We’ve all gone through periods of darkness in our lives. Whether it’s a diagnosis we were not expecting, a sudden tragedy, or being the victim of evil, we live in a fallen world and its darkness will easily spread in our lives. This is the saddest psalm. It’s the only one that doesn’t have an uplifting ending. Is there room for hope? Let’s dig in…
Psalm 88
For the choir director: A psalm of the descendants of Korah. A song to be sung to the tune “The Suffering of Affliction.” A psalm of Heman the Ezrahite (a worship leader).
1 O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out to you by day.
I come to you at night.
2 Now hear my prayer;
listen to my cry.
3 For my life is full of troubles,
and death draws near.
4 I am as good as dead,
like a strong man with no strength left.
5 They have left me among the dead,
and I lie like a corpse in a grave.
I am forgotten,
cut off from your care.
6 You have thrown me into the lowest pit,
into the darkest depths.
7 Your anger weighs me down;
with wave after wave you have engulfed me. Interlude8 You have driven my friends away
by making me repulsive to them.
I am in a trap with no way of escape.
9 My eyes are blinded by my tears.
Each day I beg for your help, O Lord;
I lift my hands to you for mercy.
10 Are your wonderful deeds of any use to the dead?
Do the dead rise up and praise you? Interlude11 Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love?
Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction?[c]
12 Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds?
Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness?
13 O Lord, I cry out to you.
I will keep on pleading day by day.
14 O Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you turn your face from me?15 I have been sick and close to death since my youth.
Psalm 88 NLT
I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors.
16 Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me.
Your terrors have paralyzed me.
17 They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long.
They have engulfed me completely.
18 You have taken away my companions and loved ones.
Darkness is my closest friend.
In the majority of the Psalms, the psalmist starts in despair crying out to God. He spills all he is going through. Toward the end, the tone of the psalm changes as the writer praises God and believes in His salvation. That’s not the case with this psalm.
Like this psalmist, many people have lived with an ailment, disability, or illness for most of their lives. Unlike other psalms, this one ends in darkness. Pastor Sandy Adams elaborates…
Not one ray of sunshine lights up the agony of Psalm 88. Yet maybe that’s the point – God is teaching us that no matter how depressing our situation gets, we can always cry to Him for help. With God we can “let it all hang out”. When the poison of pain fills our cup it’s better to pour it out, than it is to let it eat through the bottom.
One more point, in 1 Kings 4:31 the author of Psalm 88, this same Heman, is noted for his wisdom. And there’s probably a connection. Wisdom grows out of suffering when you learn its lessons. Heman was a graduate of the School of hard-knocks. Pain had been his teacher.
Pastor Sandy Adams
Watch this video from Spoken Gospel…
Depression, chronic pain, disease, and grief drown people for years on end. For others, the cloud of sorrow eclipses their entire lives. If God has laid you in a grave of despair and flooded you with terrors, hear this: God has laid you beside his beloved Son. If you are suffering a living death, know this: Jesus has suffered and died with you. He had no vital signs when they took him off his instrument of torture. He was laid in the grave without a prayer. Jesus took his place among the departed. The waves of God engulfed him. The light of the world was drowned in darkness. The God who saves, didn’t save Jesus (Matthew 27:43, 50). That means when you feel abandoned, Jesus always weeps with you.
But Jesus isn’t just another man. He is God embodied. And if God himself has suffered and died, our suffering is not a product of God’s indifference. Your suffering does not mean God is ignoring you or mad at you. Your suffering, however great it may be, does not mean God has abandoned you anymore than it means God abandoned himself. Though you may lay in death, you are in the company of God in Jesus. You can be confident that God sees your suffering, knows your pain, and has not left you in the dark.
Spoken Gospel
The Darkness of Holy Week
During Holy Week, we follow Jesus through the darkness of His walk to the cross.
Even before that, Jesus tried to warn His disciples and followers of what He knew he had to suffer. Read the Gospel of Mark.
- The Agony in the Garden when He asks His Father if there’s a plan “B”.
- Being betrayed by Judas
- Being betrayed by Peter
- Feeling betrayed by God, His Father
- From Friday night all through Saturday, imagine what His disciples were thinking.
Then Comes the Resurrection
Jesus defeated sin once and for all when He suffered on the cross. Subsequently, He then defeated death by His Resurrection. That is the foundation and confident Hope of every Born Again Believer.
Whatever darkness you are going through as you live in this evil world, be assured that Jesus knows your suffering. Furthermore, when you surrender your life to Him, He gives you His Hope, Joy, and Peace — what this world can never give you — because of His Mercy and Grace. That’s His Salvation!
If you’re not sure if you’re saved or not, if you truly want to be born again and have the assurance of salvation, receive the Holy Spirit, feel His Shalom — a peace that surpasses all understanding, and get a 1-way, non-stop ticket to Heaven after you die, or that you won’t be left behind at the Rapture, which can happen at any moment, this is what you have to do…
Believe. Repent. Be Baptized. Receive the Holy Spirit.
- Believe — have Faith — that Jesus is the Christ and He died taking your sins away forever and that He rose from the dead 3 days later.
- Repent of your sins — stop sinning! Do a complete 180-degree turn in your life and surrender your life to Him. When you ask Jesus to forgive you He will. ALL your sins will be wiped clean — past, present, and future! And All means ALL!
- Be Baptized by water baptism — show the world and yourself that you have died to your old life and are born again in Christ.
- Receive the gift of Holy Spirit in your heart.
