1. Intro: A Look at Lament
2. The Promise of God, v. 1a
3. The Problem of Pain, v. 3-9a, 14-18
4. The Prayer of Patience, v. 1-2, 9b, 13
5. The Process to Praise, v. 10-12; Ps. 89:1ff

Dear God, This is a dark psalm. It is heavy and we need Your wisdom. Would You give us that wisdom and help us as we seek to properly express our griefs and sorrows to You. Thank You for giving us this example and help us to go away changed by our meditation on Your Word today. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Intro: A Look at Lament

Psalm 88 is one of the great Lament Psalms–and it’s actually known as the “darkest psalm in the Psalter.” In all seriousness, there is a beauty in learning to lament. As Anne Bradstreet wrote, “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

What is lament? Lament is some kind of passionate expression of grief or sorrow, a complaint or even anger, over a significant loss or something that seems unreasonable or unfair; it’s often set to music, like a funeral dirge, and it can include physical wailing and sobbing. It’s personal and private and might even be loud and emotionally messy. On top of this deep grief, we often experience some measure of guilt for complaining to God. But, as we’ve learned, OVER HALF of the Psalms are laments! So, it’s clearly something that God wants us to be able to use in responding to Him. But we’re not good at this, at least I’m not. So, I’m thankful that our psalmist today models how we as believers in God can take these big emotions and rightly relate them to God when we don’t know where to begin.

These last few months alone have been full of grief and disappointment. In Psalm 88, we have an example of how it’s not only appropriate but actually proper to express our deepest, darkest emotions to God. My goal for today is two-fold: 1. that you go away from this lecture knowing that God desperately loves you and longs to hear your deepest, darkest cries and bring you out on the other side to a place of praise and blessing and beauty; He does. And 2. that you have empathy for others who are in seasons of lament and learn to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

So, personal side note here, I naturally tend more towards logic/administrative details and I’m really thankful how God is using this psalm to grow empathy in my own heart. It struck me that the Spirit was using His word to do this as I practiced this talk. This first time I read all the way through it, so many of your faces and stories flooded into my mind and heart and I literally cried the whole way through… So, know that God is working on your teachers’ hearts too and using His word to transform us…and know that you are very loved even when we can’t be in the same room.

At the beginning of Psalm 88, we have a bunch of Title Notes. These header notes have been included within the Psalter since it was compiled and are actually considered part of the inspired word of God. So, let’s start by looking at those.

A Song: It’s important to remember that the psalms are songs. Some of the best ways we can express our emotions is through music.
A Psalm of the Sons of Korah: so this was either by or for the temple musicians.
To the choirmaster: or another translation is “to dispose God to mercy.”
According to Mahalath Leannoth: literally, “sickness” “to humble or afflict.”
A Maskil: “to make wise.” This is “a psalm of understanding.”
Of (by) Heman(Hebrew: ןמיח HaYMahN) the Ezrahite (or Zerahite): whose name means ‘Faithful’. And we’ll see how he lives up to his name in this psalm. We know he’s a court musician, but there are a few court musicians with this name in the OT, so it’s hard to know exactly which one he is. And that’s okay.

In summary, Psalm 88 is a song for personal use when we are afflicted, to bring us humbly before God, and to help us understand how to beg God for mercy and faithfully pray to Him even in the midst of our hopeless feelings.

CONTEXT

We’re at the end of Book III, so over halfway through our Psalter. The first two books focused on God’s delivering his king–specifically, David, but as a foreshadowing of Jesus. Book III seems to correlate to the Exilic Period–the period where the nation of Israel had disobeyed and was punished by being exiles either in foreign lands or treated as exiles in their own land. We don’t know exactly when this Psalm was written, but it was either written during that exilic period OR if it was written during the time of David and Solomon’s reign, it still helps express the emotions that were felt during exile, so it’s well placed here in the larger book of Psalms.

If you look at Psalm 87 (the psalm before this one), the theme is “God will keep His covenant!” The psalmist is convinced of it! Then we go in to this dark, almost entirely hopeless lament in Psalm 88. Then, the last psalm of Book III is Psalm 89, and the psalmist is praising God but still lamenting as he waits for the covenant promises to be kept. So that gives us some context. Psalm 88’s as low as we go, so it’s all up hill from here.

Now, let’s look at our text: Psalm 88.

Notice who’s talking: There’s a lot of “I” or “my.” “The psalm is written in first person, but,” as Schreiner points out, “it speaks of the state of Israel: troubled, enervated, depressed, friendless, grieving and most of all separated from the Lord” (The King in His Beauty, p. 268). So it’s easy to apply this psalm to ourselves, but let’s not forget to put ourselves in the Israelites’ shoes as we read it too–a nation in exile waiting for their Messiah to appear.

There’s a lot of sporadic back and forth and then it ends…without really a resolution. When we’re experiencing these deep emotions, there’s often not a whole lot of order or logic in our expression of it, and I want you to know that that’s okay. The psalmist pings around a lot in this one, so I’ve grouped different verses together for an outline, but we’re going to walk straight through the text. I have four main categories: The Promise of God, The Problem of Pain, The Prayer of Patience, and The Process to Praise.

The Promise of God, v. 1a

We’ll see that the psalmist actually starts with where he wants to end. He states what he knows and wants to believe about God. We know that we should praise God, and we want to get to that point, but there are times when we just aren’t there. So how does Heman start?

“O LORD, God of my salvation” — All throughout Scripture, and especially in the Psalms, God promises to hear and to rescue His people, to save us. The psalmist calls God “LORD” (all caps, YHWH, Savior) and repeats it by making it personal: “God of MY salvation.” He knows that salvation belongs to the LORD. That’s the promise he’s clinging to. If you think about, isn’t that the story of the whole Bible? “Salvation belongs to the LORD.” That’s the promise we all have to cling to as we walk through these dark nights of the soul.

The Prayer of Patience, v. 1b-2

He prays. Weaved in and out of all of his declarations of complaints and griefs and sorrows is this perseverance of prayer. Let’s read the rest of verse 1, “I cry out day and night before you.” Write off the bat, we see a connection to Psalm 1. The psalmist cries out day and night, just like the Blessed One “meditates day and night.”

“Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!” (v. 2).

He’s pleading with God, and then he lets us in on this raw, personal, cry that he utters to God in vv. 3-9.

The Problem of Pain, v. 3-9a

“For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol [grave/ death]. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength, like one set loose [“freed”] 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” (vv. 3-5).

He’s surrounded by troubles from every side–troubles from within (v. 3), and then troubles from outside (vv. 4-5). He feels cut off from God, which would be truly hopeless. Think about it, he’s a temple musician and he can’t get to the temple. He compares living to praise and not-living to not-praising; he desires to live and praise God, but he feels like death might be freedom. Before we go further, I want to be sure to say that if you are feeling like this…like death might be better than the suffering you’re feeling, can I encourage you to seek professional help? We are complex creatures living in a fallen world. And while we are spiritual creatures, we also have bodies. God remembers that we are dust (even when we forget sometimes). And God made us to live in community, so please don’t try to walk this path alone. Reach out to one of us or to one of the pastors or elders or elders’ wives. You are not alone. You are loved by this church, and more importantly, by our good, good Father!

In this next section, we see the psalmist shift back and forth between “I”/“my” and “You”/“Your.” He’s blaming God for this deep, dark, overwhelming wrath and soul-crushing loneliness.

Is it okay to blame God for our troubles? In Alec Motyer’s Psalms devotional, he counseled his readers, “Don’t hesitate to see your trials as coming from the hand of God” (p. 248). If we are in God’s hand, “the trial only means that he grips us more tightly!” (p. 248). He goes on, “Don’t bother your head with problems arising, or thought to arise, from seeing things this way. [From seeing God as the cause of your pain.] This is the truth of the matter: if we are in the soup it is he who has decided what sort of soup it is, and at what temperature, and how long, and why! He is God” (p. 248). The weeping prophet, Jeremiah, agreed with him, affirming that God caused his grief, but reminding us of the promise that God will have compassion according to his abundant steadfast love.

“You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, [like a weight on your chest and you can’t breath] and you overwhelm me with all your waves” (vv. 6-7).

Judgment and wrath are often conveyed with sea or wave imagery in the Bible. Sometimes we feel legitimate wrath for sin that needs repentance; remember Jonah? And yet even there, God had a divine plan to rescue His servant. Sometimes the weight of God’s wrath is just there, and it has nothing to do with anything you’ve done; think about Noah when the whole world was judged by a flood; he felt the waves, but he was righteous. Do you feel like God is punishing you, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what you did wrong? If there’s sin, repent; but either way, waves are meant to draw us down and into the embrace of our Lord.

Then we get this little word off to the side. Selah [this would be a pause or rest in the music, and it’s like the psalmist is coming up out of the waves, gasping for air before the next wave hits.] Selah (deep breath)

“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 [I can’t get out]” (v.8)

This is possibly a quarantine situation from a disease like leprosy…or I don’t know…another virus which shall not be named?? Anyone felt shut in or shunned recently? This psalm’s for you.

“My eye grows dim through sorrow [or “has languished through affliction]” (v. 9).

Have you been there? Do you feel alone, rejected by God and everyone else, for that matter? Do you feel like you’re trapped in a pit or in one of those Escape Room Adventures, but you have no one on your team and the timer’s gone off and no one’s letting you out? This is where the psalmist is. And what does he do with it? He prays again.

The Prayer of Patience, 9b

“Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you” (v.9b).

This faithful psalmist is faithful in prayer, and his example compels us to be faithful in prayer too, even when we’re overwhelmed with dark feelings and deep sorrow. And it’s not a quiet prayer, is it? It’s physical. He spreads out his hands towards God, and he begins to ask a series of 6 questions in vv. 10-14. It’s as if this finite man is making every effort to understand His infinite God. He’s trying to comprehend what God is doing, but God is incomprehensible.

The Process to Praise, v. 10-12

“Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah [here he takes another breath] Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? [or literally, Destruction] Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” (vv.10-12).

Even in his questioning, he rehearses certain truths–he knows God does mighty wonders and is worthy of praise; he knows God is supposed to have steadfast love and faithfulness; he knows God’s wonders and righteousness are to be known. And yet he questions all of it!

Have you experienced this desperate cry? Have you ever questioned God like this? I’ve found myself here before–more times than I might like to admit. The first time I remember it was the loss of my great grandmother in the 4th grade; I was supposed to be singing with my class for the Senior Saints Luncheon, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it; and someone found me hiding in the bathroom, crying. It was the first close family member that I had experienced losing. Another time was when a friend died in a sudden, tragic accident when I was in college. Every time a wave of emotion or doubt would surge, I would fight it by repeating a phrase to myself, “God is good all the time. God is good all the time.” Over and over again in my head–and sometimes out loud–at least a hundred times a day for what felt like weeks or months, until I believed it again.

Have you felt groanings too deep for words? The shock of coworker who had been part of our young adult Bible study and had been to our house for dinner with his house on a Friday night, then on Monday morning, his wife called to see if he had come to work. She couldn’t get ahold of him, and come to find out we were the last people to see him alive. He was a veteran and lost his battle with PTSD, leaving those of us behind with feelings of unbearable grief, betrayal, disbelief, and more unanswerable questions than you can fathom.

Have your dreams been crushed? And you find yourself reeling between nearly every emotion known to man in 3-minute cycles till 3AM when you crash in exhaustion and there are no more tears and the only feeling left is numbness? I’ve been there. And those are just a few that I can share from my experience. Some of you have dealt with far worse than I. This psalm is for me, and this psalm is for you.

“Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Destruction?” (v.11).

Let’s think about this for a minute. Can death declare love and faithfulness? I’d argue that it absolutely can! In fact, it did in the death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His death was the ultimate declaration of love and faithfulness! And in his death, our man of sorrows he took our griefs and carried our sins; he was crushed by the weight of God’s wrath because of me…and you…so that he could once and for all destroy death and heal our wounds, bringing us peace with God.

Another prayer: The Prayer of Patience

“But I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you” (v. 13).

In the middle of his list of questions, he pauses to pray and remind God that he’s been faithful in prayer. In the midst of feelings of hopelessness, yet still he prays to the LORD (YHWH). He knows his only help is from God, and he desperately cries for a Savior.

Again, he lets us be a fly on the wall in this very vulnerable moment as he asks his last two questions in his process of learning to praise.

The Process to Praise

“O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” (v. 14).

The process to praise often includes questioning God… Do you remember the story of Job? Job had lost his children, his livelihood, and his health all in one day…his friends accused him and shunned him and his wife even suggested that he just curse God so that God would kill him. Instead, Job determined to bless God. But in the midst of that belief, we have a lengthy record of his back and forth with God–a back and forth that’s full of questions. And God patiently met him where He was and responded with questions, leading him to truth.

The Problem of Pain, v. 15-18

The psalmist continues to enumerate his woes. Again, he’s skipping between “I”/”my” and “You”/”Your” in v. 15 thru the end of the chapter.

“Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, “I suffer your terrors: I am helpless” (v. 15). These are ongoing struggles, maybe even lifelong ones.

“Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me” (v. 16). This is a fierce wrath that flows over him like hot, fiery lava.

“They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together ” (v. 17). We just saw fire imagery, and now we see flood imagery again. One of my sources referred to this as “the prison of the heart.” He was trapped between fire and flood and unable to escape.

“You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness [lit., “darkness is my best friend”] (v. 18). The ones who you thought loved you the most have hurt you the most and abandoned you and you feel shame and oppression and loneliness and like the only one left to listen is darkness itself. Motyer calls this section “a climax of hopelessness” (p. 247).

Isaiah 50:10, “Who walks in darkness and has no light, let him trust in the name of the LORD, and lean upon his God.”

I’m reminded of a quote that Ken Collier often shares, “When there’s a gap between God’s ways and wisdom and our understanding of God’s ways and wisdom, we must fill the gap with trust.” How do we do this? By rehearsing God’s promises… And while we can’t choose our emotions, we can choose to persevere in prayer–and ask others to pray
that our emotions will follow and we will be able to trust that God is with us, guiding us and caring for us…even in the “valley of the shadow of death” (Ps. 23:4).

Let’s look again at The Prayers in our Psalm.

We have prayers in vv.1-2; and another right in the middle in v. 9; then v. 13 is almost identical to vv. 1-2.

Where else do we see patient, persistent prayer in Scripture? I think the greatest example is in our Lord’s life. He’s constantly going up to a mountain or off to some quiet spot to pour out his heart to the Father. In three of the Gospels [see Matt. 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22], we see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, pleading with God. This is just before he’s betrayed by Judas (one of his 12 closest friends) and would be sentenced to death on the cross (one of the most painful, humiliating deaths ever). He is “deeply distressed and troubled,” “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” and “in anguish.” He prayed three times that God would take this cup of sorrow away (referring to his own death on the cross), but says, “Not my will but yours.” I found it interesting to note that Jesus prayed three times about the thorns that were literally about to pierce him, and in 2 Cor. 12, Paul prayed three times that God would remove his “thorn in his flesh,” calling it, “a messenger of Satan to torment me,” why? “to keep me from becoming conceited” and “so that the power of Christ may rest up on me.” And we also have three prayers in this psalm.

Three (3) is a significant number in Scripture; not only does it represent the Trinity, but it also symbolizes development or growth in an individual, especially through trials. Jesus brought three disciples with Him to the Garden to pray with Him–Peter, James, and John. He tells them to watch and pray as he goes a little further to pray alone; and in between His three prayers, He checks back in. What does He find each time? They’re asleep. They can’t stay awake. Luke tells us it’s because they’re “exhausted from sorrow.” Meanwhile, God sends an angel from heaven to strengthen Jesus as he prays, and it says, “he prayed the more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” Sound like lament? Absolutely.

What if Psalm 88 was one of the psalms that Jesus prayed during those hours of prayer in the Garden or while He hung on the cross paying for our sins, mistreated, abused, rejected, alone in his darkest hour? We don’t know exactly what he prayed that night, but we do know that our Lord used the whole book of Psalms in his personal worship of God. Jesus used the Psalms as his personal prayer book on this earth. And not only did Jesus pay for our sins, bearing all of our sorrow and pain on his shoulders, Scripture tells us he makes intercession for us! Jesus prays for us!

Even in our groanings, we are not alone–“the whole creation has been groaning together” since the Curse. There will be horrible sufferings in this sin-cursed world, but we can be convinced that “nothing at all can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” His love IS steadfast!

The Process to Praise, Ps. 89:1

The Psalms lead us to this conclusion too. It is no coincidence that Psalm 89 follows Psalm 88; and it’s quite possible that the Ethan who wrote Psalm 89 is the biological brother to our psalmist, Heman, which is a pretty cool example of “brothers being born to help us in times of adversity.” Psalm 89 is still a lament, but there are glimmers of hope and praise and steadfast love.

Psalm 89:1 says, “I will sing of the steadfast love of the LORD, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.”

In Isaiah 38, we see that the prophet records a writing of Hezekiah king of Judah. Remember, he was the king who had been really sick and then restored to life for a certain period of years. Well, Hezekiah prayed a prayer really similar to Psalm 88. He talks about “walk[ing] slowly all [his] years because of the bitterness of [his] soul” (15). Then, he cries to God and begs, “O Lord, restore me to health and make me live!” (16). Then the beautiful part comes. He says in v. 17, “Behold, it was for my welfare [Look! It was for my own good!] that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.” God’s love really is steadfast and full of deliverance! God is abundant in mercy!

Like Hezekiah and Heman and Paul, we groan in these earthly bodies. We lament. “We walk by faith, not by sight.” We pray, even when we don’t feel like it. We intentionally dwell on the truths of God. We “meditate on the law day and night” until we delight in it. And we hold on for the end of the story, knowing that it is the work of Jesus that can turn our lament to praise. One day, Christ will come again and these heavy weights will seem like the “light momentary afflictions” that Paul talked about, “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” and comprehension! But until then, He gives us His Spirit to walk with us as our “guarantee” of all of God’s promises to save us.

Conclusion. Our song for the semester is “Christ is Mine Forevermore.” Verse 2 says, “Mine are tears in times of sorrow, Darkness not yet understood, Through the valley I must travel, Where I see no earthly good. But mine is peace that flows from heaven, And the strength in time of need. I know my pain will not be wasted, Christ completes His work in me.”

As we wrap up, I want to jump back to Psalm 1:6. Do you remember this? “The LORD knows the way of the righteous.” No matter what we experience, or how we feel, the LORD knows! And He doesn’t just offer us sympathy based on knowledge. He does something better: He empathizes because He’s been there too. And because He knows, He calls us to “draw near to the throne of grace, praying confidently, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” And when we don’t know how to pray, the Holy Spirit does and prays for us. God knows.

It’s ok to bring our darkest thoughts to God. In fact, it’s absolutely right to do so! He promises to hears us! And he promises to save us–after all, He’s the only One who can! Can I encourage you…Don’t run from the pain. Lean into it and pray. Learn to lament; pour out your heart to God. Trust that He will lead you out into eternal light…if not today, in eternity. Then follow the example of Jesus–show empathy and act. If you’ve experienced darkness and come out on the other side, how can you minister to others who are going through similar seasons of sorrow and desperation? And even if you haven’t experienced this form of darkness, ask God to give you compassion and wisdom to come alongside a friend who is; sit with them; and pray this psalm with them.

Dear God, Thank You for including this saddest of psalms in Your Word and for teaching us the beauty that can be found in mourning. Help us to pour out our hearts to You–especially, in our darkest hours. Help us to follow the example of our Savior who poured out his laments to You often and faithfully, fervently and passionately. And help us to follow His example of patiently and sacrificially suffering and sorrowing and showing empathy to those who are afflicted. Thank You for these dark hours that teach us to trust in your faithfulness. Help us cling to the promise that salvation belongs to the LORD and You will save and bless Your people finally and forever, turning our mourning into glad dancing (Ps. 30:11a). And until then, we pray with Moses, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” In Jesus, Name, Amen.

Further Study: Read the following passages. How does each one help you to understand this psalm better?

• Psalm 139:11-12
• Ecclesiastes 7:1-4
• Isaiah 38:9-20
• Matthew 27:46
• Romans 8:18-39
• 2 Corinthians 4:5-5:7