Lament

Habakkuk 1:12-2:1, My View from the Watchtower

/ Melissa / Leave a comment

Before we get into our main lesson today, I want to take our first few minutes to look at a couple of study tools as we come to God’s Word.

First, let’s talk Context.

Context helps us get a fuller understanding of what’s being said. This might mean we study what’s going on during this time period. But it also includes literary context, which is the passage before and after your text. Habakkuk is such a short book that it can actually really help us to read the whole text each week…maybe even several times. If you have a Bible app, consider listening to it while you’re running errands or washing dishes. Soak in the text. The more you read it, the more connections you are likely to see.

How did the book start? With a prayer… Habakkuk receives this heavy burden from the LORD and rightly brings this burden back to the LORD. Habakkuk sees and questions, “God, do you see what I see?!”

Then, God assures him that He’s seeing it all and tells Habakkuk to look and watch because He’s about to do something that is unbelievable!

Now it’s Habakkuk’s turn to talk. And, just as we saw in that first passage, in today’s text, we’ll see Habakkuk continuing to carry this burden back to the Lord for as long as it takes to see God bring about justice.

What comes next? God answers again. The wicked will receive woes, and God will get the glory. And then the last chapter is a song of remembrance of God’s past deliverance and Habakkuk’s determination to sing praise to God no matter what. So that helps us remember in our text today that God will answer His people’s prayers. And God will execute perfect justice. And it helps our theme of waiting and watching for God to work to become a strong emphasis.

The next tool in our toolbox is Parallelism.

Did anyone find it hard to figure out who was who in this passage? We have to remember that we’re looking at Hebrew poetry. And Hebrew poetry is not about rhyming like our standard English poems. It’s not even about cadence or number of syllables. It’s more about parallel ideas that either compare and contrast or repeat and elaborate upon each other. So, let’s look at Habakkuk 1:12-13 in the ESV and NIV for just a minute to see if we can learn anything new by using this tool.

I tend to go with the oldest date (if we know that), and the fact that the oldest manuscripts also reflect Hebrew parallelism seems to confirm this interpretation.

Lines 3 and 4 (v. 13) follow the same pattern of parallelism as Lines 1 and 2 (v. 12).  Another reason I don’t think Habakkuk is assuming he won’t die or can’t die.

Let’s say you’re not convinced. Is it okay to translate this we? Even if Habakkuk IS saying “We will not die,” He’s still basing this belief on the covenant nature of God that we’ll talk about in a minute. I don’t think he’s saying that he will never die physically, because he knows death has been a part of humanity since the curse; it’s appointed to every man and woman to die once. And he’s seen what happens when evil nations bring other nations into exile. People do die. But it may be that he’s confident that even unto death, he will live with God forever because our souls never die.

“My View from the Watch Tower”

Have you ever been in the middle of a really hard conversation and the phone cuts out? Maybe it’s an argument with your husband or a friend. Maybe you’ve been waiting all week for a response to a job interview—did you get it or not? I have two examples that come to mind… the first was when my twin sister was having her third child. So, we knew she was going into labor, we’re excited that this baby is coming, and then about 12 hours in, we get the dreaded phone call: ” Baby’s in distress, we’re going in for emergency c-section! [Click.]” And there’s nothing you can do. So, you pray and you wait and you watch the phone because you know that they’ll call you back as soon as they can, but there’s just not an answer. Then we got a second phone call: “The baby’s okay. [Silence.]” “And Michelle?” “We don’t know yet. [Click.]” And we wait again. And you don’t know if the answer will be positive or not. The other example was my brother this January, my dad called me and said, “I’m taking Jordan to the ER because we think he had a stroke.” And he did. And it was pretty serious. And I remember giving Callan a bath that night and just kneeling by the tub, crying out to God, “God, it hasn’t even been 6 months since mom died… please don’t take my brother too!” And you fast and pray and wait. And wait.

And that’s the kind of feeling we drop into with Habakkuk. He is reeling with a pit in his stomach and holding his breath, and he cries out to God. (And, yes, we praise God that both my siblings are alive and well today, and God used those things in their lives to grow their faith in the LORD, just as He did with Habakkuk.)

The poetry of this section is more of a personal lament than a complaint. We see the personal nature as he refers to God as “my God” and “my Holy One.” Then, there’s the typical lament pattern: there’s a statement of faith, followed by an extended question, then another statement of faith (A-B-A). He also seems to be elaborating on his first lament in verses 2-4, even using many of the same words.

Don’t we do this? We pray a quick prayer and then the answer seems to be confusing, so we pray in a longer way? What attitude do we do this with? Is Habakkuk questioning God in a disapproving manner? I’d argue that Habakkuk comes to God in an attitude of confidence in God’s character and promises. And we can follow this pattern as we bring our laments to the Lord too.

Habakkuk begins by taking a hard look at the character of God. So, let’s do that with Habakkuk.

I. First and foremost, we need “A Right View of the Rock of the Ages.” (1:12-14)

When God gives us heavy burdens, it is absolutely necessary that we are grounded in who God is. We cannot look at our circumstances and change our view of God. Rather, we look at our God, and let what we know to be true about Him give us perspective about what we’re going through. In fact, isn’t usually the hardest circumstances that actually help us get a bigger view of God and understand Him even better? This is God’s heart throughout Scripture—isn’t it?! To give us a big view of Himself. And He doesn’t change—so this is God’s heart for you and me too—to know us and to make Himself known to us in a big, personal way. Relationship, not just religion. So, what does Habakkuk know about His God?

  1. He knows God is a personal, covenant keeping God (v. 12)
  2. He knows God is eternal (v. 12)
  3. He knows God is all-powerful and good (v. 12)

Let’s look at each of these attributes for a bit. First, God is a personal, covenant keeping God.

One of the first covenants we have is the covenant between the LORD and Abram (Abraham). In Genesis 12, God called Abram out of his home country (Ur of the Chaldeas—ironically, the same people group that are attacking his descendants now) and God promised to make Abram a great nation and through him bless all the families of the earth. Fast forward over two decades, and Abram is still waiting for a single son, let alone a great nation! And this is where the covenant comes in. In Genesis 15, The LORD promises again to give Abram a son and make his offspring as numerous as the stars in heaven! “And he [Abram] believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (15:6).

Then God did something as a sign of the covenant He was making with Abram. He had Abram bring a bunch of animals and cut them in half and lay them out. Then Abram fell into a deep sleep, and the LORD said to him, “Know for certain” that I will do what I said I would do (15:13). Then Abram saw “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces” (15:17). This was a special ceremony—the smoke and fire were symbolic of the LORD Himself, and the cutting in half of the animals was saying in essence, “If I, the LORD, do not keep my end of the covenant, may I be cut in two just like these animals.” But we know that God always keeps His promises! God Himself cannot die! He is eternal! And He’s serious about keeping His word forever!

Habakkuk is grounding his prayers in his relationship with God. In fact, every prayer of Habakkuk begins with the word LORD in all caps (see 1:2; 2:12; 3:2). This is God’s covenant name, YHWH, revealed to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. All of our relationships with God are grounded in this covenant history—in this covenant name—and Habakkuk highlights this first.

TRANSITION. The phrase “from everlasting” can point to both God’s eternality, but even more frequently, it implies a specific act of deliverance in Israel’s history. So once again, it points us to the covenant keeping nature of God—the Rock of ages—”our help in ages past,” “our hope for years to come.”

The covenants of God are really important to understand as we look at OT prophecy. We don’t have time to dive into all of it, but I would recommend two books: 1. Christ from Beginning to End by Stephen Wellum and our pastor Trent Hunter, which points to Jesus in every book of the Bible! It’s fantastic if you’ve never seen that before; and 2. Covenants Made Simple by Jonty Rhodes, which is an easy-to-understand introduction to the covenants (this is a really excellent read and very helpful).

TRANSITION: So, Habakkuk knows God is a personal, covenant keeping God. Next, Habakkuk knows that God is eternal—completely sovereign from eternity past thru eternity future. He has no beginning and no end. And His eternality is part of what makes Him supreme. We cannot comprehend this, but we must have this faith, as Habakkuk did and base our laments on it.

God is unchanging. I love that Habakkuk calls God “my Rock.” Is God your Rock today? If not, He can be…when we fix our eyes on Him.

Deuteronomy 31 is the passing of the torch from Moses to Joshua. Moses is 120 years old and about to die. He reads the Law to the people and he writes it all down (which we know as the Pentateuch, or first five books of the OT), then God tells Moses, “I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil that they have done, because they have turned to other gods” (31:18). Then God commands Moses to write a song and sing it to the people. And we find that song, the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. Let’s read v.3-4, and then if you haven’t done this yet, I’d make a little note to read through all of Deut. 32 and see what similarities you see and how often God is referred to as The Rock.

“3 For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
    ascribe greatness to our God!

4 “The Rock, his work is perfect,
    for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
    just and upright is he.

The song goes on to talk of God leading the people to the Promised Land, but how they grew discontent and “forsook [the] God who made [them]; [they] scoffed at the Rock of [their] salvation. 16 They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods [idols]; …  18  were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.”  And it goes on about their idolatry against their Rock.

I read this to remind us that what Habakkuk is seeing is not new. This is not the first time Israel rebelled. In fact, it’s somewhat of a broken record by this point. Verse 13 reflects Habakkuk’s wrestling with what He believes to be true about God with His circumstances.

TRANSITION: Habakkuk knows the Scriptures, and more importantly, He knows God. A. He knows God is a personal, covenant keeping God; B. He knows God is eternal; and C. He knows God is all-powerful and good. God will execute perfect, right justice.

Let’s read verse 13: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do You idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”

Habakkuk knows God is pure and will not tolerate evil, because that’s part of His covenant promises, and yet the reality of Habakkuk’s surroundings and his theological belief do not seem to line up for him. He’s like, “I see all this evil all around me. How is God letting this go unnoticed? He sees everything, right? He’s all knowing, right? All powerful? I just don’t get it, God!”

We’ve all been there—or if we haven’t, we will be at some point. I get Habakkuk’s paradox here! I know I’m only in my 40s, but the older I get, the more wickedness and brokenness and frailty I see in this world. And no matter how hard we try to guard ourselves from it, it’s simply unavoidable. We live in a fallen world, and we know that man apart from God is NOT essentially good—but rather, deceitful and desperately wicked. We are messed up! We need Jesus!

When Habakkuk says that God has “purer eyes than to see evil,” does he mean that God is not omniscient? No. God sees all and knows all, and yet He cannot and does not dwell on the evil. Fast forward hundreds of years to Jesus on the cross—what did God do? He looked away from His Son. Jesus was forsaken for us—because Jesus took all of our sin upon Himself.

So, we, like Habakkuk, have a choice—we can either let ourselves become overwhelmed by our circumstances and the wickedness of this world, and the wickedness of our own hearts and get depressed and doubt and even turn from God, like so many of the Israelites did! We can reject God and His covenant promise, and pursue idols and all forms of evil to fill up our own desires and pleasures, to try to fill the void and distract ourselves from our fears, OR we can run to God in prayer and faith and trust that God is doing something bigger and deeper and more eternally significant than we are able to see, even through these hard and horrible things. He is 100% sovereign over every aspect of His creation. And He is good!

We don’t get to decide what “good” means. We want to think that “good” is subjective to what we like or want, but God defined goodness in Himself! Whatever He does is good, and we must align our hearts with His sovereign goodness.

We will go through hard things, but hard is not the same as bad. When we go through hard things, we must remember that it is absolutely God who caused it! Is that hard to think about? To wrap our minds around? Sure. But v. 12 says that the LORD  “appointed” and “ordained” the Chaldeans for a purpose—“to execute judgment” and “to punish”—and the judgment and punishment was on the people of God in order to lovingly draw them back to God! The word “punish” here has the idea of doing what is right or just to correct AND to redeem!

Now we come to v.14: “You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler.” “You” refers back to the LORD! God is the one removing their kings and scattering them into foreign nations! We see this language throughout the prophets, God causing affliction through armies—of men or of locusts, through weather, drought, famine, and then saying, “Yet you did not return to me!” In Romans 1, it is God who gives those who refuse to repent over to the lusts of their hearts and a debased mind.

God gives His people so many warnings, including this one in Deuteronomy 29:

“18 Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, 19 one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.”

We as a nation are consumed with the idea of safety—physical, emotional, all of it. But we’re also consumed with stubbornly holding to what I want to believe is true—whether it is or not—and attempting to silence anyone who dares disagree with me. We are not so far off from the wickedness of the Israelites, are we? The result of this stubbornness: the LORD overthrew them because they abandoned the covenant, uprooted them, and cast them out…and ultimately, blotted out their names from under heaven! This is serious! Do we think we can walk in our sin and still inherit the kingdom?!

If you are walking around saying, “I’m okay,” but your heart is stubbornly set against God and His Word,   I beg you to repent of your sin and walk humbly with God! If you refuse to repent, you will find yourself among the religious crowd in Matthew 7 crying, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then Jesus answers, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” Salvation was never about our works! Apart from God, there is ZERO goodness in any of us!

Habakkuk was pleading with God because he saw God as being silent when the wicked were swallowing up Israel—he called Judah “the man more righteous than they” (referring to the Babylonians). But are they? Was Judah “more righteous” than Babylon? No! The Northern Kingdom had already been sent into exile, and now Judah was following in her footsteps! Judah had sinned every bit as wickedly as Israel AND Babylon. Why? Because they rejected God, which made them traitors and enemies of God!

This is a distorted thought of comparison: “we’re more righteous than they are!” But no, God tells us it’s foolish to compare ourselves among ourselves. Rather, we must compare ourselves to God—and when we do that, He corrects our thinking by humbling us and drawing us to repentance and righteous living.

Romans 3 (v. 9-12, 23) tells us that we are all sinners! The Jews aren’t any better off, and neither are we as Gentiles! There is none righteous, no, not one! God sent the Law and the Prophets, and then He sent Jesus—the righteousness of God manifested to us—to rescue and redeem us from our sin! We are not more righteous than anyone, except through faith in Jesus, the truly Righteous One, who loved us and gave Himself for us, taking our sin, and giving us His righteousness in its place.

If you study through the prophets, you will see this theme over and over and over… God’s heart is always FOR His people. He loves us desperately! And will do whatever it takes to bring us to Himself. And that doesn’t always make sense to us as humans. But God’s ways are better than our ways. He does everything for His glory and our good, because He knows what our best good is…to dwell with God Almighty for all eternity! That is good! Because God is good! And we can be confident that God will always keep His covenant promises to preserve His children and destroy His enemies.

Which brings us to our next point regarding God’s (and Habakkuk’s) enemies…

II. A View of the Wicked Netsmen (1:15-17)

We switch from “You” (referring to God) to “he” (referring to the Chaldeans). v. 15 – “He [Babylon] brings all of them [Judah] up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad.”

    Habakkuk keeps with his fish imagery here and sees the enemy capturing God’s people with hooks and nets—symbols of aggression, but also symbols of divine judgment in their day. And the evil nations were known to use hooks literally to drag their hostages away, treating them like hunted prey rather than human beings. The word used for “net” here in the original language is a wordplay, and in Deut. 7:26 it’s translated “devoted to destruction.” This is seriously awful!

    And then we see this phrase, “he rejoices and is glad.” Do we see this anywhere else in Scripture? Yes! The joining of these two words is throughout Scripture as a call to worship! “Rejoice and be glad!” But here it’s used of the wicked rejoicing in their conquests, not worshiping God! (v.11, “their god is their own might.”)

    v. 16 continues their false worship ceremony: “Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings [or burns incense] to his dragnet.” This is a very public form of idolatry!

    Why? “For by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich.” The evil seem to be prospering here! They are very affluent, and they follow a very logical, and yet very wrong, line of thinking. They think, “Well, sure I’m cruel, but it must be okay because it’s making me rich, and if I’m fat and happy, then that’s a sign of the gods’ favor, right?!” “The end justifies the means.” But no, just because someone is rich and powerful in this world, it does not mean that’s because “the gods” or God Himself is blessing him!

    Habakkuk felt this… and he asks God directly (v.17), “Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?”, echoing the “O LORD, how long?” cry from his first lament (1:2). (Spoiler alert: Will the Babylonians keep doing this forever? No, the woes are coming in the very next chapter! And we’ll look more later at the end of Babylon in a future week.) 😉

    Asaph felt this in Psalm 73… he was so weary because he saw the wicked seemingly prosper and always at ease, increasing in riches. And he wonders, is being pure before the Lord and worshiping God worth it?! Then, he goes into the sanctuary of God and God revealed their end. They will be utterly swept away, but God’s beloved children will be received to glory, to be with God forever!

    We must remember that our sin is every bit as snaring as the enemy’s nets, but Jesus sets our hearts free to wait and to worship. We need to follow Asaph into the sanctuary of God and follow Habakkuk to the top of the watch tower… and look at Habakkuk 2:1 for a minute.

    III. Right Responses from the Watch Tower (2:1)

    We can’t look at verses 1:12-17 without finishing Habakkuk’s thought with 2:1, so let’s read that now, noticing the very personal language Habakkuk uses.

    “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.”

    Notice he doesn’t say “we”—he is in a lonely, isolated situation, with a heavy weight, or burden to bear, but he takes individual, personal resolve to take up the task that God has set before him. He uses words like “I” and “my” 7x in this short statement.

    Habakkuk began his lament with a personal relationship with God and now he ends his lament with a personal resolve to wait for God’s answer in God’s time.

    Hosea 9:8 tells us one of the main purposes of a prophet: “The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim, [“the people of my God”].”(NIV) The watch post position was one of not only looking for the enemy attacks, but also sounding the alarm to the people! This is the job of a prophet—to watch and to warn! And this is what Habakkuk is resolved to do! He loves God and He loves the people of God, so no matter how hard it gets, he’s going to wait for God’s answer and continue to warn the people to turn back to their God.

    We are not prophets, especially in the OT prophet sense of the word. But the crux of the word prophet is a proclaimer. And that we can do! We have this picture of a watch tower—this would be a position on the wall of a fortified city. In Habakkuk’s case, this would have been the watch tower built into the city wall of Jerusalem (before the wall was destroyed and the people taken into exile).

    For us, as women, we are to be keepers of the home—this has that same watch tower / gate keeper imagery. We fix our eyes on Jesus and set the tone for what comes in and out of our four walls. We are called to proclaim truth to one another—particularly to our own children and to women younger than us (as in Titus 2).

    Waiting takes time. We need this message more than ever! We must slow down and be still. We must resolve to look for God in every aspect of life and be ready and willing to warn those in our sphere of influence that Jesus is coming. This definitely includes home, but it might also include other spheres—whether it’s a leadership position at church or outside the home with a job or in your community. Each of us has been positioned by God in a personal watch tower of sorts. And we can and must proclaim God’s truth in these watchtowers God has placed us in. But how do we do this?

    Waiting requires perseverance, humility, and patience in quietness. When we see God for who He is, He gives us the gift of repentance to turn from sin to following our Savior. He gives us faith and other gifts to call others to join us in a life of repentance and faith, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus! Say with the psalmist, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made Heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2).

    These last five years have had a lot of laments for our family. We’ve had hard diagnoses, death, difficulty in relationships; I quit a job I loved because it was the right thing to do for our family. Life is full of hard things and various disappointments. Sometimes it seems like life is shadowed by a little black raincloud. BUT GOD! Through every single thing, we have seen God proving Himself over and over and over to be faithful to His covenant, and faithful to us as His covenant children. We have seen God strip away our expectations and lift our eyes to a greater understanding of His goodness and glory. And in those lonely, dark hours, we must follow Habakkuk’s example once again. Fixing our eyes on our coming King Jesus!

    So, when you are hit by a wave of emotion—grief, anger, fear, confusion, doubt—for whatever circumstance God has placed you in, remember God is with you! The God of Habakkuk is our God too! And we can follow Habakkuk’s example—confidently taking our laments to the Rock of Ages, and then confidently fixing our eyes on the God who will answer and rescue.

    Meanwhile, we wait patiently; we wait humbly; and we wait expectantly. So, take your stand and look to see what God will say! God will answer, and God will win! But you’ll have to keep reading for that part.

    Let’s pray. “O LORD, You are our Holy One, our God, our Rock—and we do not always understand Your ways, but we trust Your character. You are our stability and eternal hope. And we thank You for the hard realities that drive us to Your goodness. Keep our eyes fixed on Jesus who “endured” much more “hostility” than we ever have, and yet did so with “joy, so we may not grow weary or fainthearted.” Thank you for the “discipline” you use “for our good, that we may share in Your holiness,” by the mercy of our Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.”

    Psalm 88: A Dark and Desperate Cry (Learning to Lament)

    / Melissa / 1 Comment
    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