Praising Through Lament (Psalm 88)
This is a sermon I preached in chapel at Maranatha Baptist University on 2/14/2022 as part of a series on Psalms called "Planted and Productive: Living a Blessed Life."
Introduction
I have an opening question for you this morning, and I want
you to think about and chew on it as I go through the rest of the message. Our
theme in Psalms is “Planted and Productive” – we are talking about living a
blessed life that shows the enviable position of the one who knows God, but today
as yesterday we are dealing with a lament psalm. Here is the question: are
believers still enviable in the midst of what Martin Luther termed “the dark
night of the soul” – that is, in great sorrow?
I have another question for you to think about as we are
going through the sermon today: in Hebrew, the book is not called “psalms” but “praises,”
which accurately reflects a large majority of its contents; but does that title
accurately reflect the laments? We are going to answer those questions in the
end.
Before we jump in, I want to remind you of a couple of
things: this is a Psalm. Remember that the psalms are divinely-inspired, human prayers,
which makes them unique from all other Scripture. This is God telling us how to
pray. It has often been said that, when the disciples came to Jesus and asked
“Lord, teach us to pray,” He could have said “Read the Psalms.”
Poetry, though, is different from other genres in Scripture:
poetry isn’t designed primarily to teach us theology; it’s designed to make us
think about it, meditate upon it. Poetry is not designed to give you new
information; it is designed to make you think about what you already know. And
that is what we are going to do today in this psalm.
Sin and its effects are bad, but God is good and sovereign
My main point is theological today, and this psalm is a
response to that theology in the situations of life. So, here is the
theological point I am going to be making, and I want to develop it a little
before we get into the psalm. It is nothing new, nothing earth-shattering, but
this is foundational to our lives: sin and its effects are bad, but God is good
and sovereign. Simple truth, simple words, but that is all of life.
We are talking about a lament psalm, and we have to remember
that the genre of lament – crying out to God in the midst of this sin-cursed
world – exists because we live in a fallen world. When we think of psalms, we
usually think of psalms like 113, which are praise: the emotional high of the
Psalms when the writer is so enthused with God, so in awe of Him and his
situation of blessedness is so great that he can’t help but say “praise God – hallelujah!”
But yesterday we looked at Psalm 13, and it is a lament – the cry of the soul
to God. And one of the things I think that we forget is that this is the
majority of the Psalms: lament. They help us to refocus on God; they help us to
refocus on the truth that sin and its effects are bad, but God is good and
sovereign. The essence of lament is that the psalmist – though sometimes he may
feel like God's victim (and we are going to talk about that this morning in
Psalm 88) – he knows that God is the only one who can truly help him, and so he
cries out.
So, why do we suffer in this world? Well, the short answer
is sin. But what does that look like? There’s our own sin. Sometimes we suffer
consequences for our own sin; sometimes we suffer because people sin against
us; other times it’s sin that indirectly affects us; but sometimes it’s just
because we live in a fallen world. Sometimes you see lament psalms where the
person is being attacked by enemies and cries out to God because that situation
is bad. Other times it is not just enemies but fallen aspects of the world that
bring on the situation. For Psalm 88, which we are looking at this morning,
some have hypothesized that it is about someone suffering terminal illness.
Because not just sin, but sin and its effects are bad. The lament psalms are
what we pray when we are wrestling with the effects of sin in this life, and
they help us to correctly grasp this central truth: sin and its effects are
bad, but God is good and sovereign.
Now, there is a progression in the Psalms, and I don’t want
you to lose sight of this. I’m dealing with lament, and specifically Psalm 88,
which is kind of the lament of laments. God does not want us to stay in lament
our entire life; there is a progression from lament: “God, everything is
falling apart, and it’s horrible, and I don’t know where you are;” to trust: “God,
everything is still falling apart, and horrible, but I know that you are in
control and I know that you will work;” to thanksgiving: “God, everything was
horrible and falling apart, but you brought me out;” to praise: “God, you are
amazing because of what you have done.” So, there is a progression here. But we
also need to be careful not to run roughshod over lament – it exists for a
reason. God wants us to lament. God wants us to come to Him with the sorrow
that comes from this world. He wants us to cry out to Him. In fact, He commands
us to lament by “casting all [our] cares on Him, for He cares for [us]” (1
Pet. 5:7).
God also commands us to have joy in trials, which seems
confusing and contradictory. But we need to remember that joy is not an
emotion; joy is an attitude. Joy is what you have when you are confident in
God, when you know who He is and expect Him to do what He has said. We call
those faith and hope in ‘Christianese.’ That doesn’t mean the sorrow isn’t
dark. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. But we have to remember that God is
our only hope.
So, sin is bad and its effects are bad, but God is good and
sovereign. Let’s chew on that last bit for a second, because when we are in a
trial, one of the easiest things for us to forget is God’s sovereignty. And we
have to remember that God is in complete control of all things: He is never
thwarted, He is never surprised, He is never conquered. That’s our God. We have
to recognize this, and part of recognizing it is recognizing that the effects
of the Fall are bad. We ought never to call those things that the Fall has
brought about good; death, sorrow, suffering, are bad. God is amazingly
powerful and amazingly sovereign, and as Joseph said to his brothers at the end
of his life: “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it
unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive”
(Genesis 50:20). He doesn’t say to his brothers, “No, don’t worry – what you
did was right.” It was bad. It was sin. He doesn’t say, “Well, you did
something wrong, but the fact that I was in sorrow and slavery all those years
was good.” No, that was bad. What he says is that God uses the bad for good; He
uses all sin for His purposes. Have you ever thought about how amazing that is?
Sin – that which exists because rebellion against God exists – still bends to
the will of God. He is not the author of sin, He does not create sin, and yet He
is sovereign. Romans 8:28 tells us, “And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God” – notice that it doesn’t say that
things are good; sin and its effects are bad. But they “work together
for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
It is because of
Christ that we can rejoice now even in the midst of sorrow, even in the midst
of the Curse. 2 Timothy 1:9-10 tells us that Jesus Christ has abolished death
and brought immortality and life. It is the Gospel that gives us hope. And yet,
we have lament psalms, and in lament psalms God acknowledges that – while He
has told us about the hope, He has told us about the future, He has told us that
He wins and sin and death are destroyed – it is hard for us to understand what
is going on in the midst of it. The lament psalms are God saying, “It’s okay to
not feel sure how to feel.” God doesn’t ultimately answer the ‘problem of evil’
for us. If God is completely good and completely in control, why does evil
exist? He doesn’t fully answer that question; what He does is tell us about
Himself. “I am good, so trust me.” I have a quote for you here on specifically
Psalm 88:
One of the great wonders of
the Bible is that it accommodates the darkest experiences any of us could walk
through. We will never experience a difficulty that goes deeper than what the
Bible addresses. Every pain is accounted for, acknowledged, in scripture. We
are even, as here in this psalm [Psalm 88], given words to pray in such
emotionally debilitating times.[1]
As Dr. Love mentioned yesterday, the Bible does not tell us
that, once we get saved, we should expect every day to be happy and wonderful.
In fact, Paul tells us that “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall
suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12) and that through many trials we must
enter the kingdom (Acts 14:22).
So, what’s our problem? I’m talking about Psalm 88 this
morning – it has often been called the most depressing chapter of the Bible
because it is not like normal laments. In a normal lament, like Psalm 13 which
we saw yesterday, the psalmist cries out to God, and then at the end he
expresses confidence in who God is; and we don’t really see that in Psalm 88,
not the way we do in other psalms, anyway. Because sometimes it seems so dark
that even the truth you know doesn't shine through – and let me tell you, that
is not necessarily because you are in sin; it is because sin exists. It could
be because you have sinned, but it is not the case that every time you feel
sorrow you have done something wrong. It’s because you are face-to-face with
the Curse, and the Curse is bad. Grief is coming face-to-face with the Fall and
its consequences; it hurts because sin, sickness, suffering, and death are
unnatural – they are not how God designed this world. God will fix it all
someday, but until then we live by faith.
Now, some of you are right here, right now in Psalm 88. You
are so overwhelmed by the difficulty, you are so overwhelmed by the trial, you
are so confused that all you can do is say to God, “God, I’ve prayed – where
are you?” Maybe it’s anxiety, maybe it’s grief, maybe it’s loneliness, maybe
it’s prolonged singleness, maybe it’s abuse, maybe it’s medical issues, maybe
it’s moving, maybe it’s loss of a job, or finances, or maybe as a college
student it’s just perpetual car trouble. You either have been or will be in
Psalm 88 at some point in your life, and we need to know how to deal with that,
because laments tell us to take our cares to God. Again, 1 Peter 5:6-7: we “humble [ourselves] under the mighty
hand of God, that he may exalt [us] in due time” – how do we humble
ourselves before God? By casting our cares upon him; for He cares for us. We
humble ourselves before God by acknowledging, “God, I can do nothing, but you
are all-powerful.
So, we are going to work through this psalm, but this is
poetry, not an epistle; it will not be verse-by-verse, line-by-line,
word-by-word. I am going to work through thematically and hit some main ideas,
and I have three main points for you today. But all of these main points stem
from my central theological proposition this morning: sin and its effects are
bad, but God is good and sovereign. Because of that:
God wants you to come to him no matter how you feel
Remember that prayer is not about giving God information he
doesn’t have – he knows. Christ in the Sermon on the Mount tells us that your
Father knows what you need before you even ask (Matt. 6:32). So, why do we
pray? It’s not about giving God information; it’s about expressing our
dependence upon him. Part of the Lord’s Prayer is “Give us this day our
daily bread” (Matt. 6:11) – “Father, give us everything we need to continue
going on.” You do not have to be living a perfect Christian life to come to God
– that’s legalism. You do not have to pretend to be happy when approaching God –
that’s hypocrisy. You should not expect to be always happy in life, and it’s
not a sin to sorrow; after all, our Lord and Savior was called a “Man of
Sorrows” (Isa. 53:3), who also expressed perfect joy and hope.
So, as we talk about laments, I want to give you some cautions about praise Psalms
- The praise Psalms are not universal. You will not always be able to pray a praise psalm; that is not why they are there. Ecclesiastes 7:2-7 actually tells us, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Now, this is not to say that Christians should be morose and walking around as if we have no hope; we do have hope, but we ought not flee sorrow.
- The praise Psalms are not for correction. When someone is sorrowing, when someone is grieving, we do not respond by quoting verses of Scripture that command them to rejoice. Don’t be one of Job’s friends. Listen! Stop! Care! Love! Psalm 25:20 says, “As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre” – This is, baking soda and vinegar; when you combine them it destroys both individual elements and makes a mess – “So is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart.” It doesn’t help.
- The praise Psalms are not the norm. You won’t always be in a mood of praise. Now, we ought always to worship God, but part of my reorientation for you today is that lament is actually worship because it acknowledges that God is in control.
That’s point one: God wants you to come to him no matter how
you feel. Now, I haven’t jumped into the Psalm yet, but that’s foundational for
this entire Psalm Because I have already told you that Psalm 88 is called “the
most depressing chapter of the Bible.” And some have said that the only glimmer
of hope in this entire Psalm is that the psalmist addresses it to God. Even
tough things are bad, even though he can’t remember the right theology to
correct himself, he is talking to God about it – and that is good; that is
worship.
God wants you to come to him about how you feel
Now, our emotions are fallen, and what that means is that we
cannot trust them as a foundation for truth. Your emotions will lead you astray
if you trust them rather than what God says, but that doesn’t mean stuff them
in a box, stick it in your pocket, and never acknowledge they exist, because
that’s not how Jesus dealt with his emotions. stifling your emotions is
unhealthy; it’s a violation of your purpose as God’s image, because we are
supposed to image him, and he has emotion. And it’s also disobedient to God
because you can’t cast your cares if you’re locking them in a box and sticking
them in your pocket. Another author says, “Our dark emotions reveal God; they
open the road to true joy. This is the central message of the book of Psalms:
we encounter divine goodness in the midst of pain.”[3]
Sin and its effects are bad, but God is good.
So, where do we see this in Psalm 88? The psalmist shows us
we can pour our emotional and physical sufferings upon God. Verses 3-5 say, “For
my soul is full of troubles: / And my life draweth nigh unto the grave. / I am
counted with them that go down into the pit” – that is, people think I am
bound for death – “I am as a man that hath no strength: / Free among the
dead, / Like the slain that lie in the grave, / Whom thou rememberest no more: /
And they are cut off from thy hand.” Basically, people think I am without
hope and a dead man, and I feel that way, too. What is he talking about? Again,
many have conjectured that it is physical illness. The title of the Psalm
doesn’t really help us much because the people it mentions, we’re not sure who
they are; and the musical terms it lists, we’re not sure what they mean. But
that’s the beauty of the Psalms – they go beyond the original situation of
their composition; they speak of the human experience. Verse 9 of Psalm 88
says, “Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: / LORD, I have called
daily upon thee, / I have stretched out my hands unto thee.” Ever been there?
That’s life under the Curse.
Now, I hope that you noticed in some of those verses and
elsewhere in Psalms that sometimes the psalmists say things that are not quite
objectively true. Don’t let that freak you out! The Bible is inspired; every
word is the Word of God. But sometimes the Bible truly records that someone
said something false. When Satan says to Adam and Eve in the Garden, “Eat the
fruit – you’ll be like gods,” he really said that, but it was a lie. When we
come to the psalmists, sometimes they say things that, while not technically
true about their situation, are really how they feel. Psalm 10:1 “Why do you
hide yourself in times of trouble?” Does God do that? No! But may you feel
that way sometimes? Yes. Psalm 13:1 “How long will you forget me?” Does
God do that? No, but you can feel that way sometimes. Psalm 42:9 “Why have
you forgotten me?” Psalm 43:2 “Why have you rejected me?” Psalm
44:23 “Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?” Are those things true? No,
but sometimes you’ll feel that way. And what God says in the lament Psalms is,
when you feel this way, don’t fake it, don’t ‘grin and bear it’ – tell God!
When you’re not sure how you feel about God, tell God about it, because that’s
acknowledging that he is sovereign and good, although the effects of sin are
bad.
So where do we see that happening in this Psalm? In verses 1
and 2, the psalmist basically says “God doesn’t hear my prayers.” He says “O
LORD God of my salvation, / I have cried day and night before thee: / Let my
prayer come before thee: / Incline thine ear unto my cry.” He says, “God,
hear my prayer, because you’re not doing it now.” And Luke 18:7-8 tells us, “shall
not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear
long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when
the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” God hears our
prayers!
In verses 10 and 12, he says, “There is no hope after this
life!” He says, “Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? / Shall the dead arise
and praise thee? Selah. / Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? /
Or thy faithfulness in destruction? / Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? /
And thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” Now, this one is a
little interesting, because sometimes we are not quite sure just how much Old
Testament saints knew about the afterlife; their blessings were very much
focused on this life. But his statement is basically, “God, once I die there’s
no hope for me left.” And Scripture tells us in John 3:36, “Whoever believes
in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God remains on him.” There is hope after this life; in
fact, that is the greatest hope – that is THE hope, that after the Fall, after
death, there is life eternal!
In verse 14 he says, “LORD, why castest thou off my soul?
/ Why hidest thou thy face from me?” He basically says here that God
sometimes rejects believers. 2 Timothy 2:11-13, “The saying is trustworthy,
for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; / if we endure, we
will also reign with him; /if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are
faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” As Christ said,
“My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to
pluck them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:29). God never rejects us.
Christ never rejects us. And it is important we recognize that God doesn’t
rebuke us for feeling discouraged.
Do you remember 1 Kings 19, when Elijah has just with God’s
power defeated the priests of Baal, and then he finds out Queen Jezebel wants
to kill him, and he gets freaked out and depressed and he runs out in the
wilderness, and God finds him and he says, “Elijah, take a nap and eat a
snack.” Because, quite frankly, sometimes the godliest thing you can do is take
a nap. But then God does correct him with truth. He says, “Elijah, what’s going
on?” And Elijah says, “Well, I’m the only one left – everyone else has
abandoned me. They don’t love me, they don’t love you; they hate you, and they
want to kill me.” And God says, “Elijah, that’s not true. You know that’s not
true.” But he doesn’t rebuke him, he doesn’t attack him; he says, “Elijah, this
is the actual truth.”
God wants to hear from us about how we feel and no matter
how we feel. And then finally, God wants you to talk to him in lament, not just
praise.
God wants you to talk to him in lament, not just praise
We are God’s images – we have His sense of justice and
morality within us. And what that means is, when we see the effects of the
Curse in this world, it should disturb us. If you are not disturbed by the
injustices, atrocities, and crimes against God’s images on this earth, then the
issue is not that you don’t value God’s images – the issue is that you don’t
value God. 1 John 4:20 says “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his
brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” That’s intense – and that’s not
me; that’s the Bible!
But we speak to God in lament, and since God is sovereign,
we do have to acknowledge that, at some level, every difficulty we endure is
permitted by Him. Look at verses 6 through 8. It’s a little spicy. And as you
read it, you might be feeling the tension: “Can I say that to God? Is that okay
to do?” The lament Psalms say yes. When we feel that way, we should take it to
God. Why? Because he is good and sovereign; He is the only one who can really
help.
By lamenting we show faith; we recognize God as our only
hope. I skipped over verse 1. In the opening to this Psalm, he says: “O LORD
God of my salvation” – that is, “God, I recognize that you are the only one
who can help me” – “I have cried day and night before thee.” That is, “God,
it doesn’t feel like you are there with me. It doesn’t feel like you love me.
It doesn’t feel like you are caring for me; it actually feels like you are my
enemy, but I know that you are my only hope, and so I ask you for help. Verse
13: “But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; /And in the morning shall my prayer
prevent thee.” Even though he doesn’t feel like his prayers are answered,
he is still going to keep praying. Why? He recognizes that God is his only
hope.
The proper response of a believer to seeing the Curse in
this world is seeking justice from God in the form of lament; and I want you to
know that if you cut lament out of your prayer life, you are refusing to hate
sin as much as God does. We have to pray lament – it’s most of the Psalms, and
the Psalms teach us how to pray! Because sin and its effects are bad, but God
is good and sovereign.
Conclusion
Why am I talking about this?
Why, when given the opportunity to talk about Psalms, did I pick the most
depressing chapter of the Bible? Some of you probably don’t know this, but my
current wife is not my first wife: I met a girl during college, we dated for three years, got
married the day after graduation, and in 2019 she passed aways sudeenly and
unexpectedly. Sin and its effects are bad. But I can tell you that what I
learned in that time (largely through Psalm 88) which – although you may not
think of it this way – gave me hope! I knew that sin and its efffects are bad, but I learned that
God is good and sovereign.
What should you do if you are
in Psalm 88? Sometimes when we get into a trial our first thought is, “God,
stop the trial!” And that is not the way a believer should respond. It is not
wrong to ask that God would expedite the trial and take away the sorrow and
sufffering, but first and foremost we have to recognize that the goal of trial
is to re-sync us with God, to get us into a right relationship with him, to
sanctify us. You cannot have joy with God after a trial without connecting with
God through trial. But also, don’t run from grief, because lament is intended
to teach you about God – it is part of how we humble ourselves before him; it
is how we come to learn him; it is how we learn what it means that Christ is “meek
and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29). Don’t run from grief, and bring your
laments to God. Also, remember that seeking the peace, relief, and rest that
come from God in something else is idolatry, and God won’t stand for it.
What should you do if someone
you know is in Psalm 88? Again, don’t pray mainly that the trial would end;
pray that they would know God through it, that he would use it for his glory. Please
don’t use clichés, though. Is it true that God is good all the time? Yes. Is
that what someone needs to hear when they are in the middle of the “dark night
of the soul”? It might not help. What they need is for you to stop and listen
in love. Don’t just tell them to be happy – that is not what Scripture does,
and that’s not what the praise Psalms are for. Romans tells us to “weep with
those who weep” and “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Romans 12:15).
Don’t tell them that all things are good – that’s not true. Romans 8:28 tells
us that God uses all things for good, but sin and its effects are bad –
don’t cross that line! Don’t slander God by attributing the effects of sin to Him.
Don’t tell them God will restore their loss. Don’t tell someone who has lost a
kid they can have another one. Don’t tell someone who has lost a spouse that
they can get maried again. That’s not the problem – the problem is sin and its
effects; the problem is the Fall; the problem is the Curse. And no temporary
happiness in this life can make up for it, which is why our hope is eternal:
our hope, when we deal with Psalm 88, is that God is still good and sovereign
in the depths. You might not feel it, but it is true. Our hope is that God
still wants to hear from us when we are overwhelmed. Our hope is that God will
use the suffering for his glory and for our good. Our hope is that Christ will make all things new. “The last
enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26). Lament is how we cast our
cares on God.
So, I asked you two questions
at the beginning – the first one: does Psalm 88 fit within the category of
praises? And my answer to you is: yes, it does; because casting your care on
him is worship. We praise God in trial, in sorrow, in grief, in affliction by
taking that sorrow to God – that’s how we humble ourselves before him. We
recognize that he is the only one who can help. I asked you another question as
well: are Christians – believers – still enviable in the”dark night of the
soul”? The answer is yes, because we can take it to God and we have hope.
Here is our point again. It’s
nothing new, nothing fancy, nothing shiny, but it is foundational to your
entire life: sin and its effects are bad, but God is good and sovereign, and we
recognize that through lament.
[1] Dane
Ortlund, In the Lord I Take Refuge (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022).
[2]
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (Chicago, New York: Scott, Foresman
and company, c1920).
[3] Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, The Cry of the Soul (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994), 245.
All Scripture verses come from the KJV.
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