Sadness and Salvation

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.

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 am shut in so that I cannot escape.

My eyes grow 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 Abaden?

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.

My companions have become darkness.

If you're not already there, if you could uh turn with me and your Bibles to Psalm 88.

And uh if you don't have a Bible, uh you will find a Bible in the pew in front of you.

You should uh take that, use that this morning, but also uh if you if you need a Bible, if you don't have a Bible at home, take that, write your name in it, keep it as your own, bring it back week after week so we can study God's word together.

Is it okay to be sad as a Christian?

That may seem like a silly question, but uh but I think it's an important one.

Uh think, think about the words uh to this great hymn, and it is a great hymn, Alas and did my savior bleed.

Maybe you know that hymn.

Uh the words of the hymn go like this Alas and did my savior bleed, and did my sovereign die?

Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?

At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away.

It was there by faith I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day.

What does sadness mean in light of that?

I mean, if I'm supposed to be happy all the day as a Christian, what does it mean when I'm not?

Uh I think sometimes we would say, if I'm not happy, if I'm sad, it's because I'm not trusting in Jesus.

Right?

Because if I was trusting him, I would be happy all the day.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not happy all the day.

In fact, there have been moments in my life that have been profoundly troubling, and if I think about them, I'm still sad.

This psalm, Psalm 88, is a psalm about sadness.

Psalm 88, it's an important psalm because it shows that sometimes life as God's people is full of sorrow.

And sometimes life is full of sorrow without any seeming resolution.

And this psalm shows us that we ought to lament the trouble that we undergo.

We ought to mourn.

Psalm 88 is a lament.

Pat mentioned that a moment ago, and the lament psalms are psalms with a passionate expression of grief.

What I want us to do right now is I want to walk us through Psalm 88 in a rather quick fashion, but I want to do it before I even tell you sort of my outline, before I tell you what I think the psalm is about, I want to walk us through it because I want you to feel the psalm before we begin to analyze it.

I want you to feel the heart of the psalmist before we begin to break it down too much.

Of course, I'm going to break it down a little bit just in going through it.

But let's look together.

Psalm 88.

Psalm 88 has three main parts to it.

Each of those parts begins with a cry out to God.

So verses 1 and 2.

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.

And then verse 9, in the middle, every day I call upon you, O Lord, I spread out my hands to you.

And then verse 13, but I, O Lord, cry to you.

In the morning my prayer comes before you.

See, the psalmist is pouring out his soul to God.

He is pouring out his tears.

He is crying out to the Lord again and again and again, day and night, in the morning, all day long, he is crying out to God.

Why?

Well, verses three to five begin to tell us.

He says, For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.

That's just another word for the grave.

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.

The psalmist tells us about his trouble.

He's almost dead.

He's in Sheol and the pit in the grave, right?

All kind of rough synonyms for the place of the dead.

The psalmist is experiencing a living death.

He's alive, but he feels as if he's dead.

It couldn't get any worse than this.

And notice he doesn't even tell us what's going on.

He just tells us how bad it is.

I think part of the reason for that is because then we can begin to all see our own struggles in this.

Maybe you're there right now.

And the psalmist is giving us words to cry out to God in mourning.

Verses 6 through 9, he goes a little further.

He actually points to God as the source of his trouble.

Look at verse 6.

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.

See, not only does the psalmist say, God, I'm experiencing trouble, I'm in the midst of horrible things, but God, you're in control of this.

God, you are in control of this.

The psalmist is confident in God's sovereignty in the midst of his trouble.

He says, You have put me in the depths of the pit.

Your wrath, you have caused.

On some level, he's saying, God, my trouble is your doing.

Verses 10 to 12, he moves on.

He says, 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 Abaden, the place of destruction?

Are your wonders known in the darkness?

Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

See, he begins to ask God some questions.

He's saying, Is this really going to bring you glory, God?

Is my death going to glorify you?

Am I going to remember you in the grave?

Am I going to praise you there?

Will my death and destruction lead to you being known and praised?

He's asking God questions about what God is doing.

And then in verse 14, he asks straight up, why?

Why are you doing these things?

Verse 15 to 18, then he recounts his trouble again as sort of as evidence that God is hiding his face.

So verse 14 says, Oh 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.

My companions have become darkness.

God, why do you hide your face from me?

Why am I experiencing your anger and not your love?

You know, if you read through the Psalms, there are plenty of laments.

In fact, a third of the Psalms are laments or more.

But most of the lament psalms, in fact, all of the lament psalms except this one, end with praise.

They begin with a complaint similar to this one, but they end with confidence that God has heard and will act.

But we don't see that here.

This psalm is all dark from beginning to end.

It's all a complaint.

It's all lament.

All mourning.

Here's what I think this psalm is about.

Here's sort of my simple proposition.

Oftentimes, sorrow and confusion are godly responses to the pain and difficulty of life in a fallen world.

Oftentimes, sorrow and confusion are godly responses to the pain and difficulty of a fallen world.

Now, if that troubles you a little bit, I ask only that you'll hear me out.

Because I think as we look at the Psalm, we'll see that that is true.

Really, this is a sermon about permission.

It's about permission to be sad and confused as a Christian.

And I'm going to break that down really into two things.

First, it's okay to feel and express sorrow about life.

And second, it's okay to feel and express confusion about what God is doing.

And by it's okay, I mean I mean it can be righteous.

It can be good, even necessary if we're in a relationship to God.

Okay, so it's okay to feel and express sorrow about life.

It's okay to feel and express confusion about what God is doing.

Well, how do we see those in the psalm?

So it's okay to feel and express sorrow about life.

You know, we we think about, we think that talking about trouble is always, or at least mostly, simply complaining, grumbling.

And of course, if it's grumbling, that's a bad thing.

The Bible has things to say about grumbling, right?

But the psalmist not only talks about his sorrow and his trouble, he writes it down for God's people to sing.

Notice something I didn't read earlier, but the heading of the psalm, the headings of the psalms are very important, and I'm sorry for not reading it.

The heading of the psalm, Psalm 88, the first two words of that are a song.

Psalm 88 is a song about trouble.

It's a song.

It was intended for God's people to sing.

Now, as Pat said a moment ago, you know, sometimes when we look around at the songs that we have available for us, and Pat and I were talking about this this week, we we couldn't find Psalm 88 put to music.

Right?

I mean, could you imagine singing this psalm in worship this morning, right?

Ending with the words, my companions have become darkness.

Why don't we sing this?

I think there are lots of reasons.

I think one is when we when we think worship, we think rejoicing, not mourning.

We think upbeat and uplifting, not depressing, as this psalm is on the surface.

I think sometimes we think sadness is disrespectful to God.

Like we said before, Christians should be happy all the day.

And if I'm not, then what am I saying about God?

Am I saying God is not enough if I'm sad?

I also think, of course, we don't want to feel sadness.

We don't want to be sad.

So we avoid sadness whenever possible, and sometimes we use our theology to justify that.

Well, God has made me happy, therefore I don't have to be sad, so I'm going to be happy.

We see this in funerals, actually.

People want funerals to be celebrations of life, and I get that.

We don't want them to be mourning over death.

We want them to be celebrations of life, not mourning over death.

But Jesus, when he comes to the tomb of Lazarus, he didn't say, let's celebrate Lazarus' life.

Right?

He wept over the great enemy of death.

He mourned.

He was broken.

And the psalmist is crying out day and night.

His sadness and his crying are constant.

And I wonder if we allow ourselves to feel sad about life even for a moment?

Are we willing to just let ourselves be sad?

Could you think about sadness at times not just as permissible, but actually as a righteous response to the world?

You know, I think if somebody is crying in public, we often think there must be something wrong with them.

Like, what are they doing?

You know, I mean, I was thinking about this.

I was sitting in Starbucks, and I was thinking, if someone was crying in Starbucks, we'd think there's something wrong with this person.

Right?

Why don't they look on the bright side of life?

I mean, every cloud has a silver lining, and the sun will come out tomorrow, and it's never really as bad as it looks.

That's what we say.

But Jesus felt great sorrow in life.

Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Jesus was even honest about his sorrow.

He says in the Garden of Gethsemane, he says, My soul is very sorrowful even to death.

Jesus experienced and expressed his sorrow.

And Jesus was righteous.

He was sinless, which means sometimes sorrow is actually righteous sorrow.

It's good.

How can that be?

I mean, how can sorrow be righteous?

Because the world is not the way it should be.

The world is not the way God intended it to be.

So much in life you should be sad about.

Right?

Injustice and illness and arguments and bitterness, and you could multiply that list a hundredfold of all the things going on in your life that are not the way they should be, not the way God intended them to be.

Because of sin in this world.

And so if we're not sad about those things, we have to ask, why not?

Why am I not sad about all the troubles that are going on in my life and around me?

Is it because we've trained ourselves not to feel?

Or at least not to feel things that you shouldn't feel.

Again, I'm supposed to be happy all the day, so if I start to feel sad, I just push that to the side and I put on a happy face.

See, but actually the truth of the matter is, only by mourning the evil in the world do we honor God's goodness.

Because if I just ignore the evil in the world, then I'm ignoring God's goodness as well.

Because I'm not seeing the world in light of who God is.

Only by mourning the injustices in the world do we honor God's justice.

Because if I'm really looking at God's justice, then I'm gonna see the injustice in the world.

I'm gonna see how wrong it is.

If we don't lament the world as it is, we are not honoring the way God intended it to be.

Part of what that means is sadness is a part of worship.

Sadness is a part of giving honor and glory to God because He is good and He is just, unlike the world that we live in.

You know, I mentioned this before that there are a lot of lament psalms in the book of Psalms.

In fact, there are more lament psalms than any other single category or genre of Psalms in the book of Psalms.

So more of them are laments than are anything else.

What that turns out to be is that there are more than a third of the Psalms are lament psalms, and the rest are broken up into different categories.

But think about that, a third of the worship songs in the Bible are psalms of mourning.

A third.

Now it's important to understand what I'm not saying here.

Think about this, right?

Look at the psalm, look at Psalm 88.

What request does the psalmist make of God?

What is he asking for?

The only request is in verse 2.

Verse 2 says, Let my prayer come before you.

Incline your ear to my cry.

It's the only thing the psalmist asks for.

He asks to be heard by God.

That's it.

Now that's important because what we see here is not someone who comes to God making demands to change the world.

The psalmist isn't making demands saying, God, fix my life.

He's not doing that.

He's just coming to God and saying, Hear my cry.

He comes not to make demands, but to express his sorrow.

Because we're in no place to demand, are we?

And God has, he really has no obligation to give us what we ask for.

I'm not encouraging grumbling by this.

This psalm is not encouraging grumbling.

This psalm is not encouraging a demanding attitude.

This psalm is encouraging honesty with God.

The psalmist just wants to be heard, and he leaves the response in God's hands.

I'm also not saying you can't ask for God to change your situation.

I'm just saying that's not what this psalmist is doing.

It's okay to feel and express sorrow.

To not feel sorrow, sorrow really shows there's something wrong with my heart.

It's disconnected from the world around me.

And of course, to not express that sorrow shows that there's an emotional distance from my father.

Because I'm not crying out to him.

Draw near to your father.

Pour out your soul to him.

It's okay to feel and express sorrow.

It's also okay to feel and express confusion.

You know, how often have you gotten to a place in life where you didn't know what God was doing?

Where you didn't know why He was allowing what He was allowing in your life?

I actually think that's almost a daily occurrence for me, but it's the same for the psalmist.

Every day he's crying out in his confusion.

Now it's important that we realize the psalmist knows that God is the God of his salvation.

So verse 1, Psalmist says, Oh Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.

God is the God of his salvation.

God is his deliverer.

Yet, look at what God is doing.

And so the psalmist says, I don't understand.

You put me in the depths of the pit.

Your wrath lies heavy upon me.

You've caused my companions to shun me.

I don't get it, God.

You're the God of my salvation, but I'm experiencing all this trouble.

I don't understand why you're letting this happen.

In fact, one commentator said the psalmist feels like he's being treated like the wicked.

And so, verse 5, God has forgotten all about him.

Verse 7, God has poured out his wrath on him.

The psalmist feels like, God, why are you treating me like your enemy?

You're the God of my salvation.

You're my deliverer.

You're my God.

Why are you treating me like this?

And so the psalmist asks in verse 10, do you work wonders for the dead?

Do the departed rise up to praise you?

If I go down to the grave, what's going to happen?

See, from the psalmist's perspective, God works in the world.

Miracles happen in the land of the living, and so God is praised in the land of the living.

We are here together because we're living and we're singing psalms to our God, singing songs to our God.

Living people declare God's love.

Living people talk about his faithfulness, verse 11.

A corpse does not know God's wonders or remember his righteousness, according to verse 12.

And so the psalmist says, God, why?

Verse 14, why?

God, what are you doing?

If you kill me, I can't praise you.

How can I praise you if I'm dead?

How can I praise you from the grave?

Why are you allowing this?

Why are you allowing all of this pain and all of this suffering and all of this difficulty?

What are you doing?

The psalmist is confused.

And so he asks, why?

The psalmist knows God's goodness.

He knows that God is the God of his salvation.

He knows that God is in control.

And yet the psalmist also knows his situation.

He knows what life is like.

He knows that he has experienced trouble and pain all of his life, according to verse 15, all of his life, since his youth.

And he's trying to understand, trying to reconcile these two things.

And haven't you ever been in that place?

Maybe you're there right now where you know what the Bible teaches about God, you believe it, but you're experiencing great trouble, sadness, sickness, brokenness, and you can't figure out how to reconcile the two.

Your confusion is not sin.

Confusion is not sin.

Even Jesus was honest about his confusion.

Now hear me out for a second.

See, like the psalmist who asks why in verse 14, Jesus cried out on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Now Jesus was fully God and fully man, but in his sinless humanity, at his point of greatest suffering, he expressed expressed confusion about what God was doing.

God, why are you doing this?

See, pain often stops us from seeing life clearly, doesn't it?

And in the midst of pain, we ask questions, why?

Why is this happening?

Why are you doing this?

I don't understand.

And that's what Jesus did on the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Now, confusion, again, it's not sin because it comes from recognizing God's goodness, from recognizing the trouble in the world, and trying to make sense of the two.

Confusion isn't sinful often, it's just honest.

And actually, we have more reason to be confused than Jesus did, don't we, on one level, right?

Because Jesus on some level knew why God was doing what he was doing.

Jesus was fully God as well as fully man, and so he knew God's plan.

He knew what was going on, but we can't really know, can we?

I mean, we don't know why God is doing the things in our life that he's doing in our lives.

We have God's word.

God's word tells us quite a bit, but it doesn't tell us why specific things are happening to you or me right now.

It doesn't say, Luke, you're experiencing this because.

If you believe in a good God who's in control, you should be confused on some level.

On some level.

Scriptures say more than Psalm 88, right?

To be sure.

But Psalm 88 brings out this tension, doesn't it?

God, you're good.

You're the God of my salvation, but you're doing these things.

I don't understand why.

No, no, we don't like tension.

The psalmist could try to resolve this tension, couldn't he?

He could do away with it.

He could try to resolve the tension through blame.

He could just charge God with wrongdoing.

He could lay the blame at God's feet.

He could say, God, this is your fault.

And that resolves the tension because, well, if God is good and there's trouble in the world, then there's a tension between those two things.

But if God is not good, then trouble just makes sense.

If I just say, God, it's your fault, you're not as good as I thought you were, no more tension.

The tension goes away.

You could try to resolve the tension through through excuses.

You could explain away the trouble as if it's really not as bad as it feels.

It's not really that bad, right?

Don't get all worked up about it.

But the psalmist doesn't do either of those things.

He knows that God is in control, but he doesn't blame him.

Neither does he make excuses.

He doesn't let God off the hook, so to speak, by just saying, oh, God, it's not your fault.

I'm not going to worry about it.

He's confused and he doesn't get it.

And so he asks a question, a valid question.

He says, God, why?

Why are you doing this?

Of course, as we said before, the Psalm is not resolved.

There's no resolution in the end.

There's no praise in the end.

There's no deliverance.

Now, again, in case you don't know, the Bible has more to say about these things.

And that's really important, right?

This is not the only thing the Bible has to say about sorrow and suffering.

There are good answers that the Bible gives as to why God allows these things, but those aren't given here in this psalm.

This psalmist doesn't bring those up.

He doesn't acknowledge those things.

And we're bound to ask why.

Why not?

Why doesn't this psalmist in the end say, oh, but God, I know you're going to work it all out?

He doesn't do that.

Why doesn't he do that?

Other psalms do.

I think the answer is actually very, very practical.

The psalmist doesn't resolve the tension for us.

The psalm just ends on a down note because you and I may suffer in this life without relief.

Maybe you are.

Or maybe a loved one is.

How will you deal with that?

If it never gets better, if it doesn't go away, if it's just constant, are you able to allow yourself to feel the sorrow?

Not feel sorry for yourself, they're different, but to feel the sorrow, the sadness of life in a fallen world.

Are you able to express that sorrow to God in faith?

Even in the midst of deep confusion, even when no resolution is in sight, are you able to express that sorrow and confusion to God?

Is there any hope?

Maybe you're sitting there thinking, okay, Luke, I'd like you to resolve the tension now.

And I've thought about not doing that.

Just stopping right here.

But I'm not going to do that.

But I do hesitate.

I hesitate because sometimes we use hope as a reason not to feel.

Right?

I mean, stop being sad.

Just hope God's going to do something in the future.

You don't need to be sad.

No, I'm not, by giving hope right now, which I hope to do, I intend to do, I'm not saying you shouldn't be sad after all.

I'm saying live in the tension between sorrow and hope.

Okay, so how is this psalm hopeful?

I'm going to give you three things briefly, two more briefly than the third.

First, the psalmist addresses God as the God of his salvation.

We've said that before, but the psalmist is putting his eyes in the right place, isn't he?

He's keeping his eyes on God even in the midst of his sadness.

And we can do the same thing, right?

We can hope in the God who is there.

We have a God who's there, we have a God who will hear us, a God who will listen, and so we can turn to him even in our sadness and sorrow.

That doesn't mean we turn off our sadness and sorrow, but we turn to him in it.

Two, the psalmist continues to cry out, right?

Day and night.

He knows the one who cares, he knows who can do something about his situation, and so he cries out day and night, he cries out every day, he cries out in the morning, right?

He keeps giving these little time markers to say, I'm constantly calling out to God.

And we can do the same.

We can hope in the God who hears us, hope in the God who is there.

We can set our eyes on him, we can cry out to him.

But third, of course, this psalm is not the end of the story.

Praise God.

This psalm is not the end of the story.

You know, verses 10 through 12, and particularly verse 10, is an amazing verse.

Look at verse 10.

Do you work wonders for the dead?

Do the departed rise up to praise you?

What's the answer to that question?

The psalmist asks, essentially, God, how will you be glorified in death?

Right?

When people are dead, they stay dead, right?

Wrong.

In light of the resurrection of Jesus, we find answers to these questions.

Jesus came as a man of sorrows.

He came to sympathize with us, to take our sorrow upon himself.

The psalmist uses death in the grave as a metaphor for deep suffering and deep trouble, but Jesus can really say these words.

Jesus went into the grave for us.

Jesus went down into the pit for us.

His friends rejected him for us.

He faced God's wrath for us.

All of these things the psalmist was feeling, Jesus actually went through.

And his death does bring the Father glory.

Because by his death, he defeats death.

And he rises from the dead.

Verse 10 Do you work wonders for the dead?

Do the departed rise up to praise you?

Yes, they do.

Jesus rose from the dead.

He did not stay dead.

He did not stay in the grave.

Death could not hold him.

Death does not have the final say.

God is good, God is in control.

There is trouble in the world, but it won't last.

See, that's our hope as Christians.

Trouble will not last forever.

Death has been defeated in the cross and the resurrection.

And as God's children, we have the hope of rising from the dead.

The Bible says the last enemy to be destroyed will be death.

It's defeated in Christ's resurrection, and yet one day we will rise, and death will have no more say over us.

Let not your hearts be troubled, says Jesus.

Believe in God, believe also in me.

In the world you will have trouble, but take heart.

Jesus has overcome the world.

Can you live in that tension of neither despair on the one hand nor just blind happiness on the other?

But can you live with a realism about the present and the future?

Present troubles and future glory.

Paul says he's always sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

How can he be both at the same time?

But he is always sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

Be honest.

Be honest about your sorrow and your confusion.

But do not grieve as those who have no hope.

Jesus rose from the dead, defeating death, and we will rise with him.

This is our great hope in the midst of sorrow.

Let's pray.

Father, teach us.

Teach us to be sad.

That seems like a funny thing to ask for, Father, but we we need it.

Teach us to be sad.

Teach us to be sorrowful about the world as it is.

Teach us to hate the world as it is and to long for something else.

To long for a new creation.

And yet teach us in the midst of that to put our eyes on Jesus, to remember that he defeated death, and that there will come a day when there will be no more death and no more sin and no more tears and no more crying and no more pain and no more suffering.

And teach us to hope in the midst of sorrow.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.