A Sermon on Psalm 88

Introduction

Me and my wife have been going through the book of Job for the past few months in our family prayer. If you look at the beginning of Job’s life, there has been nothing but suffering. His life keeps getting bad at every turn of the page, until the last few chapters that is. I think when he was in the middle of his struggles, he would have perfectly related with this Psalm.

Maybe there are some of us who are here who feel the same way. As we were reading this Psalm, it is possible that some of you felt “hey that is exactly how I feel.” And there might be some of you who feel “thank goodness that is not my life.” Whatever you might have felt when reading it, I hope this would be an encouragement to you.

Psalm 88 is called as the darkest psalm. When we read it, we can quickly observe that it is psalm of lament. There are 150 psalms in this book, which of course many of you would know. But did you know that of those, 59 are psalms of lament? That is like 40% of the Psalms. Forty three of those 59 psalms are written by David, boy was his life hard. Moses’ psalm of lament is Psalm 90, which is his only psalm in this Psalm book. But Psalm 88 is very unique from the rest of the lament psalms. It is the only psalm that does not conclude as other melancholy, lament psalms do. See how Psalm 90 ends, for example. Verse 14 - “satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,” vs 15 - “make us glad,” vs 16 - “let your work be shown”, vs 17 - “let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us.” It ends with some hope, and a prayer of hope. You will not find something like that, at least not explicitly, in the entire Psalm 88. As we look at this Psalm, I want to draw three things from it. First we will look at the Psalm itself.

An Exegesis of the Psalm

Christ of Psalm 88

Final Application and Exhortation