Let's read God's word for exposition now from Psalm 88. The introduction says a song, a psalm of the sons of Korah to the choirmaster according to Mahalat Le'anot, a maskeel of Heman the Ezraite. Psalm 88. O Lord God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you. Incline your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the pit. I am a man who has no strength. Like one set loose 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. You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have caused my companions to shun me. You have made me a horror to them. I'm shut in so that I cannot escape. My eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O Lord. I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead, or do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry to you in the morning. My prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors. I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me. Your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me, and my companions have become darkness. Thus far, the reading in God's holy word. Would you join your hearts with me, and we ask God's blessing in prayer. Let's pray. O God of our salvation, we pray that you would open the eyes of our spiritual understanding and draw us to Christ, that we might find comfort and support and sustaining help in him. We pray in his name. Amen. Amen. Brothers and sisters, well-loved by our Lord Jesus Christ, God has given us a prayer book in this Psalter, given words for you to use in those times of happiness when you're filled with joy and you just want to praise him. And God has also given you words in this book to use to express your deepest anxieties and even your agonies. Psalm 88 is a prayer for us, especially when we are depressed and particularly discouraged. Many of the psalms express our experience of the brokenness that we know so well living in this busted up and fallen world. Many of the psalms move from this direction, from up to down, but then they resolve. Most all the psalms, all but one, have some word of comfort, some word of resolution, some word that is a praise or a thanksgiving at the end. But this psalm, it moves in one direction, this way, this way. Psalm 88, as Dr. Godfrey puts it in his new work, Learning to Love the Psalms, quote, is the most profound expression of individual suffering and sense of abandonment in the whole Psalter. Our psalm ends on the lowest note in the whole Bible. And that word is darkness. Darkness. The NIV translates this powerfully. Darkness is my closest friend. Do you know something of this darkness? Do you know something of this discouragement and despair? One commentator reflected, whoever devises from the scriptures a philosophy in which everything turns out right has to begin by tearing out this page of the volume. This psalm is the antidote to that health and wealth gospel, that heresy that we all love so much that if you become a Christian, things will turn out so well for you. Your kids are all going to turn out perfectly. Your bank account will always go this direction. You'll be playing competitive tennis until you're 95. We want to hear that. We want to hear that, right? But in Psalm 88, there is no happy ending. And in this world, many times, for us, it seems, there is no happy ending. And people who are facing particularly painful afflictions have found again and again comfort in this psalm. People who are looking at stage 4 cancer, families who are dealing with the realities of Alzheimer's, women who have experienced brutal abuse that they can't seem to shake off, find comfort and help in this psalm. This psalm is strong medicine. I hope you can take it. It's like chemotherapy. It brings you down in order to heal you and to comfort you. Even if everything in your life right now is sunshine and roses, I think this psalm has value to you. Surely this psalm can help you have more sympathy for those who find God to be a mystery, for those who cry in the dark, For those whose prayers seem to go unanswered, month after year after year. We cannot explore all the interesting things in this psalm, but I'd like to ask three questions to help us hit the main points and to draw some practical instruction and comfort from this psalm. And my first question comes from verse 3. I'm going to ask you three questions, and the first one comes from verse 3, and that is this, is your soul full of trouble? Is your soul full of trouble? The metaphor in verse three comes from the table. This verb refers to the feeling that you get after a good meal. I hope maybe you've got something special planned for lunch today, and afterwards you may pat your stomach and say, I feel satisfied. That's what this verb generally refers to. We see the same verb used in Psalm 63, verse 5. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. This is a positive image, generally. But here, the psalmist, in typical psalm fashion, he uses very evocative language. He uses very emotional, feeling language in a way that we can all identify with. He uses a language that's strong but that's general so that each of us can think of our particular bitterness and suffering. He is saying that his belly is filled with troubles, as it were. Literally evils. It's as his inner being is filled up with afflictions and hardships and sufferings. That's what he's experiencing. That's what he's tasting at the back of his tongue. he describes that in physical terms. Look at verse 9. He says that his eye is growing dim through sorrow. Maybe this is a picture of his entire body. He's sick. He's afflicted. Perhaps he's growing old. He says in verse 4 that he's a man who has no strength. This is a bit of an irony because the word for man is a word that precisely emphasizes strength and ability. It's like a lion that has no boldness or an elephant that has no weight. And that's you and me when we're in the hospital. We come to the end of our resources and we have no strength. But in his case, it's been lifelong. Look at verse 15. He says he's been afflicted and close to death from his youth up. The Fault in Our Stars is a Hollywoodized movie based on a sensationalized novel by John Green. But that novel drew somewhat on the real-world experience of a young girl named Esther. And I knew Esther when she was a girl, and her father was a seminarian with me a number of years ago. She wrote a journal called This Star Won't Go Out. Her father helped her. Esther had leukemia, and she suffered for many years, and she died at age 16. Her entire life, as it were, was typified by suffering. And the psalmist is saying, ever since I was a kid, my life seems to be blow after blow and battle after battle. What do you do when things are so dark that you seem to forget that it was ever good, that there were ever any good times? This psalm at least can give us that, what I call a backward comfort, to know that other believers have experienced this kind of despair, that these are genuine feelings, to know that others have walked this path, That others have been in that point of such darkness that suicide itself seems to become a more logical option to the difficulties that we're facing in this life. Many believers have been in that place. But in addition to the physical sufferings that the psalmist is going through, perhaps the social sufferings and losses that he's experiencing are even more painful. Look at verse 8, look at verse 18. They remind us that much of our comfort and happiness in this world comes from our social connections, our relationships. But these have been taken away from the psalmist. He's been robbed of his relationship with his friend, of even his beloved, verse 8 and verse 18. How painful it is to be separated. None of us, even the children, like to be excluded in the game, like to be passed over in the invitation list to the party. We adults have many experiences of rejection and being snubbed and being sinned against in one way or another. But the psalmist experience, as you look at verse 8, is intensified. It's not just that they left me, but they look at me like I'm leprous, like I've got some kind of an infectious disease. They shun me. That's the intensity of what he's experiencing here. This is very intense. This is very intense. Now, if we are foolish and we betray our spouse and our spouse leaves us and we find ourselves alone, we can understand that. but what happens when it's the other way around? What happens when our spouse leaves us for no apparent, no legitimate reason? How do you handle that? How do you deal with that kind of feeling? How do you deal with losing a beloved child to death? Losing your spouse before their time? Even in old age, losing a spouse. How do you handle that? How do you deal with that kind of loneliness that becomes an aftertaste in your mouth day after day? In our extended family, there's a situation where this son has deliberately estranged himself from his parents for 20 years. And so for 20 years, this son and the grandchildren, No contact, no connection, no relationship. And can you imagine the bitterness of that to his parents? That's estrangement. That's an ongoing suffering where there seems to be no escape. The psalmist describes his hardship like this. He says in verse 7 that his hardships are like waves. Have you ever been caught in the riptide? You may be struggling to get out. And what? It just pulls you back in and then slams you again. And then slams you again. And then slams you again. That's his experience here. There's no out. The waves are crashing over him. And he has a soul that's filled with troubles. Is your soul full of troubles? Is your soul full of troubles? Let me ask you a second question from this passage. The second question is, is there a larger story to these troubles? Is there a larger story to these troubles? Is there a broader narrative, a way for us to understand, put some sense to these sufferings and put them in perspective? Those of you that have given birth to children, when you cry out in pain because your time is on you, right? It's a terrible suffering, right? but you know what's coming. There's a perspective that you have that enables you to endure the sufferings of childbirth. But our psalmist here is lost. He's floundering. He can't make any sense of what he's experiencing here. Can you make sense of your sufferings? Is there some kind of context that you can put these sufferings that you're experiencing in? Well, the introduction of this psalm, it seems to me, is not an enormous amount of help. We really don't know who Heman the Ezraite was. He may have been a wise man in Solomon's day, as we read from 1 Kings 4.31. He may have been a Levitical singer in David's day, as 1 Chronicles 15, 17, and 19 suggest. The tune name, Mahalat Le'anot, it may refer to a mournful tune for affliction, but all these things are speculation. We get help as we look at this psalm in context, however. The placement of the psalms are not random. Where is Psalm 88 coming in? What's the significance of its placement? What book of the Psalter does it come in? It comes in book three. It comes in book 3. And many of the psalms in book 3 are struggling with the crisis of faith in view of the exile. How is it that God seems to have brought an end to the Davidic kingship and we've been yanked away from our promised land? The next psalm, 89, first it remembers the promises to David, But then in verses 38 through 51, it laments how the king of Israel is being mocked and humiliated and ruined. That's where we're going in Psalm 89. And then what about Psalm 87? What is the focus of Psalm 87? Psalm 87 gives us a picture of the fulfillment of the promises of God. Here, we see that God will bring all the nations into Zion. And if I were to go around this room and were to ask each of you where your great-great-grandparents came from, I bet we could have quite a list that God is fulfilling this promise in bringing into his church people from all the nations of the earth. So how do we get from Psalm 89 with its suffering and despair to Psalm 87 with its fulfillment of the promises and its hope? We get there through this psalm. There's a connection through this Psalm 88. And I dare say we can hear the voice of the king here in Psalm 88. The king indeed was, as we read in verse 4, counted among those who go down to the pit. The king has no strength to save his people. The king is so discouraged that he barely has the ability to moan out a request in this psalm. You'll notice there's barely a request, a specific plea in the psalm. And indeed, if we think about Psalm 88, we can see that it is typical of the experience of Israel at the end of the Old Testament period. Israel, the people of God, because of their continued disobedience, because of their continued failure, has found themselves under the discipline of God and they have been exiled. They have been cast out from the promised land of God. But even more than the voice of the king here in Psalm 88, is it not even easier for us, is it not even more appropriate for us to hear the voice of our Savior here in these words? we find that Jesus is indeed the bridge who takes us from the sufferings of exile and judgment into the fulfillment of the promises of God and the glories to come. We see that even though the old Israel, earthly Israel, for 40 years was disobedient to God and who deserved, after that great patience of God, who deserve to be cast out from their land. We know that there's a second, a new Israel, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ, who in those same 40, that period of 40, for him, 40 days, was in that same desert and was tested in that same way. But how did the new Israel respond? The old Israel said, no. The new Israel said, it is written. It is written. It is written. He obeyed and he merited the blessings of God based on his achievements, which the old Israel failed to achieve. Old Israel got judgment for their sins. The new Israel got blessings and life because of his obedience. And all us who are joined to him by faith, we share in his triumphs and the benefits that he procures. All those benefits and those promises that are symbolized by the promised land, you and I receive by our connection to the one who earned them, our Lord Jesus Christ. Our time is limited, but we can't explore all the details of this, but did we not notice that there's no confession of sin in this psalm? There's no admission of guilt. This psalm is the prayer of an innocent sufferer. This psalm is like Job, who said, I don't deserve what I am suffering, and who never understood what he was experiencing. But the innocent sufferer par excellence is our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can fully and finally pray this prayer. He's the only one who does not stand in need of forgiveness and mercy. We've been hearing these sirens go off, right? That someone is in need of mercy, and may God provide mercy for that person. Each of us here needs mercy. Each of us participated in the prayer of confession earlier in the service. But our Lord Jesus had no need to confess his sins. He had no sins to confess. He alone was the innocent sufferer. If you look at this text, this text is so strong, it's almost blasphemous how the psalmist is pointing the finger at God. Listen to just how, this almost seems disrespectful. Look at how he says in verse 6. He says, you have put me in the depths of the pit. Verse 7, your wrath lies heavy upon me. You overwhelm me with your waves. Number 8, you have caused my companions to shun me. You have made me a horror to them. It's worth noting that where the other psalms ascribe these sufferings to enemies, oftentimes this psalm ascribes the sufferings to God. This is very strong. Look at verse 15. He says, Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors. Very strong. Verse 16, Your wrath has swept over me. Your dreadful assaults destroy me. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. This is the voice of an innocent sufferer. Now, this may seem hard to believe, and if you're not yet a Christian, this may seem particularly harsh. But in the light of scriptural teaching as a whole, Well, we who are sinners by birth and by choice and by inclination, we all deserve to suffer. There's none of us that can at the end of the day say, I don't deserve this. Because we do. We who have constantly asserted our autonomy from God, we want to run our own lives and define who we are. We deserve to be rejected and cast off and to have the good things taken away from us. There's only one of us who can, in that final and absolute sense, pray these words. And who can say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Why have you abandoned me? Why have you turned your back on me? There's only one of us that can say that, and that's our Lord Jesus Christ at the end of the day. But the beautiful thing is that because the Lord Jesus indeed prayed those very words, because the Lord Jesus experienced this suffering of body and of soul, this social rejection to the utmost, because of that, therefore you and I, who are connected to him by living faith, we can then join in and pray these prayers ourselves. Calvin said that we can have the kind of confidence that's expressed in this psalm. We can embosom ourselves to God in this way. The person praying here, quote, has the kind of confidence in speaking to God that a person has in speaking to their caring father when they know that any words can be said, any pain expressed, and any accusations voiced. Jesus says that you can pray our Father. You can pray this way because you are accepted with God based on Jesus' work. You can lay out your frustrations and your loneliness on God's bosom, as it were, because you are received, adopted, and beloved based on what Jesus has achieved for you. Your rejection is taken on Him. Psalm 53 verse 5 tells us in that famous prophecy ahead of time that he was pierced for our transgressions. He was wounded for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed. Our Lord Jesus in that same text, his social sufferings were underlined as we read in verse 3 of that text that he was one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised. Can you imagine? The Lord Jesus' whole life was a life of misunderstanding, was a life of rejection. His very family turned their back on him, misunderstood him, tried to haul him off and have him arrested at one point. Even his closest friends, when push came to shove, they all turned their backs on him. and one with whom he spent the most intense and intimate time, lifted up his heel against him and betrayed him to his death to the governing authorities, right? The Lord Jesus experienced rejection, rejection, and rejection, even to the point of praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, Lord, no, please. And God the Father is turning his back and treating his own beloved son as a sinner and pouring out the wrath of justice on him, which he didn't deserve. He's experiencing that, even though his human nature is crying out against it. Jesus took that cup of rejection in body and in soul for our sake. He was rejected and scourged and mocked and beaten to the point of utter exhaustion and the collapse of, as it were, every organ of his. In Psalm 88, the psalmist is, we can feel teetering on the edge of death. He's saying, I've got a foot in Sheol. Or he says in verse 11, I'm almost in Abaddon, which is the place of destruction. It's the same place. And we won't go into some of the interesting ideas of death here that's being reckoned here, being dealt with here. But the point is that we may be on the edge of death and all the sufferings of the rejection of God that may seem. But our Lord Jesus went all the way in. He goes all the way in. And because he went all the way in, therefore death itself now does not hold the terror for us that we, before we knew Christ, it did hold indeed. It is the Lord Jesus who experiences, verse 7, verse 16, to the maximum. He's the one who experiences the very terrors of God in himself. You now, Christian, can be safe and secure from all alarms because the Lord Jesus was rejected, because the Lord Jesus was cast off. Because he had God turn his back on him, therefore God will never turn his back on you. Because he was put away, you will never be put away. You will be adopted, married, and received, and comforted for the rest of your life and forever and forever. This is the good news, brothers and sisters. This is the gospel, all that God has done for you to secure your well-being in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the gospel, not your achievements, not your sufferings for your own sake, not what you've done, not what my hands have done. But it's what God has done for you in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the good news. This is the gospel. I know a number of you had Dan Wagner as your friend. Dan worked for us for many years at Westminster Seminary in an unobtrusive position at the library. He's a counselor resource to many. Dan died last month. But how is it that Dan Wagner, who died at 82, how is it that he was able to face death itself with such quiet confidence? How could he endure this kind of crushing loss? And the way he put it when I spoke with him, when I asked him, are you ready to go into hospice? He said, I know that my Redeemer lives. I know that my Redeemer lives. That's a quote from Job 19.25. He knew, and you can know, that if you have Jesus, you can face the very worst. You can face anything. You can face any despair that raises its ugly head and wants to shout you down. You can face it, and you will triumph, not in your own strength, but because of God's grace to you in our Lord Jesus Christ. All the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you can face them all because of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is your belly full of troubles? is there a larger story in these troubles and the answer then is yes in connection with Christ yes yes there is a larger story there is a bigger picture let me now ask you one third and final question by way of application to help us draw out some further comfort and instruction from this passage and that is this my third and final question is will you keep praying will you keep praying will you keep praying at this point in the psalter you're probably not surprised what a number of the scholars have said one says this is the saddest psalm in the whole psalter or i should say in this point in our reflections on psalm 88 another says about psalm 88 it is quote unrelieved by a single ray of comfort or hope another says it is stark and lonely and pain riddled aren't you glad you came this morning This is not light stuff, not light stuff. Another says that it, quote, ends in final darkness, thumping leadenly like some muffled drum in the poet's own funeral cortege. Another says the nocturnal silence of the long night of death is at hand. And George A.F. Knight goes so far to see this psalm as sub-Christian And to say, this psalm shows people at what point they have gone wrong in their relationship with God. My word, this is a bold thing to say. He says, this black psalm is a warning to us all. George, did you want to go so far? Is there really not a glimpse of light in this psalm? Really? Look a little closer. Look a little closer. Where is the light? Where is the word of hope in this psalm? Where is it? It's the title of the psalm as we sung it, right? Verse 1, Lord God of my salvation. It's right in the beginning, right? That's where the hope is. I cry out day and night before you. That's where the word of confidence is from the beginning. Brothers and sisters, when the world seems to turn black, the very fact that you can pray at all is an evidence that God has not turned his back on you. This may seem subtle reasoning, but I want you to take it and find some comfort in it. The very fact that the psalmist is praying is evidence that God has sustained him to that point. He's not run away. He's not given up. praying. He's not turned his back on God. He knows that Yahweh is the God of his deliverance, is the God of his rescue. He knows where to turn, and so he keeps praying. Will you keep praying, or will you give up? Will you give up? It is a tragedy that my dear friend, the father of that young woman who suffered so much, it seems, has given up. Has given up on Orthodox Christianity. And it's sad to say that many of our young people, when they go off to university, give up. Give up on the faith. And stop praying and turn away from the Lord. You teenagers who are here today, will you give up? Will you give up? Or will you keep praying? I hope you'll keep praying. I hope you'll not give up and turn away from the Lord. This psalm is a reminder for us that you and I are in pilgrimage. You know, the motorhome is great. And the trips to Catalina on the boat, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. but if you think that you will find your heaven on this earth in whatever way whether it's from a chemical or from a vacation house or whatever it is that you're looking for or from some people doing this to you you will not it is not here to be found if you seek your final and full satisfaction here you will in the end be disappointed because it cannot be found here it is beyond here it is beyond here we live in a world the apostle tells us the very world itself is groaning there's something there's something broken there's a groaning of nature waiting for the new heavens and the new earth to be revealed around the corner and then we'll find our full heart's desire and now God gives us as it were kisses tastes of his goodness even here in the land of the living but it's not the full and final experience not the full and final experience we're waiting as the apostle tells us in Romans 8.22 for the very redemption of our bodies and so we can keep praying even when everything turns black because we have a hope that goes beyond the worst social rejection and the worst physical rejection and troubles that we can experience here when the 401k goes like this when the kids go south when the business goes up in flames when the very house goes up in flames we had some missionary friends just before they were going off to to be missionaries in spain the house burned down and every single thing they had just a week before they had all their stuff ready to go and to be shipped off and everything burned up they lost completely everything but they didn't lose the one most important thing and they could still keep praying and they went on to many years of fruitful ministry and service, right? Can you keep singing? Can you keep praying? Yes, you can. If you're connected to Christ, you can keep singing those strong songs, those strong new songs like we read from Shane and Shane. Though you slay me, yet I will praise you. Though you take from me, I will bless your name. Though you ruin me, still I will worship. Sing a song to the one who's all I need. You can sing the new songs. You can sing the old songs. You can sing with Samuel Radagast his piece from 1676 where he says, Whatever my God ordains is right, though now this cup and drinking may bitter seem to my faint heart, I take it all unshrinking. My God is true. Each morn anew, sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart, and pain and sorrow shall depart. Friend, if you are not yet a Christian, this Psalm 88, in all its bitterness, is a wonderful invitation from you. You will face the blackness, even if you're not facing it now, because you have to face death at some point. And what an invitation to have something that goes beyond your worst losses in this life, and to have a comfort that you can find only in the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christian friend, remember, remember that despair and depression do not have to be the final word because you have Christ. You, because Christ was rejected, you are accepted and you have the guarantee of looking forward to the very redemption of your body and the remaking of this present earth into a new earth of which you will have the experience. We saw that in the Hebrew of this psalm, the last word is darkness. But in your experience, darkness does not have the last word. Remember how John begins his description of the Lord Jesus in his gospel in chapter 1. This is a description of your rescuer, the one who's strong to help you. We read about him in verse 3, that all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Praise God, right? You can indeed keep praying, and even when the house burns, you can rejoice because you have Christ. And Christ is indeed your light. Would you join me in prayer? Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the one who came to live the life that we could not live and to suffer the rejection that we could not possibly endure. We thank you for our security through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we ask that you would sustain us now in our present and our future difficulties. We pray, Lord, for those who are suffering the difficulties, especially those that we thought about this morning, that you sustain them, lift them up, and help them, especially those who are under the pounding of the waves, Lord, that they might find and rejoice in Christ as their light. Lord, enable us, each one, to praise you, even in the times of blackness, we pray. For Christ's sake, amen.