Amen. I asked the praise team, Matt and Jimbo to lead us in that song because the author understands some things about a life of faith and persevering and it relates well to what we're going to read right now in Psalm 88. Psalm 88, I've entitled this, The Dark Cry of the Soul. And you can follow along as I read, I'm using the English standard version of the only overhead. You'll understand as you read, why this is called The Dark Cry of the Soul. O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you and climb your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles and my life draws near to Sheol. I'm counted among those who go down to the pit. I'm 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 am 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? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon or your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of unforgettableness? But I, O Lord, cry to you in the morning, my prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you test my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Afflicted and close to death for 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. My companions have become darkness. That is not a feel-good moment. That is not a song that you will typically hear, you know, TV preachers and proclaim. This is not a song that you find a song written in the hymn book. In fact, in the back of the, the trinity hymn, it has a lot of salt or readings. They skip it all together. This is not one that you go home and say, wow, that just loved that one. I just really, you know, sort of, sort of struck me in a positive way. And yet, my guess is that there are folks here this morning who read through that with me and said, I am right there. And I've been there for a long time. And I have a feeling I want to stay there for a while. And I want you to know that God put this song here for a reason. So, if I can make it through the introduction, we may be able to learn some stuff from this song. Taylor Two City starts off. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Well, this song starts off. It's the worst of times. And it's going to keep on being the worst of times. And Macbeth, the character Macduff at one point, says, each new mourn, new widows, howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face. How true. We live in a fallen world. We live in a world that sometimes things seem perhaps overwhelmingly and totally dark. Have you been there? Are you there? You may be there at some point in the future. Some of you have been, as I said. And as you read over this song, you see that this is not just sort of your typical kind of, you know, bad hair day, spiritual funk that we might be in for a day or a couple of days. This is something where the psalmist is experiencing a deep sense of loss and grief and sorrow and the psalmist cries out and in this psalm there are truths and experiences that are instructive and encouraging. Now, the first thing we see, the first section is the cry of the soul and the description of his condition and just, you know, he says, he's been crying out and is it being heard? God, where are you? I'm crying and you're not hearing me. And then his soul is deeply troubled. He's been put in the pit and he says, I've been put in the pit by you, God, you put me in the depths of this. He said, my friends have been removed. He says, God, you've removed them. He says, God, your wrath rests on me. So he's dealing honestly and relationally with God in a way that we don't often, you know, feel comfortable with and we might read them and say, wow, who is this guy? I mean, who is this guy? Is he some really bad, horrible center that this is happening to? And this guy just live in a lifestyle that, you know, he, all this is happening because he just deserves it and biblically we have to look at it and probably say, no, the introduction at the top of the psalm explains his name is Heman and you know, first Chronicle 6 describes him as one of the leaders of worship. He's he's part of God's praise team. David's praise team and he and these these guys who are the the called the Ezra height of the these guys were part of the group that wrote Psalms and their other Psalms by the Ezra heights. In fact, when I read this morning, the call to worship, Psalm 89 is another from another Ezra height. So this is from somebody who is from all we can tell is, you know, the guy is really seeking to serve God and love him and yet he is just in this deep time of darkness. Now, there's an important lesson for us in this. And the first lesson is that darkness can last for a long time. You can call out, you can live rightly and still be plunged in inner outer darkness or exterior or in inner darkness, whichever way the two different types of darkness. There's an external darkness that comes when circumstances just fall apart. And we all taste that in some degree in our lives. We all know we live in a fallen world. That thing's happened. And so there's an external darkness that happens, though, that is very profound. And but is what is worse is there's an internal darkness. An internal darkness comes when you feel like you're crying out to God and he's just not there. He's not listening. And so you don't have the sense of the resources that you normally have to deal with the external darkness. It is just the external issue, you know, but you know, you have a sense of the presence of God on your life. You can make it through that external, but when it's both, at the same time, then you're just overwhelmed. And he says, in one translation, the last line says, darkness is my only friend. Well, those of you from my generation, you might immediately think of, hello, darkness, my old friend. You know, and some of you may remember that you may be singing that regularly right now in your life. There's a sense that darkness is your only friend. And that's what he is going through. And we see they say, well, how can this be? Isn't God's loving? So it's come to the Christian life. So it's be good and positive. Doesn't work God work at all things together for good. Those who love him, those who are calling to his purpose. Doesn't the Bible tell us that? Yes. But we may go through our entire life without really knowing this side of the grave, what they good purpose was. Oh, really. Oh, that's maybe a wake-up call for some of us to realize that. It is not all, you know, Rosie, the psalm heats us from naive expectations of life. You know, people can have the same experience with different expectations, and they will experience it totally differently. In 1976, I went to a beach project in Newport Beach, California. A group of students from all of us with campus crusader, five of us from the University of Georgia, went out there. Tim Couch's sister was actually on that group that went with us. And my twin brother, some other folks got to California and kiss them all over the country. And I went out there to this beach project, expecting it to be hard, expecting it to be a very trying, faith stretching experience. Because I talked to people the summer before who go on on a project. And they talked about that. And so I went out there expecting that. And it was that. And more. Then I was ready for it, in a sense, expecting that. And I had a great time. Now, there was a girl on our project from from Northern California. And she came as we learned toward the end of the summer. She came expecting, oh, this is going to be great, you know. I'm going to be up the beach all summer and just going to be up with these friends. It's going to be a lot of fun and really cool. She wasn't expecting structure and going out and getting a job. And you know, all these things that we're involved and outreach and ministry and evangelism. And she just was having a hard time the whole summer. We were at the same beach, the same people. We experienced it totally differently because of her expectations. We go through life, expecting everything is just going to be easy and breezy. We're in for a real shock when reality sets in. And so this song gives us some wisdom. You know, as westerners, particularly as Americans, we expect things to be easy. We expect things to happen right now. We expect things to have a happy ending and to be resolved quickly within a 30 minute, you know, TV show or an hour or two hour movie. Everything sort of wrap up and be resolved nice and easy. This song gives wisdom because it gives a clearer picture of reality. And we can practice wisdom and learn wisdom when we avoid, learn to avoid bad answers. Bad answers of the moralist. And some of you have seen this little
comparison of the moralist and the secular view that relates to many different areas of life. We've used it in different studies, but it applies to this understanding of life. The moralist view are like Job's friends. What did they say to Job? Job. This bad stuff has happened to you because you're living a bad life. Sit down. Think about your sin. Make a sinless confess it and everything will be fine. Well, see, they didn't understand the first part of Job in which God and Satan had a conversation. They didn't understand what was really going on. They just came with this moralist viewpoint. They see, saw suffering as punishment. If you live a good life, good things happen. Martin Marty, who's the church historian and Christian social critic, is written, whoever devises from Scripture philosophy, which everything turns out right, has to begin by tearing this page, Psalm 88, out of his volume of philosophy. Because we miss Psalm 88 and Psalm 39. And those about the two Psalms that are this way, but the biggest difference in Psalm 88 from many other is it just doesn't even end with a sense of hope. Most of the Psalms, you see the crying out in the processing it is with the word of hope. Psalm 88 is with a sense of darkness is my only friend. Now, the secularist, the cynic view is this. I knew it. I knew there wasn't a God. I knew that life was just a random chaos. And, you know, we can't count on anything. It's meaningless. If God's there, he's either incompetent, or he's indifferent, if he existed on. Nobody's really in charge. I knew it. Just look at all the stuff going on in life. That's the secular, so the cynical view. Or, somebody even take a religious view, similar to that, and the book years ago, what a bad thing happened to good people. It was written in the author's response, coming from sort of a religious perspective was, well, God means well, he just can't pull it off. You know, God just, he's sort of, he's got good intentions, he just sort of incompetent. So I asked, you know, for the cynic, this question, if praying to God when things aren't going well, seems useless and absurd, you know, how are we any better off by not believing in God? You know, if the reality of suffering over here, and you have God over here, say, well, the reality of suffering brings into question the very existence of God. Okay, let me do this. Take God out of the way. What are you left with? Suffering. As Dr. Phil would say, how's that working for you? Does it really help you to just have suffering with no God in a meaningless, random universe? Does it really help you to say there's no God because they're suffering? The reality is, if you take away God, you also have to take away the idea of suffering and something's wrong with the world because if there's no God, there's no, there's no standard of what is good or what is bad. It's not that bad stuff is happening. It's just that what? Stuff's happening. Stuff, you can't call it good, you can't call it bad because there's no eternal reference point to say, what is good or bad? We just live in a random, chaotic, meaningless universe. There you go. So does that really help? The cynic has to take a leap of faith. The believer takes a leap of faith. I certainly think the leap of faith of the psalmist in holding on the God makes more sense than the leap of faith of the cynic who just jumps into the abyss. Either way, there's a leap of faith involved. Now, modern secular, cynic, theologian, Woody Allen puts it this way. One of his movies is talking about the meaningless of life says, think about watching people on movies or whatever I'm thinking, I should stop ruining my life, searching for answers, and just enjoy it while it lasts. After all, who knows? Maybe there is something. I know maybe is a slim read to hang your life on, but that's the best we have. I want to tell you something. A lot of people in Gainesville, Georgia live by that philosophy. You can't really know if there's a God or not. Let's just go and enjoy life, and maybe everything will work out in the end, and I know maybe is a slim thread to hang on to, but it's the best we have. And the psalmist here would say this, no, it's not. If you're a Christian, we can say, no, it's not. Maybe is not the best we have. We may not understand everything, but we understand that God is still in control. And there's an encouragement that comes to us in this psalm. James Boyce,
PCA pastor, who passed away a number of years ago, but he said, this is good to have this a psalm like this. It's good that we only have one. This is not going to make a regular habit of feasting on this, but there are times where we really need it. It may be shocking for us to hear, to read that psalm. That may be the first time somebody who read psalm 88. You may be more familiar with psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. What a comforting, wonderful thought. You know, psalm 100, make a joyful noise to the Lord, and we read this one as like darkness is my only friend. Wow, where's this guy coming from? But it's reality. It's amazing shocking to hear him talking to God like this, but note something important. He is talking to God. He's not talking about God out among people behind his back. He's addressing this and processing this to God and before God. And so he cries out in the cry of faith even when it's dark, and it shows the invincible stephastiness of faith that's centered on God. And when things get really dark, what we need is stephastiness of faith, just to hang on to God, even just by our fingernails, to hang on to God. He's crying as as God, God of my salvation. I don't think you're hearing me. I feel abandoned and darkness is my only friend, but I know that you're the God of my salvation. It's a cry of faith. Derek Kiddner in his commentary on talking about Psalm 39 and Psalm 38, he says, their presence is a witness to God's understanding. He knows how men speak when they are desperate. God keeps these prayers in the Bible for a reason. He keeps them there for us because we need to see what it sounds like to process through the darkness. And God isn't ashamed or embarrassed to have these here. He's our God. He's our God of grace, not because we pray correctly all the time, not because we have all our theology pervert because these are going well in our life. He's a God of grace and he can take it folks. When we come to him and we cry out to him and we need this because it's it's liberating. It does us good to be honest with God. We might as well be honest with God. He already knows what we're thinking anywhere. He knows the pain we're going through. We shouldn't try to try to hide it and make him think, oh, God, everything's okay. When we know it's not, I love to see it in the movie of the Apostle. When Robert devolved, you know, things have sort of really fallen apart for him and he's praying and he's just saying, God, I am mad at you. I am mad at you. And it's just God level honest, but he's not out in the street accusing and blaspheming God. He's processing it in prayer to God. He says, God, give me your peace. Just give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Peace. He wants it. He's seeking God just like the psalmist. He wants to know God. He wants to have that sense of peace. But he's just not there for the moment. He's hanging on in the cry of faith. Let me ask you this. Does your life reflect this kind of honesty? Does your prayer life reflect this kind of honesty and steadfastness?
The second section is God is interrogated. The psalmist asks all these questions. And what he's thinking is, I'm going to sort of get a trump card on God. I'm going to ask all these questions. Okay. And so we ask these questions. You know, do you work wonders for the dead? The departed rise up to praise you. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave? What he's saying is God, if I'm as good as dead, how am I going to praise you? Don't you want me to be one of these people who can praise you? Isn't that great? And he's not getting any answer. He thinks he's going to trump God with that, but that's not working in the way that he thought it would. The God is still there in the midst of his pain, but note his complaints are not mocking in the nine existence of God. They're different ways that people will approach God. The second lesson we see here is the despair of suffering can be a time of growth when we process our anguish through faith. He's processing it through faith. And even in his despair, he cries out in faith. David Paulison in writing on a similar Psalm, he says, there may be mixed motives, but over time, it always becomes clear whether we are processing our anguish through faith or through pride and unbelief. Over time in our lives, it becomes evident. And this cry of faith holds on to God even when it seems like he's not being heard. Psalm 88 speaks directly to God as one who was great, not as one who was powerless and wicked, but one who was great. He keeps going back to God. And then we see the final lament of faith in verses 13 through 18. He continues to cry. He sees sorrow everywhere. Verse 13, 15, he says, I see it from my path, from my youth up. I've had nothing but terror, nothing but horror. You know, I mean, he's so absolutely ties this. There have no nothing but bad things from my youth. He sees it in his future of terrors. He sees it in his present. His friends are gone, and all is left with his darkness. Yet in the midst of this, there's growth. And we see the third lesson, we can grow in the darkness when we learn to cling to God alone. Some of you know this better than others. The reality is we grow most when we're forced to cling to God alone. When we get to the place, we realize that we can't rest on our gift mix. We can't rest on our temperament type. We can't rest on our portfolio. We can't rest on all the things that are working for us out here. We've got to cling to God alone. And that is when we really get to know God in a way that will deepen us and turn us, conform us gradually into people. As scripture says, transformed, conformed to the image of Christ. Walter Brugumon, a commentator, writes about the value of this Psalm. He says, Psalm 88 stands as a mark of biblical faith. It has a pastoral use because there are situations in which easy, cheap talk of resolution must be avoided. So if you're at this place, be encouraged
that what you're experiencing is understood by God. He understands this sense of isolation. He understands this sense of forsakeness. If you're not at this place, be very careful that you don't look down on people who are and just say, buck up, buddy, suck it up. Things are going to be better. This one will come out tomorrow, weep with those who weep, pray for them and pray for steadfastness of faith in the midst of those difficult times. Though this is not the typical experience in the Christian life, we've got one or two Psalms out of 150 that express this deep cry of darkness of the soul. So it's not typical. God doesn't bring all of us through this to this degree, that there's some, we all experience it to some degree, but not probably to this degree. And for whatever reason, God and His sovereignty ordains this in a way for some to take them through that in a way that he won't do in your life. We just don't all experience the same degree of difficulty. There's a great little thing in the movie to kill a mockingbird in the book, actually more so than the movie. If you've read it or seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about, if not, you need to read it. Where Miss Mardi is talking to Jim, little boy talking about his father, Atticus, he says, I don't know if it'll help, but I want to say this to you. There's something in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father is one of them. We're so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we have men like Atticus to go for us. And the Psalmist is kind of like that. We're not all called to go through this kind of deep darkness of the soul, but some of us will be. And we don't know who that's going to be. And it may not be you right now in your experience. And it may happen a year, five years, ten years so now. And so we can learn from one another, encourage, pray for one another. The Psalmist prays, and he feels like he's getting nothing, but that really begs a question. Do you stay with God when you're getting nothing? Tim Keller, commenting on Job, talks about the similar kind of experience, says, only when you know this deep darkness, do you get this question that comes from God? And it's basically this, did you get into this relationship with me to serve me or for me to serve you? Did you get into this because you thought I was just going to be your errand boy and make everything work out well for you? Is that why you got into this? Or you in this for me alone. When you've got nothing else, you still got me. Is that going to be good enough? That's the question that comes to us. Growth in Christ's likeness requires trials. Again, like what Keller said, just as pressure turns coal into a diamond. So pressure and the darkness, spiritual darkness in our lives, God uses that to transform us into the image of Christ. We're going to grow in the image of Christ. We're going to experience trials. John Typer, great author, pastor, and I'm going to run through several points pretty quickly. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer before the site and click on the resources and hit the link for it. But I want to give you some insights from him. Let me encourage you. Go read the entire thing because all I'm doing is giving you the bullet points. And I would say this, substitute, suffering, or trials, whatever it might be, because it may not be cancer. It may be something else going on in your life. Some sense of grief and loss, substitute that for cancer. And these points work just as well. Typer writes, you'll waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God. You'll waste your cancer or your suffering if you believe it is a curse and not a gift. Scripture says there's no condemnation for those in Christ. So whatever it is, it comes our way. It's not a curse. God is going to use it for our good and for his glory. Third thing, you'll waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God. The doctor tells you where you've got, you know, you've got 70, 30 chance here of beating this cancer. Oh wow, 70, 30. If you take comfort in the odds, rather than taking comfort in God, then your cancer's wasted. It hasn't moved your heart to resting in God. It's moved to resting in the odds or whatever that suffering might be. You'll waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death. We're all going to die. Psalm 9 and 12 says, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. We may present to you a heart of wisdom as you're going through that time of suffering. Let that time of suffering teach you to think about the ultimate end and eternity and gaining a heart of wisdom here and now to take into eternity. The fifth, you'll waste your cancer if you think that beating cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ. If the doctors do all of their stuff and you have the right attitude and you beat cancer but you don't come out of it cherishing Christ, the cancer was wasted, the suffering, whatever it is was wasted. You'll waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer not enough time reading about God. You'll waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepening your relationships with others in manifest affection. You'll waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope. You'll waste your cancer for your darkness, your suffering if you treat sin as casually as before in your own life. Or if I say this principle is maybe particularly true when your anguish is caused by someone else's sin against you. Don't waste that hurt. Don't waste that anguish by treating your own sin casually. Don't waste that by looking at that person and saying, oh God, I thank you that I'm not like him. I think that I'm not like her that I would never do that because you've wasted the suffering in the trial that has come upon you. But let it turn to a point of reflection in God's grace in your own life. And then the tenth point is your waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and the glory of Christ. And another sermon on suffering Piper says, in the time of suffering, pray that God would use that in your life to make Jesus famous through you, to those around you, that Jesus would become famous through your suffering. And I hear those points and I think this is impossible. This is impossible to do. This is impossible to pull off. And it is. If we're left on our own resources, it's impossible. But we have been given the resources of God. We've been given resources that the psalmist did know about the psalmist hung on to God by faith. And he understood that somehow God would was a savior. But we on this side of the cross have a lot more information. And frankly, the life of suffering would be absurd. And meaningless if there were no God who identifies with us and who suffers for us. The darkness seems absolute and permanent for the psalmist. And yet ultimately, it's not his, he wasn't totally abandoned. The work of Christ, that came years, years centuries later, the work of Christ gives us the answers to the questions that he cries out. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Yes, because of Christ and the resurrection. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave? Yes. Are your wonders known in the darkness or righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? Yes, because of Christ and the cross in His work and the resurrection. As one lady in the church put it, she always says, well, how are you doing? She says, well, you know, there's nothing coming my way to the resurrection, can't you? The resurrection, you got to have that eternal perspective and the work of Christ. How about us? Can we know that we're not forsaken? Well, the answer is yes, but the answer isn't a theology, the answer is a person. It's Jesus Christ. The answer is a person, a person who went through utter forsakenness. This psalmist cries out and he is feeling totally abandoned and yet the abandonment that he experienced isn't the same as the abandonment that Jesus experienced. Jesus went through far more and taking hell for us. Jesus was forsaken so that we even though we will go through dark times, we don't have to be forsaken. If Jesus didn't forsake us on the cross, he's not going to forsake us during this time, this season of darkness. We can be thankful for that. You can grow through English if you don't waste it. In the valley of vision devotional book, there's a particular prayer that really struck me. I read it a couple of months ago and just hit me in a new way. There's a particular part. It's called Christian calling and this is what he praised. Go back one. He says, this is a prayer. How many times have we prayed this? Grant that I may be salted with suffering. With every exactment tempered to my soul, every rod accidentally fitted to my back to chastise, humble, break me. Let me not overlook the hand that holds the rod, as thou does not let me forget the rod that fell on Christ and drew me to him. How often do we pray? God, let my life be salted with suffering so that I can be humbled and broken. But all the time, keep in my eye on the one who holds the rod and it's the same hand that held the rod on Jesus and he was broken and I was drawn to him through that. So that guy who ever wrote that had a deep understanding of faith. Do you know him by faith? Do you know him in this way? Will you trust him as he works to bring you into conformity with Christ? And then finally, there's a poem from Edward Chilito, who is a pastor in World War I, and having seen the death and devastation in the battlefield of World War I, he writes this Jesus of the scars, says, if we have never sought thee, we seek thee now. Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars. We must have sight of foreign priests on thy brow. We must have thee, O Jesus, of the scars. The heavens frighten us. They are too calm. In all the universe, we have no place. Our wounds are hurting us. Where is the balm? Lord Jesus, by thy scars, we claim thy grace. If when the doors are shut, thou draw us near, only reveal those hands that side of thine. We know today what wounds are ours. We have no fear. Show us thy scars. We know the countersign. The other gods were strong, but thou was weak. They rode, but thou that stumbled to a throne. But to our wounds, only God's wounds can speak, and not a God has wounds, but thou alone. The wounds of Christ draw us to him, and he can identify with our wounds, because we have a wounded Savior and a risen Savior, and we can hang on to him in times of darkness. Let's pray. Not a God has wounds, but thou alone. Lord, were it not for Christ and his suffering for us, life would really be absurd. Suffering would be so meaningless, but we thank you that you are not a God who stands apart, stands afar off an aloof, but you are a God who came to this earth, to enter in, and you know our weakness, you know our hurts, for you are a God with wounds. Draw us to your side, O Savior. Give us steadfastness of faith. If there are any here today who don't know you, we pray that you would cause them to look at Christ, and run to him, for it's in his name, we pray. Amen.