"...The darkness is my closest friend."
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Scripture: Psalm 88:1-18
Sermon Title: “…The darkness is my closest friend.”
We started this series back in Psalm 23, the most well-known psalm, and we found there both ups and downs, we found enjoyable and comforting parts of life as well as difficult valleys. From there we went to Psalm 40, and we focused quite a bit on how the psalmist cried out to God from the pit, and that was likely to give the image of a tar pit—it’s not a pleasant image. Last week we were in Psalm 52, where David rebuked Doeg, Saul’s man, and proclaimed the LORD’s judgment and destruction on him. Now we’re in psalm 88, which ends with the words, “…The darkness is my closest friend.” Trust me—this dark decline was intentionally planned, and I promise I’ve chosen more cheerful psalms for Books 4 and 5 and for Thanksgiving Day.
I chose the psalms we’ve been looking at because it’s easy to think, both ourselves and for people outside the church, that the Christian life is automatically going to be happy all the time. “There’s no doom or gloom, no depression, no sadness or sorrow, no trouble or tragedy for believers.” Maybe our knowledge of the psalms also tends to remain on the happy ones and comfortable ones. Yet so many of them sound like the ones we’ve been in. We do well to remember fellow believers wrote these—these songs and poems and prayers. They wrote them from the dark or sad realities in their lives. So, we must not overlook them.
Here’s the summary of Book Three, which includes Psalms 73-89. From the ESV notes, “The tone darkens further in Book 3. The opening Psalm 73 starkly questions the justice of God before seeing light in God’s presence. That light has almost escaped the psalmist in Psalm 88, the bleakest of all psalms. Book 2 ended with the high point of royal aspirations; Book 3 concludes in Psalm 89 with these expectations badly threatened…” Along with that, if you page through these psalms, you’ll notice the first 11 are authored by Asaph, and then the rest are by the Sons of Korah, who were one of the Levite families, except for one psalm each by David and Ethan the Ezrahite.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, unlike last time in Psalm 52, we don’t know the backstory here. We don’t know the series of events and experiences which led to such a painful cry for God to do something. But we can quite appropriately assume these aren’t the words of someone who’s had the worst day ever—or, as I was reminded of a children’s book title, this was not just a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” These aren’t the words of someone who received a dismissive comment from someone they look up to and respect, or who they love and consider a treasured friend. These aren’t the words of someone who just needs to sleep on whatever mess is in their head, and hopefully tomorrow it will be forgotten.
No, these are the cries and pleas of someone experiencing piece after piece of life and pain and grief bearing down on them continually. I think it is appropriate to say the psalm’s author appears to be deeply depressed. What do I mean by that? When I do premarital counseling, one thing I talk about with couples is that those who are looking forward to their wedding day often “have rose-colored glasses on.” Their husband-to-be or their wife-to-be is absolutely perfect. They and their relationship have no flaws, no problems; everything will work out without ever arguing. That’s not likely reality, but it’s how they might see things—they’re in love, they’re infatuated.
Depression, in a way, is the opposite. By medical definition, depression is a
“serious mood disorder. It causes severe symptoms that affect how you feel, think, and handle daily activities.” Someone going through this may persistently feel sad, hopeless, pessimistic, worthless, have decreased energy or fatigue among other symptoms. Instead of rose-colored glasses where everything’s good, for the depressed person there’s little to nothing good about life. Everything goes wrong for you. Nothing brings you joy. A person who’s depressed might mope around or isolate themselves or do that in their head. You convince yourself that there’s nothing positive, you shut other people out, you shutdown. For those who go through that, sometimes they convince themselves it’d be better to just not exist anymore. “If life is always so terrible, what’s the point? It’ll never get any better.” The psalmist seems to be near that point as he expresses being “full of trouble…set apart with the dead…overwhelmed…unable to escape,” rejected and alone.
For some of us, I’m guessing it’s hard to read this psalm and even comprehend how someone could feel the way he did, or to hear about depression and have a grasp on that. Yet for others, you get where the psalmist is coming from; maybe you battle depression yourself or know someone who has. No matter where we fall on that spectrum, there are things to learn and grow in our faith with the words of Psalm 88. We begin with one of the big questions: where is God when we feel depressed and even utterly alone?
There are many accusations in this passage that the psalmist screams out to God. Verses 5 through 8, he considers himself among those whom God remembers no more, “who are cut off from your care. You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them.” It’s bad enough that God has put him here, but he also feels like God is turning others against him. He picks that tone up again in verse 14 and following, “Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?…I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me,” and again, “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me…”
He’s leveling all these charges against God, and we must not miss that. What the psalmist has endured has not caused him to give up on his faith. It has not caused him to let go of his belief that God is real and he matters to God. To use language we find elsewhere in Scripture, and which is highlighted in the Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 1, he knows that he belongs to God. So, despite all his feelings, the weightiness and weariness he feels against God, where is God? For the psalmist, God remains where and who he has always been.
What does that mean? Even though this is, as the ESV calls it, “the bleakest of all psalms”—we hear a similar refrain three times. Verses 1 and 2, verse 9, and 13, “O LORD, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry…I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you…I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.”
The Lord God is present and watching and listening all day and every day to the prayers and cries of his people who he loves. The psalmist believes that. He know that God is omnipresent: he is always present everywhere. There’s no where we can go that is hidden in any way from him. God has no blind-spots. In Psalm 139, David expresses, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” He goes through the heavens, the depths, the wings of the dawn, the far side of the sea; God meets him in each place. “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
When we feel that God is distant or even if we think that he is absent in our lives, or for some reason we feel he is against us, God remains who God is. He listens and watches over us. Not only that, ultimately, he is the God who saves us. While the psalmist’s life feels depleted, that assurance is enough to cause him to cling to God. It’s enough to cause him to live another day, to call upon the LORD another morning and another evening. Our confidence and the confidence we can share with fellow believers should be exactly the same. The value and worth of living life are not first and foremost what we get out of it and pleasure being guaranteed to the extent we think we should have. No, life’s value is in the God who provides it, and by his grace is redeeming us.
Let’s move on to our second point, which is the other big question that likely hits us: why does God allow a person—especially a believer—to be so depressed or defeated? And building on that, why hadn’t God yet answered the psalmist? For many of us, we may not often, if ever, feel comfortable going so far as to accuse God of oppressing us. In our daily lives, we’re quicker to simply blame sin and the work of the devil. Or when things aren’t working out over and over again, we perhaps assume God has a different plan that we just need to figure out. Yet there can be times, especially around tragedies, deaths, significant illnesses or diseases when believers do tend to call on God in this way. If God is in charge of everything, if he is sovereign, why is he doing this or why is permitting this to happen to me? Why or how can he trouble those he loves with such grief?
Truthfully and biblically, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for these questions. If you read the book of Lamentations, the author is believed to have been the prophet Jeremiah writing about the fall of Jerusalem. Throughout Lamentations, he repeatedly writes how the LORD had done this; he brought Jerusalem down. Chapter 2 verse 17 summarizes it, “The LORD has done what he planned; he has fulfilled his word, which he decreed long ago. He has overthrown you without pity, he has let the enemy gloat over you, he has exalted the horn of your foes.” As a prophet, he understood the Lord’s judgment was for their sin. Yet that knowledge didn’t make it any less bitter to watch his homeland, the Promised Land, be destroyed. Chapter 3 begins, “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has drive me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long.”
Now what comes in the middle of that chapter? Verses 21 through 26, he has hope! Jeremiah’s hope is the LORD’s great love, his unfailing compassions, his great faithfulness, his goodness to those who hope in and seek him, who wait on his salvation. Those verses don’t really answer our questions, though. Again, why does God allow such depression or defeat and why doesn’t he answer the one who calls on him? The closest we get to an answer in Lamentations 3 is in verse 38 and following. Jeremiah writes, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? Why should any man complain when punished for his sins? Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say: ‘We have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven. You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us; you have slain us without pity. You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through…’ Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed. My eyes will flow unceasingly without relief, until the LORD looks down and sees.”
We may not always find out the answer for why God allows certain of his people to be so afflicted. Looking at Judah, while all people were sinful, surely not all of them were involved in such heinous sins and yet they may have suffered the same. When we face such trouble, what we can do is cry out to God seeking his mercy, sincerely repent from and address sin that remains in our lives, and continue to hold onto hope. That’s what Jeremiah teaches.
That’s what the psalmist in Psalm 88 puts forth as well. He doesn’t give us the answer to why this is happening. It’s similar in Job—the LORD’s lengthy responses in chapters 38 through 41 summarize how people can’t even begin to understand all that God is doing. We may not always know why God is allowing something or sending calamity, or if it is meant simply for us as individuals or if there are others impacted, but we can trust that his purposes are righteous and good. Even if we experience such hardship in our lives, we can still trust in his eternal salvation.
That brings us to our final point, which picks up that message of hope: darkness is temporary for those who love the Lord! While believers may experience depression, or we feel forgotten or chastised by God, or that everything and everyone has turned against us, if we love the Lord, we can hold onto the promise that the darkness we experience here and now is temporary.
Let’s go back to Psalm 88 verses 10 through 12. The psalmist is inquiring of God to act for him, because he’s alive right now. He asks God, “Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?” While the rhetorical answer to all those questions is “no” from what we read in Scripture, we do know and believe that our God can raise people from the dead. They are no longer dead, though—they’re not in the grave or in the place of darkness, but they have been made alive and given new eternal life through the death and resurrection of Jesus! We can trust that we will be raised from the dead and given new, imperishable bodies in order to praise the eternal God!
Jesus promised us this in his ministry. In John 6, we find the feeding of the 5,000, and after that miracle, the crowd came back for another show. Jesus tells them that he can give them “true bread from heaven,” which was himself. “‘He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believers in me will never be thirsty.’” And here are verses 38 through 40, “‘…I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.’”
That is our sure hope. We are looking forward to those days. They are not here yet; they will not come until Christ returns. But it’s good for us to remember that permanent new life is going to come. That hope isn’t something that we’ve thought of on our own. It’s not to be something that we’ve just dreamt up in our minds. No, it’s what Jesus promised to his followers, to all who do and who will believe in him. He promised it and sealed it with his own resurrection.
When he returns to raise us and all who believe up, that will be enough to satisfy us. The present darkness and depression and pain and sorrow will be finished. We can’t easily make sense of why certain people suffer so much or for so long whether with physical or mental anguish or with great fear or grief or loneliness. But never forget that our God is the one who brings light into darkness, and when he returns all the darkness we have experienced or we are experiencing will be cast out. We will live with our Savior in the light. Amen.