Love in the Grave
Preached by Ben Bechtel
March 29, 2020
This morning we have the privilege of continuing our series together on the psalms of lament by looking at Psalm 88. If you have been with us for this series then you will know we have been speaking of the psalms of lament as psalms on a trajectory, psalms that move us through our pain into praise. However, we all know, there are those moments in life when this doesn’t happen, moments where we are honest about our doubts, fears, struggles, and emotions with God and yet we can’t seem to turn the corner to praise. Psalm 88 addresses us in these moments. Psalm 88 is one of only two psalms in the entire book of psalms that doesn’t end in praise but ends in darkness where it began. In this psalm God meets us in our darkest moment and, in a unique way, speaks comfort to us there.
Psalm 88
A Song. A Psalm of the Sons ofKorah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. AMaskil of Heman the Ezrahite.
1 O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you.
2 Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!
3 For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5 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.
6 You have put me in the depths of the pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all yourwaves. Selah
8 You have caused my companions toshun me;
you have made me a horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim throughsorrow.
Every day I call upon you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the landof forgetfulness?
13 But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shunme;
my companions have become darkness.
1. A Life of Darkness
Depending on your situation in life,a certain song, quote, novel, or movie may strike you completely differently atany given moment. All of us have had a moment where we go back and listen tosongs we used to like when we were growing up and respond with, “that music isgarbage. How did I ever like that?” But we also all have had moments where asong which we’ve heard dozens of times strikes us in a way it never has before.The same goes with the psalms. I’ve read Psalm 88 multiple times before thissermon and yet it struck me, and I think it will strike all of us, in a waythat it couldn’t have even three weeks ago. This psalm ends with one of themost dejected cries in the book of psalms and in Hebrew darkness is the finalword of the psalm. It will not come as a shock for you to hear from me that weare living in a time of darkness for so many. Like us today, the psalmistclearly penned this psalm in a season characterized by darkness. And so, totruly understand what this psalm means and what is means for us, we have toface the theme of this psalm: darkness.
The psalmist is experiencing threedifferent layers of darkness. First, there is the darkness of hiscircumstances. Now, we are not told very much about what has actually happenedto the psalmist and it is hard to decipher at times what is emotional hyperboleand what is an accurate representation of circumstances. However, we do knowthat the psalmist is isolated from others, on the verge of death, and lyingawake at night wrestling with these circumstances.
The psalmist is also facing inner turmoil. We read in the text that his soul is vexed with troubles (v. 3), he is constantly thinking on the nearness of his own death (vv. 4-5; 10-12; 15), and he feels as if God is directly inflicting his wrath upon him in these things. Look at verses 6-8 again with me:
6 You have put me in the depths ofthe pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all yourwaves. Selah
8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a horror to them.
He describes his situation as feeling like God’s waves of wrath are rolling over him. Water, particularly the ocean is a majestic and scary thing. We all can think of days out in the ocean at the beach when the surf was relentless, when wave after wave rolled in and knocked you down. And you can hardly get back to your feet before another wave crashes down. Or before your older brother or sister dunks you back under water. The psalmist here is saying that his life is like this, only God is directly hurling the waves at him. God is dunking him under the water so that he can barely catch his breath. He has gone from saying “I feel like I am in the pit” to “God has pushed me down into the lowest, dark corner of the pit.” The language is ratcheted up. As Benjamin mentioned a few weeks ago, the lamenter is not simply saying “I feel like God is doing this to me” but drops all pretense and says, “God is doing this to me.”
This darkness the psalmist is facingis also recurring. If you look down to verses 14-18, the psalmist simplycircles back around to his complaints stated above. He is suffering, feels likehe is close to death, and is isolated and it is all on God’s account. He can’tseem to speak to God about anything other than his doubts, fears, and troubles.When we are suffering it can be hard to think about anything else. We try tofind normalcy and lift our thoughts and hearts to other people and things, butit is nearly impossible. We may succeed for five minutes but then slip rightback down again into despair and feelings of abandonment and isolation. That iswhat is happening to the psalmist in this prayer.
And that is what is happening to somany of us right now. We are facing the external darkness of a novel virus andour mortality in light of that, economic concerns and job loss, and the realdanger posed to many of you as healthcare workers by showing up to work. We arefacing the internal darkness of fear over our own death and the death of ourloved ones, anxiety about what the future holds, loneliness of being stuck inour houses or nursing homes, and grief over disrupted wedding plans or for ourstudents an abbreviated senior year, a cancelled musical or spring sportsseason which you have worked so hard for. And all of this won’t quit. It comesback day after day, news cycle after news cycle, statistic after statistic,shift after shift, wave after wave. What are we to do when faced with this typeof darkness? What comfort can we find in such darkness?
2. Comfort in the Darkness
This psalm provides us three streamsof comfort for you in the time of darkness.
a. God Knows Life is Hard
Christians can and will face hardtimes. Just because you are a Christian does not make you immune from sufferingin this world. Anyone who tells you anything otherwise is a cruel liar. Therewas a worship song that was popular when Whitley and I were in college that ourcampus worship team would lead frequently. I actually liked the song a lotexcept I did not like the first two lines of the song at all. These lines are:“I want to be close, close to your side/’til heaven is real, and death is alie.” Christian, death is and never will be a lie or an illusion! Maybe I’mbeing too nit-picky, but God placed Psalm 88 in the canon of Scripture becausehe is realistic about the hardships of life and wanted to give his people asong to sing in the darkness. This psalm is here for you to face death anddespair because it is not a lie. God knows our fears and our emotions andplaced language in the psalter to capture that, even in our darkest moments.This psalm is for you to pray in your darkest hours. Christian, death is not alie and it is scary. You can pray this psalm in those moments of fear.
b. God Has Patience with Even the Weakest Faith
This psalm is a prayer addressed to God. Look with at verse 1 again:
1 O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you.
The psalmist directs this prayer, as dark as it is, to God, andnot just an impersonal vague God but the God of his personal salvation, thefaithful God of his people. Even in his darkest moments, the psalmist raisedhis cry to God, the psalmist had faith. And even the weakest faith, when itlays hold of and cries out to the strong God of salvation, is true faith. Evenwhen the psalmist sinks back down into recurring complaint about his troubles,he is still bringing that complaint to God. This is a prayer of weak, feeble,faith and yet it is a prayer of faith. This Psalm tells us that even when ouremotions are an absolute mixed bag and we can’t even utter a sentence of praisewithout drowning again in despair, God is still there and he still hears. Takeheart. God knows our weakness. Faith is truly even more childlike than werealize.
c. God Experienced the Waves of Suffering
There is one significant portion of the psalm that we have not addressed and that is verses 10-12. Let’s read those again:
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the landof forgetfulness?
In these verses the psalmist is interrogating God in a waysimilar to Job. His main point is, “what good will I be to you if I am dead inthe grave? What praise can I bring you? Can you be glorified in death?” And theimplied answer to each of these questions is “No!” The psalmist certainlydidn’t think death is a lie. The power of death is total and comes foreveryone.
However, in the gospel, we receive acompletely different answer to that question. God not only knows that life ishard because he sees and knows all things, but he knows the difficulty of thislife because he’s been there too. Jesus knows the horrors of the hour of death.Jesus knows what it feels like to have his friends abandon him in the hour ofdarkness such that darkness was his only friend. Jesus knows what it actuallyfeels like to have the wrath of God directed against sin in his flesh. AndJesus knows what it feels like to come out on the other side, victoriouslyraised from the dead. The steadfast love of the Lord has been declared in thegrave, the grave of his beloved Son. Can the dead rise up to praise? Yes,because God, humbled in flesh, has faced down the horrendous waves of death andcome out on the other side!
Anyone who places their faith inJesus, no matter how weak or feeble it may be, no matter how dark the night mayget, has the comfort and hope of a God who was abandoned to the grave so thatGod’s love might be spoken over our graves on that great day of resurrection.In a time when so much is dark and unsure, when we are isolated and alone, whenour death is looming at the forefront of our minds, trust the one who faced thedarkness of death for you so that you may be raised up on the dawn of that newday when God comes again to make all things new. And in the meantime, no matterhow dark it gets, even in days when all you can do is circle back to prayingyour problems to God, draw strength from his Spirit to continue on another day.
One of the most prolific hymnwriters of the 18th century was a woman named Anne Steele.[1] Much of Steele’s writing was born out of her life of immense suffering. Her mother died when she was 3, she began suffering from acute malaria at 14, was paralyzed after being thrown off a horse at 19, and at 21 her fiancé drowned shortly before their wedding. In her first 21 years of life Steele experienced enough suffering for a lifetime. Her life, much like the writer of Psalm 88 is a life marked by darkness from youth as verse 15 says. And in that darkness she penned these words to the hymn “Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul”:
Dear refuge of my weary soul,
On Thee, when sorrows rise
On Thee, when waves of trouble roll,
My fainting hope relies
To Thee I tell each rising grief,
For Thou alone canst heal
Thy Word can bring a sweet relief,
For every pain I feel
But oh! When gloomy doubts prevail,
I fear to call Thee mine
The springs of comfort seem to fail,
And all my hopes decline
Yet gracious God, where shall I flee?
Thou art my only trust
And still my soul would cleave to Thee
Though prostrate in the dust
[1] See http://hymnbook.igracemusic.com/people/anne-steele for more details on Steele’s life and hymnwriting.
