Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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Thankfully, many of life’s serious challenges are temporary.
But some are not.
Some illnesses or other physical conditions are never healed.
Some problems are never solved.
Some difficult circumstances never change.
Some troubles never go away.
Psalm 88 is the pitiful cry of a man who faced an ongoing trial.
He was suffering miserably from a chronic illness that had plagued him from his childhood.
Over and over again, he had cried out to God for healing, but healing never came.
Apparently, his condition worsened through the years to the point that it crippled his entire life.
His friends forsook him, and he felt he was at the point of death.
The heading to Psalm 88 identifies Heman the Ezrahite as its author.
Heman was one of David’s three chief musicians—a primary leader of worship in Israel.
He was respected for his wisdom and served as one of David’s chief spiritual advisors.
Yet, as his only psalm reveals, he suffered immensly.
Various commentators have described Psalm 88 as the saddest, gloomiest, and darkest of all the psalms.
Early commentators applied it to the suffering of Christ at Gethsemane and Calvary.
Even today, it is often read at Good Friday services.
Psalm 88 is different from every other psalm about suffering and trouble.
In other psalms of lament, there is a transition in which the psalmist is delivered or his burden is lightened and his sorrow is transformed to joy.
As in these other psalms, Heman prays diligently, earnestly calling on the Lord for help and deliverance.
In his case, however, his prayers seem to go unanswered.
No deliverance comes.
No confidence or hope of deliverance is given.
He receives no comfort or relief from his suffering.
The last word of the psalm is darkness.
At the end of the psalm, he is still suffering and in despair.
Through Heman’s excruciating suffering of both body and soul, God used this wise worship leader in a wonderful way.
Heman’s prayer is raw and bursting with emotion.
It speaks to all who experience ongoing suffering and to those who fear the experience of suffering.
Any of us whose healing never comes, whose circumstances never change, and whose prayers seem to go unheard can identify with his emotions.
Heman does not describe his circumstances as they actually are but as he perceives them to be—the way he sees them.
For example, he feels that God has forsaken him and angrily stricken him.
Still, the Holy Spirit inspired him to write his psalm this way—uncensored and unfiltered—
so we can know that we are not alone in questioning God and can see that we have the liberty to express our true feelings to our Heavenly Father.
At the same time, Heman stands as a sterling example of unwavering faith.
After years of his prayers for relief going unanswered, he continued to pray.
He may have questioned and complained to God, but he never stopped believing in God.
I. Just Keep Praying
(88:1–8)
Day and night, just keep praying!
In the depths of despair and desperate for help, the psalmist cried out to God day and night.
He poured out his anguished heart to the Lord, freely expressing his feelings and frustrations.
While he was clearly disappointed in God, he had not lost his faith, nor had he lost hope that God would respond to his pleas.
Why keep praying?
A. Because there is no on else to go to
(v. 1).
Heman addressed the Lord as the God of my salvation.
His illness was grave, and he had apparently suffered with it since childhood (v.
15).
It is reasonable to assume that he had pursued every means of help available to him throughout his life, but to no avail.
Despite everything, he continued to believe that God could save him, that He could heal and deliver him from his illness.
B. Because God alone can hear and answer prayer
(v.
2).
With God as his only hope, the psalmist pleaded with the Lord to hear and answer his prayer.
Although he had cried out to God for years, relief from his suffering never came.
He surely felt that his supplications were not reaching God, or that God was not listening.
With that in mind, he asked that his prayers would come before God’s face.
He desperately needed God to listen to him.
Cry (rinnah) usually speaks of loud shouts of joy in the Old Testament.
The Expositor’s Bible Commentary describes it here as a “deeply piercing shout,” stating that it is “a loud cry for divine help.
The psalmist shouts loudly to the Lord, hoping that He will hear.
C. Because your life full of sorrow
(vv.
3–6).
Frustrated and worn down by years of suffering, Heman emptied his soul to the Lord.
He began by stating that he was full of trouble (v.
3a).
The Hebrew word for full (sabea) is used of one who has eaten to the point that he or she can eat no more.
Bluntly stated, the psalmist declared that he had endured all the trouble that he could stand.
His suffering was so intense that he felt he stood at the very brink of death (v.
3b).
Draws nigh or near (nagah) means to touch or make personal contact with.
He sensed that he was so near death that he could actually reach out and touch the grave.
In fact, the psalmist expressed that he felt like a dead man (v. 4a).
Others avoided him, treating him as if he were already dead.
He was very weak; he had no strength to continue fighting his affliction (v. 4b).
Exhausted and discouraged, he had reached the point where he felt he could go on no longer.
Not only was the psalmist shunned by others, but to Heman it also seemed that God had abandoned him (v.
5).
He felt as if he were a corpse lying in the grave.
In spite of his unending cries for God’s help, his situation never changed.
It was as if he were dead, as if God had forgotten him and did not care about him.
The severity of his suffering caused the psalmist to feel that God had caused his affliction (v. 6).
He plainly stated that God had put him into the lowest pit imaginable.
God had plunged him into the darkest depths.
God was responsible for his agony—or so it seemed.
D. Because you feel it is God’s discipline
(vv.
7–8).
The psalmist reasoned that he was suffering so intensely because of God’s wrath (v.
7a).
He assumed that God was angry with him and was disciplining him, perhaps for some sin he had committed.
He felt trapped beneath the weight of God’s fury, struggling to survive the relentless waves of a fierce storm (v.
7b).
Before he could recover from one crippling blow, another wave struck.
He was like a drowning man, unable to keep his head above water.
To make matters even worse, the psalmist was fighting his way through this alone.
Repulsed by Heman’s wretched condition, his friends shunned him (v.
8).
He was confined by his despair, trapped and unable to escape the sorrow that squeezed the very life and hope out of his soul.
All who persevere through prolonged suffering can identify with Heman’s feelings:
He felt God was not listening to his prayers, that He was ignoring him (v.
1–2).
He thought he could not go on any longer—that he could endure no more pain (vv.
3–4).
He felt nobody cared about him—that he had no true friends (v.
4).
He felt God had caused His suffering—that God had done this to him (vv.
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