you’re alive in this world.

And it doesn’t matter how much you have or how happy people think you are or how rich you might be, you know as well as anyone else that life is suffering. Period.

Life is one thing after another. The happy times that we enjoy are just periods between times of suffering. That’s how this broken world works, and that’s how it’s going to keep working until Christ comes down from heaven.

But for some reason, we tend to forget that. For some reason we think that because we’re saved, because we pray and read our Bibles, because we have Jesus bumper stickers on our cars and we go out and do good works for people in need, that somehow protects us against the hardness of this world.

And so when things go wrong in our lives, we don’t know how to deal with it. We can’t square the pain we feel with the faith we’re supposed to have.

So what can we do in those times to keep from falling apart completely, and losing our faith all together? We can listen to this Psalm. We can hear what it says, hard as it is, because the four lessons it gives us might be hard ones, but they’re also wonderful.

And those four lessons are these: darkness can last a long while; darkness is the best place to learn of God’s grace; darkness is the best time for you to grow; and darkness can be put into perspective.

Ready? Let’s get started.

First, darkness can last a long while.

This Psalm is so tough for us to read because it doesn’t end like almost all of the other ones. It doesn’t end in hope. It doesn’t even end with some sort of wisdom that at least makes the problem easier to deal with.

There’s none of that here. That’s the entire point of this Psalm. That’s the lesson it teaches, and it’s a hard lesson to swallow but it’s one we all have to hear: you can pray and do all the right things and still be surrounded by darkness for a long time.

But look at the kind of pain this person is suffering through.

There are two kinds of darkness that can afflict us.

First there’s outer darkness, or the darkness of our circumstances. That’s what this man is having to endure.

We don’t know what exactly those circumstances are. We get hints throughout the Psalm — all of his closest friends are gone, his loved ones have been taken away, and his own death is quickly approaching — but it’s nothing concrete.

Many of the Psalms are written this way. They don’t speak of the actual reasons they’re hurting, or wanting, or suffering, they just speak of what they’re feeling because of it, and how they approach God.

And the great thing about writing the Psalms that way is that since the problems are so vague, they can be almost anything, including whatever problems we’re having ourselves as we read them.

You see? It doesn’t really matter what this man is suffering from outwardly. In fact, it’s better that we don’t know, because that way we can see our own problems in what he’s experiencing, and we can receive the same help from God.

But it’s more than just outward darkness he’s dealing with. This man is also dealing with inner darkness, and that’s much worse.

Now what’s inner darkness? Inner darkness is a state of spiritual despair. Look in verse 1. What’s he say? “O Lord, God of my salvation.”

He still believes in God, still trusts God as his savior, but he has no sense of God’s presence in his life at all.

In fact, when we read through the rest of the Psalm we see that he feels like God’s anger is on him. He feels rejected and abandoned by God. He feels trampled by God. There’s no sense of God’s love and care and presence at all.

It’s the worst possible state that we can find ourselves in. If you have outer darkness but know in your heart that God loves you and is with you, then you can bear up under it. But when you have outer darkness AND inner darkness, all of your hope is gone.

That’s what this man is experiencing. He believes, he prays, he worships, he lives the way he should, and yet everything in his life has fallen apart and he feels like God has abandoned him. And the Bible says that will likely happen to you as well.

That’s the first point this Psalm is making, and it’s the hardest one for us to hear. Because doesn’t the Bible say that God is working all things out for good? Doesn’t the Bible say that God has a purpose for you?

Yes. But the Bible also says Psalm 88. And Psalm 88 says that you can go all your life but not know what that good purpose is.

That’s what it means to be in darkness. You can do all the right things and pray all the right things and believe all the right things and still have everything fall apart. You can believe with all your heart and still have no sense that God is with you.

That’s what God says right here. And let me tell you this, and I mean it: if anybody wants to preach to you and say that you just have to believe more, or give more, or have more faith, if anybody tells you that as long as you do all the right things, everything in life always turns out right in the end, and if you believe that, you better tear this page right out of your Bible.

You have to expect trouble in life. You have to prepare for hardship, because it’s going to come.

If you go through life thinking outer and inner darkness can never happen to you because you’re a good person and God loves you, then you’re fooling yourself.

Because Jesus was a good person, wasn’t he? Look at how he suffered. What makes you think you’re better than Him?

But now the second point: those times of darkness are the best times to learn about God’s grace.

Look at the language used in this Psalm. This is a prayer. This man is talking to God. But this isn’t a prayer filled with flowery language and Thee’s and Thou’s. It isn’t a holy prayer, it’s an angry one. This man isn’t controlling his temper or his emotions. He’s letting it all out.

And more, he’s actually accusing God. He’s putting God on the stand and treating Him like a hostile witness. Look at verses 10-12:

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 Abaddon?

Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

He’s saying he wants to praise God. He wants to tell the world of God’s love and faithfulness. But he can’t do that because he doesn’t feel God’s love and faithfulness at all. How can he, when it feels like God is trampling him on the ground and killing him?

Why are You not answering me? he’s saying. But he gets no answer. And by the end of this prayer, he still gets no answer. That’s why in verse 15, he says “Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.”

From the time he was a boy all the way until now, he says, God has never been there for him.

Now that’s quite a thing to say, isn’t it? This isn’t speaking respectfully to God. This isn’t acknowledging God’s holiness.

At the end of this Psalm, he says that darkness is his closest friend. Darkness is ore of a comfort to him than God.

It’s surely an exaggeration, because of course God has been there, and of course God has given him good things. And surely God is a better friend than his despair and pain.

But as harsh as these words are, this Psalm only shows the depths of God’s grace.

Because the very fact that a Psalm like this is included in holy scripture is evidence of God’s understanding. It’s proof that God knows how people think and feel and talk when they’re absolutely desperate.

God didn’t leave this Psalm out of the Bible. He didn’t say, “This is someone who has fallen out of my grace, so I don’t want his words printed here for the world to see.”

Instead He’s saying, “I’m still this man’s God, no matter the way he talks.” He’s saying, “No matter what you’re going through, I’m still the God who saves.”

It says that right in verse 1. God is telling us that He’s not our God because we follow the rules and put on a happy face. He’s saying He’s our God because He’s a God of grace.

And we desperately need that when that darkness comes. We need to understand God’s patience and His grace.

Now, our third point. It’s during those dark times when we can’t see God working outside of us and we don’t feel God working inside of us that we have the best opportunity to become someone great.

When you’re stuck in that darkness, you’re getting absolutely nothing out of all your praying and worshipping. It doesn’t give you any benefit at all. That’s exactly why it’s so important.

Remember when Satan went to God about Job? He said, “Job’s only serving you because of what he can get out of it. Take all his blessings away, and he’ll curse You.”

Satan says that about all of us. He tells God, “He’s only serving You because it pays. She’s only serving You for what she can get out of You. All of those believers are actually serving only themselves. They’re all self-centered.”

And Satan says he can prove it. “Plunge them into darkness,” he tells God. “Don’t answer their prayers. Take away their comforts. Make all of their worship for nothing. Then they’ll curse You.”

And you know what? Satan’s kind of right. We are self-centered. We all have needs, and we all want God to supply for them.

And a lot of times, as soon as things start getting hard for us, as soon as life gets tough, we give up because we think God isn’t holding up His end of the bargain.

After all, we’re Christians. We have faith. We follow all the rules. We do all the right things. So God’s supposed to give us everything we need in return, right? That’s what we think.

But something’s happened to this man. He feels the same way we do, he’s yelling and screaming at God, but he’s still praying, isn’t he? Even when he says at the end that darkness is his closest friend, he’s saying it to God.

He hasn’t left his faith. He’s clinging to God even though he’s getting absolutely nothing out of it, and that means he’s proving Satan wrong. Satan, right here in these verses, is being defeated right before our eyes.

When you’re in that darkness, when you come to a point in your life when serving God is getting you absolutely nothing, you have a choice. And that choice is this: do I worship God to serve him, or do I worship God to get him to serve me?

That choice you make is everything. If even in your darkness you hold onto God, even if your prayer is just “God I don’t like you and I don’t understand you and I’m so angry with you, but I’m not going anywhere,” Satan is being defeated.

Because then you prove him wrong. You prove that you’re not in a relationship with God for what you can get out of it. You’re in a relationship with God because He’s God and you’re not.

If you do that, you’re becoming somebody. Because when that darkness lifts back out of your life — and it will — you’ll discover that you have a strength that can’t be shaken by the world. The person who loves God in spite of what happens is a person who can endure anything.

Finally, the last point. Darkness can be put into perspective. Now, what does that mean?

When you’re in that darkness, whether outer or inner or especially both, it can feel like that darkness is total. God has completely rejected you.

That’s what this man thinks. God’s anger is completely upon him, he’s been completely abandoned, his life holds absolutely no purpose at all. He thinks the darkness he’s trapped in will never end.

But he’s wrong. Even though he says at the end of this Psalm that darkness is his only friend, we know that’s not true. How do we know that?

Look at the title of this Psalm, printed there in your Bible. What’s it say? My translation says, “A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.”

A man named Heman wrote this prayer. Heman was actually the grandson of Samuel, whose mother was Hannah. And in 1 Chronicles chapter 6, we learn that Heman was the leader of the Kohathite guild of musicians and poets who wrote Psalms.

If you want to read the Psalms that these people wrote, and that Heman oversaw, they’re found in the 40s and the 80s of the book of Psalms.

Some of the greatest, most powerful, most penetrating Psalms in the entire book. Which means that Heman produced some of the greatest works of music and literature in human history.

And how did he do that? What was it that allowed this ordinary person to accomplish something so great?

It was the darkness he suffered in his life. Because of that darkness, because Heman clung to God no matter what, even when it felt like he was getting absolutely nothing at all out of it, he was turned into an artist who has helped countless people.

From his point of view, he thought the darkness in his life served no purpose. He thought God had abandoned him. And Heman lived out his whole life without knowing why God allowed that.

But God was using that darkness to turn him into someone great. So great that all these thousands of years later, a group of people in Stuarts Draft, Virginia, would be sitting here talking about his work.

Because all that pressure he was under because of that darkness turned Heman into a diamond because he never stopped going to God. Because he worshipped God for God’s sake, and not Heman’s own sake. And that’s why Heman’s name means “faithful.”

God hadn’t abandoned him. It just felt that way. We know that as a fact, because we can look at what Heman wrote and what he went through and know that his words have stood the test of history.

But what about our own darkness? What about when it feels like God has abandoned us? Has he, or does it just feel that way?

It just feels that way. And we can know that as fact, too.

How can we know that? Look at the end of this Psalm. Darkness is my only friend. The other Psalm in the Psalter that ends this way is Psalm 39, and at the end of Psalm 39 it says “Turn your face away from me, God.”

What’s that remind you of?

In Matthew 27, Jesus is on the cross, and it says that from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there was darkness over all the land. And Jesus says to God his Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” And earth shook, and the tombs were opened, and many of the saints were raised.

Heman thought, and we think, that we suffer the ultimate darkness in life. Things go bad. We lose hope. God seems to turn away. There is no one left who loves us.

But in those times, are things really bad, or are there still beauties and blessings in our lives that we just have a hard time seeing?

And do we really have no hope, or is that hope just hidden by our own pain?

Does God really turn away, or is He closer to you than He’s ever been?

Is there really no one left who loves you, or is there a God who loves you more than anyone ever could?

You see? We just think we’re in darkness. Christ suffered the ultimate darkness. Christ faced the real anger of God.

God truly did abandon him on the cross, because everything Satan says is true: we really are selfish. We really are self-centered. We really do deserve the darkness and punishment.

But God wants to forgive us, and forgiving someone means paying the debt they owe you yourself, rather than making them pay it.

Jesus took on that ultimate darkness so that our darkness is only temporary. Darkness truly was his only friend on that cross. But he did that willingly so that in our own darkness, we still have him.

That series of questions Heman asks God in verses 10-12 of this Psalm:

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 Abaddon?

Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteous in the land of forgetfulness?

Heman’s asking those things because he thinks the answer is no. Christ proved that the answers to every one of those questions is yes.

Because you’re saved. Because he is going to raise you up to glory. So how can there be true darkness in your life without hope? Without love? Without even joy?

Whatever it is you’re going through, whatever darkness you’re facing, I can promise you this: it’s nothing that being in heaven won’t cure. If you know that heaven is waiting on you, then the darkness you face will be only a shadow.

Make no mistake—you’re going to face that darkness at some point. It may be outer darkness in your circumstances. It may be inner darkness and a crisis of faith. It could even be both.

But it doesn’t mean you’re not a believer. Doesn’t mean you’re not saved. Doesn’t mean you’re lost. Doesn’t mean you deserve it. It simply means you’re alive in a broken world that will be remade soon, and you along with it.

Hang on to that. And in your darkness, pray like Heman. Pour out all of your anger, all of your hurt, all of your doubts, right to God. Because He’s there, He’s listening, and He still, and always, loves you.

Let’s pray: Father we’re so thankful that Your love for us is unending. We’re so thankful that your presence with us is eternal. But even as we know these two truths, Father, we still fear the darkness in this world. The darkness in us. Help us when our grief and doubt grow to blackness that You are still there. Give us the strength to understand that you have not abandoned us. And remind us, Father, that Christ faced the ultimate darkness for us so that we do not have to face our own darkness alone. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, Amen.

Benediction

And now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.