If you would all turn in your Bibles to the book of Psalms, to Psalm 88. This is the Word of God. A song, a psalm of the sons of Korah, for the director of music, according to Mahaloth Leonoth, a mascal of Haman the Ezraite. O Lord, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you. May my prayer come before you, turn your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of trouble, and my life draws near the grave. I am accounted among those who go down to the pit. I am like a man without strength. I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care. You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily upon me. You have overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape. My eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O Lord, every day. I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness and destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? But I cry to you for help, O Lord. In the morning, my prayer comes before you. Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth, I have been afflicted and close to death. I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me. Your terrors have destroyed me. All day long, they surround me like a flood. They have completely engulfed me. You have taken my companions and loved ones from me. The darkness is my closest friend. Thus ends the reading of the word of God. Please pray with me. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for revealing to us your will for your people throughout the Holy Scriptures. Bless this word to all of us this evening. Please be with your servant. May my words be those you would have your people hear. Guide them with your Holy Spirit. Let us delve into your word and show us as Christians why we should cry to you, even in our grief. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, what are we to make of this psalm? It's pretty depressing. I would go as far as to say that this is the bleakest psalm in all of this altar, and perhaps even the Bible, as far as 15 verses, 18 verses rather, where at first glance there appears to be no hope. Now, the reason I first became interested in this psalm was because I was taking a course Christian prayer at the seminary. And my pastor looked at this, or my professor, who's also a pastor, looked at this as an example of a prayer of suffering. And he related a story of a pastor friend of his who had been visiting a widow in the hospital. And all her family was out of the area, she was all alone, and she was literally on her deathbed. And as Pastor Voss and Pastor Donovan and many pastors like to do, he wanted to read some scripture with her. And she said, read me Psalm 88, Pastor. Now, let that be a charge to all of us to know our Bibles, to know what we're getting into when we start reading something. Because this pastor had forgotten how Psalm 88 went. And many Psalms start in despair, but end in hope and joy. And that's not the case in this Psalm. It's pretty much sorrow from beginning to end. So what do we make of this? Is there any hope in this passage? Well, thankfully, I believe there is. And we see that from the very introduction. The very fact that this is a psalm of the sons of Korah should give us hope. Because if you remember, a little over a month ago, Reverend Squeers preached about how the line of Korah was preserved. So the fact that this psalm is from the sons of Korah should remind us, right from the get-go, that the Lord delivers his people and upholds those who are his. But now to say, well, that explains it, it's a hopeful psalm, let's move on, would be to miss the point. This is a psalm of grief, through and through. But I think it's a psalm of three different types of grief that we need to examine. First, we see grief suffered through the psalmist. Second, we see grief born or carried or endured through the life and work of Jesus Christ. And finally, we see this grief is transformed through faith. So first, we look at the grief suffered. Now, this psalm comes at the end of Book 3 in the Psalter. And Book 3 is characterized as a book of lamentation. And Psalm 89, we see the very last psalm of Book 3, And it expresses Israel's doubt in the Davidic covenant. It's a corporate cry of lament. In Psalm 88, I believe we get an individual's cry of lament, the culmination of the individual's cry of lamentation and suffering. So, let's start at the beginning. It's a good place to start. In the introductory address, we see he says, O Lord God who saves me. Now, if you just glance over that part, read it again. O Lord God who saves me. Because everything that follows comes after that qualifier. And it's a big qualification. This is a covenantal address. The psalmist knows that the Lord is the Lord of his salvation. We can see an antithesis, or an opposite of this, in Exodus 16.2, where we read, In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron were the appointed leaders of God. So to grumble against them was to grumble against the Lord. And is that what the psalmist is doing here? Not at all. He's crying to the Lord in grief, but he's crying to the Lord who saves him. He reflects the sentiments of all those who are in doubt and affliction throughout the Old Testament. We see in Isaiah 19.20, the prophet says, it will be a sign and a witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, He will send them a Savior and Defender, and He will rescue them. So the psalmist is not crying out in vain. He's crying out to the Lord who saves him. And he knows that the Lord will hear his cry. And we see this throughout the Psalter, the entirety of the Psalms. In Psalm 9, verse 12, we read, He does not ignore the cry of the afflicted. In Psalm 34, 17, the righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them. He delivers them from all their troubles. And in Psalm 107, verse 6, we see, Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. And this isn't even unique as an address to begin a psalm. In Psalm 77, verse 1, we read, I cried out to God for help. I cried out to God to hear me. So what does this all mean? That the psalmist is crying out for deliverance, and that the psalmist is crying out in faith. That has to be established before looking any further into the psalm. But once that has been established, we have to look at the entirety of the psalm. And to ignore the fact that the psalm is reflective of great grief would be foolish. Because it just shows pain through and through. And we see that in the suffering of the psalmist. It is not only a faithful cry, it is a very painful cry. In verses 3 and 4 we read, My life draws near to the grave. I am accounted among those who go down to the pit. I am a man without strength. Now, perhaps to some degree this is hyperbole or an exaggeration, where a stand-up comic may say, I'm dying out there. You know, sort of just to reflect that he is in real struggling, goes over the top with what he says. But I honestly believe when he says he has no strength, there's a real sense that the psalmist is in physical affliction. Whether that be old age or a disease of some sort, we don't know. But it would be further supported in verse 9 where we read, that his eyes are dim. And it indicates that he is close to death. But even beyond physical suffering, we clearly see there is suffering within the psalmist's soul. In verse 3 we read, My soul is full of trouble. And in verse 7, Your wrath lies heavily upon me. You have overwhelmed me with all your waves. So we see that in his soul, he is suffering genuine affliction. He is not in unbelief. He never doubts that the Lord he is addressing is the Lord that has saved him, but his soul is in turmoil and doubt and temptation. And finally, we see that he is also experiencing extreme loneliness. Not only is he afflicted in body and soul, but he is all alone. We read in verse 8, You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. Now let this be a charge to all of us, beloved, That there are many people in our congregation who are alone, who are struggling. And we must not neglect them, because it can be truly a horrible thing to be alone and feel like you are abandoned. But my hope would be that we would also look to comfort, where to quote Dr. Howell Jones, without the accent, in a class of mine, a student asked, and this was referenced into the pastoral life, but I think it applies to the whole congregation, He said, how does a pastor deal with loneliness? And Dr. Jones' reply was, at every point in a Christian's life, you will be alone. At some point in every Christian's life, you will be alone. But you are never truly alone. And that's such comfort to know that the Lord is always with us. Were we separated by thousands of miles from any other human being, the Lord is always with us. And we would hope that this would be where the psalm would turn to joy. And he would say, but praise the Lord, the Lord is with me, the Lord is my strength. But that's not what we see. Sadly, that's not the case. That though the psalmist knows in fact that the Lord is with him and it is the Lord who saved him, what he feels is that he is alone and abandoned. And let that be a warning to all of us to not trust our feelings too heartily when they are in contrast to what the Lord tells us is true. In verses 5 and 6 we read that he is like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care. You have put me in the lowest pit and in the darkest depths. The psalmist is in darkness. Now throughout all of scripture we see a contrast of darkness to light. And darkness is doubt and disbelief. And light is the light of Christ. So to say that he is in darkness seriously means his soul is in heavy doubt. He is not in unbelief, but he is in the midst of tremendous suffering. Suffering that leads to doubt, and doubt that can lead ultimately to unbelief. So he is afflicted in body and soul. He is all alone. He is suffering through tremendous grief. But that's not where the psalm ends. We go to our second point and see how grief is born in the person of Jesus Christ. Now, so far we've dealt mainly with just the first nine verses, partly because the last nine just echo the first nine. It's all about suffering. But if we look at verses 13 through 18, I think we see an expansion of that suffering to show that it is suffering born or carried by Jesus Christ. The Old Testament, as we know, is a shadow that is pointing forward, namely to Christ. And it's no different in this psalm. We see in here, 13-18, a prayer of Christ, paraphrased. I'm not going to say turn to the book of Luke and you'll see where Christ gives this prayer, because he never does, but the content of the prayer is reflected in the life of Christ. Christ's prayer, just as the psalmist's prayer, is faithful and asks for deliverance. It's different than our faith and the deliverance that we ask for, because Christ's faith is faithfulness, namely, to his task. and the deliverance he asked for is not from sin for we know Christ never sinned but he's asking for deliverance from the task at hand we see this in the garden of Gethsemane Matthew 26 verse 39 Christ says my father if it be possible may this cup be taken from me yet not as I will but as you will he's asking for deliverance from not sin but the burden of the task at hand and he shows his faith through his fidelity or faithfulness. Not my will, but his you will. So this is important for understanding the prayer as a whole. Because when we look at the psalmist's prayer, we see how we are to pray, a prayer of grief. And when we look to Christ's prayer, we see why we are to pray. Because since Christ suffered, he is gone in our place. In Isaiah 53, verse 4, we read, Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. He fulfilled and perfected our prayers. So only in that comfort may we approach the Lord. So we've seen in these last five verses, we see in the last five verses the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Often we tend to limit, when we talk about Christ's suffering, we limit it to the cross. Because indeed that was the pinnacle or climax of his suffering. But in verse 15 we read, From my youth I have been afflicted. Surely that is how it was for Christ, beloved. That by coming down to a sinful earth and taking flesh in a lowly manger and being in a world that rejected him and knew him not, he suffered from the manger to the cross, our Savior suffered in our place. In Matthew 27, verse 46, we see how Christ's suffering did reach its climax in his death on a cross. We read there those familiar words, and please turn there with me. Matthew 27, verse 46. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And while we know these to be a direct quote from Psalm 22, I think this phrase is also a paraphrase of what we find in Psalm 88. In verse 13, we see the psalmist crying out for help, just as Christ did. And in verse 14, we further read, Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? Now, if those are a paraphrase, 16 and 17 give a further explanation of the suffering Christ must have felt on the cross. We read the vivid images that heighten the pain Christ must have felt. Your wrath has swept over me. Your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood. They have completely engulfed me. Now this imagery of waves crashing in gives us this idea of choking, claustrophobia, no breath, suffering, and then darkness. We've already talked about what darkness can signify throughout the Bible, and here we see the height of darkness. In verse 18 we read, You have taken my companions and loved ones from me. that darkness is my closest friend. Now from Gethsemane to the cross, this is a picture of Christ's life. The rooster had crowed three times and all Christ's friends had abandoned him. And then, if you go back a verse in Matthew 27, verse 45, we read, From the sixth hour until the ninth hour, darkness came over all the land. Darkness was literally our Savior's last companion before His death on the cross. But Christ bore all this from His youth up, in our place, rejected by men, rejected by His own Father, and left with only darkness as His companion. Now, thinking about the suffering of Christ should make us sorrowful. And we remember the suffering He went through. but it does not end there beloved we also see that our grief is transformed in our third point through faith in Jesus Christ now if you've noticed we've dealt with the first nine verses and the last five now I would like to focus on verses 10 through 12 to see how our grief has been transformed we read do you show your wonders to the dead do those who are dead rise up and praise you is your love declared in the grave your faithfulness in destruction are your wonders known in the place of darkness or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion now when the psalmist asks these questions the clear answer he thinks is no that's the implicit answer now while the Old Testament believers had a very real concept of heaven they would often use the imagery of death as meaning separation from the Lord because in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel and more specifically, the temple was the place where God was most visible. So to be dead was to be apart from that, to be away from that, to be alone. So the psalmist asks these questions in despair and in doubt. But when we look at these questions, the answers have been transformed through the work of Jesus Christ. We ask, do you show your wonders to the dead? And we think on the gospel and look to the resurrection. And the answer is absolutely. We think, do those who are dead rise up to praise you? And we see our Lord Jesus Christ ascending on high. And we say, absolutely, that is so. Is your love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in destruction? We see an empty tomb. And we hear the words of Christ saying, destroyed this temple and in three days I will rise it up. So is your love declared in the grave? Your faithfulness and destruction? Hallelujah. It is. And are your wonders known in the place of darkness or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? And we remember once again Matthew 27, 45 when darkness descended over our Lord on the cross and indeed his wonders were known in the land of rejection and in the darkness. The life and work of Jesus Christ has changed the darkness into light. Now when we view this easily the bleakest of the Psalms, we cannot help but be comforted. May we have abounding joy in this comfort that Christ, our Savior, has purchased. And because of Christ's merit, we may cry to the Lord in joy and in thanksgiving and even in our grief. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for the Psalms. May this melancholy poetry show us how we are to pray to you in grief. But even more, how your son cried to you and how we now may live as those whose grief has been transformed. Please be with us in this week. May we honor you in all that we do. And if we struggle with grief, may ours be the prayer of the psalmist and not the grumblings of the Israelites in the wilderness. We bring these prayers to you, knowing that you hear them and knowing that you have delivered us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.