"Darkest Before the Dawn"
Notes
Transcript
Introduction: Dark days. A reality of any person’s life. It’s that reality that blindsides us, even if we prepare ourselves mentally and even biblically. Many of us know that we live in a broken and fallen world. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t face hurt, pain, abandonment, sickness, and even death.
I know for me that there have been some difficult days. Difficult days even when you feel like you’re doing the right thing. I have spoken about this before, but one of the hardest times in my life was my first position at a church when I was in seminary. Though young, and often didn’t know what I was doing, I had some of the most patient and loving volunteers and people in the church, and it was amazing to watch how God was working through this church to reach the very houses within walking distance of the church with the Gospel. We had a wonderful amount of kids and teenagers coming, and I had the privilege of teaching and helping lead the ministries alongside some people that had already done the hard work of reaching them.
But, as Satan often does, he gets his hands in things and began to sow discord and disunity among the body. Questions of how much money was being spent on these kids and not enough on other things began to come out. Eventually, it was decided by some that the church couldn’t afford my position anymore. It didn’t go through, but the damage had already been done. Those that were involved in those ministries began to leave, for they felt like everything they were doing was deemed unimportant by some in the church. I stayed a little longer, but eventually, the constant divisiveness and contentious actions of some led me to leave myself. It was a dark time for me. Lily was one the way, and when we left, she was only a month old. With one part of our income gone, I was able to work at the Target in Wake Forest to make up for some of it.
At that point, I was wondering, why God? Why did you let this happen? I thought this is what you wanted? I thought I was doing the right thing? I thought a good portion of this church was doing the right thing? I wasn’t done with ministry, but I was hurt. And I still really don’t have an answer to those questions. I can tell you what happened for me…but I can’t wrap my head around it for everyone else involved.
Here for us today, in my time here already, I have seen some of the tragic and dark days for you all. Losing of loved ones. Some expected. Some unexpected. Some tragically. I’ve seen the losing of jobs because of a pandemic. I’ve seen medical diagnoses that seem to keep hanging on, and you wonder, when is this going to end? I’ve seen the effects of a car accidents that have lingering effects for some of our members that are still lasting to this day, and even some that will have those effects last a lifetime. I’ve seen effects of physical and mental disorders that have plagued some of you for a long time, and some of you are enduring things that no one else even knows about.
So, what do we do with this? How do we get through the darkness? Many of the Psalms are called “lament Psalms.” Lament is declaring to God what is wrong in our lives and the emotions we feel about them. It is an act of prayer, addressing God, and even asking the questions that many of us feel to ashamed to ask. Why God? What are you doing? When are you going to do something about this?
So let’s spend some time in Psalm 88 this morning, and see in one of the clearest forms what a prayer, a song of lament looks like in our lives and in the lives of God’s people.
READ PSALM 88
CTS: When the darkness comes, cry out in desperation to your Savior!
The foundation of lament is verses 1 and 2. That foundation is that this is directed toward the LORD, Yahweh, who is the God of our salvation.
The foundation of lament is verses 1 and 2. That foundation is that this is directed toward the LORD, Yahweh, who is the God of our salvation.
Who is Heman?
31 These are the men whom David put in charge of the service of song in the house of the Lord after the ark rested there. 32 They ministered with song before the tabernacle of the tent of meeting until Solomon built the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they performed their service according to their order. 33 These are the men who served and their sons. Of the sons of the Kohathites: Heman the singer the son of Joel, son of Samuel, 34 son of Elkanah, son of Jeroham, son of Eliel, son of Toah, 35 son of Zuph, son of Elkanah, son of Mahath, son of Amasai, 36 son of Elkanah, son of Joel, son of Azariah, son of Zephaniah, 37 son of Tahath, son of Assir, son of Ebiasaph, son of Korah,
Heman the Ezrahite was a singer. He led in worship after the ark of the covenant rested in Jerusalem. Keep that in mind as you read this. He was a songwriter that was writing for the worship of God’s people. This song was no doubt meant to be sung corporately in worship. How many songs do you we have that lament like this?
Whom do we go to?: Again, Yahweh is whom the Psalm is directed to.. This two verses will lay the foundation of the prayer, of the lament. We must keep this in mind as we experience the darkness. The God whom we address our laments to is the God of our salvation. That statement should drive us even in the darkest of days to our knees, because we know he is the only one who can save.
How do we come? Heman prays day and night, in constant conversation with God whom is his salvation. This shows a complete daily dependence. A great reminder that our hearts in the lament are and often should be focused on the Lord, laid out before him bare.
And we come in a way that I think we are often afraid to come. We come boldly, and we ask God to hear us. Hear us God. Give us your ear. Listen to us! This isn’t a sign of disrespect, but rather, and desperation. When the darkness comes, when the hurt and pain are unbearable, cry out in desperation.
And its in this we have confidence. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t mean you can’t have feelings of depression and heartache. I think this Psalm makes it clear that this is part of our humanity, our the reality that we live in a fallen and broken world. So instead of ignoring it, covering it up, and trying to find relief in sin or the things this world, lament to the Lord.
I. Certainty of Death (3-8)
I. Certainty of Death (3-8)
A. Counted among the dead (3-4)
A. Counted among the dead (3-4)
Heman has encountered such troubles in life that death seems preferable. Whatever he has faced, it has culminated in a view of life at that very moment that viewed it close to death. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it could be literal physical death, or it could be the troubles of a fallen world. So great is his lament and heartache, so great his pain and suffering, that it feels like death.
The preference here for death is not a suicidal type of thought, but rather, death is an escape from what he is going through. He has no plans for suicide, but his life leading toward death speaks to how the dire the situation is, and how great his lament is.
And he is man of no strength. The strength to go on is not there. This suffering, this closeness to death, cannot be overcome by himself. It is a recognition of his own weakness as a man. And this is an important part of biblical lament. Stating our condition is a matter of humility. We are telling the Lord that we can’t go on in our own strength. It is crying out to him, saying that he has to do something that we cannot do.
B. Cut off from you (5-6)
B. Cut off from you (5-6)
And that death is described of himself. He is counted among those that roam Sheol (the grave). Sheol was that place of the dead, the view of the after-life, but this in particular is the negative aspect of the after-life. He is has been put in the grave, slain by God himself. These are the wicked, these are those that are cut-off from God. What Heman is experiencing is correlated to this kind of death he faces. He understands that this death, without God, is hell.
To be cut off from God would be the greatest of all separations, yet this is what sin does to us. It is the reality of each man, and without God’s intervention, this is what we face. This trouble that Heman feels is one that makes him wonder, has God sent me to my death, to a place where I have been cut off from him.
And that is the honest lyrics of our Psalmist, and one that I think if we are honest with ourselves, have wondered in our own lives: God, where are you? Are we cut off from you? Do you hear me? And it can feel like death. Whether we lament over the troubles we face in our lives that are caused by others or caused by ourselves, this feeling cut off is a legitimate feeling.
Have you ever felt cut off from God, left for dead? And have you told him that? You can, and should, for He alone is the remedy for it. Go to the one you feel cut off from and cry out to him.
C. Abandoned by my friends (7-8)
C. Abandoned by my friends (7-8)
The wrath of God here is one that can be hard to think about, especially believers. Are we still under the wrath of God if we have trusted in Jesus? And that’s a great question. We are not, but that doesn’t mean that we still don’t treat sin seriously. This situation that Heman is in feels like wrath. It feels like death. It may even be death itself. The waves of the consequences of sin are very real, and it should remind us that brokenness and death are the reality of every person, and that every human being is under the wrath of God. A close correlation to the waves of wrath overcoming Heman is that of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet of God, yet he spoke clearly about God’s wrath upon him:
1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. 3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. 4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ 5 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. 7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. 8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!” 10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Shunned by our companions: The state by which Heman is in causes his friends to think, he’s as good as dead. A biblical character that exemplifies this is Job. Humanity in general doesn’t do well when we encounter struggle and death. We tend to want to ignore it or dig our heads in the sand about. People do like to be around when everything is going well, when joy and happiness abounds, which is understandable. I don’t think it’s fun to be around struggle, pain, hurt, and death. But as we see, it is often in those hard and difficult times that those around us tend to not come around as often. Those who were once our companions are no longer. This is what death feels like, for death removes us from the land of the living. Death cuts us off from God and from our friends.
It’s in the most difficult of times, when no one else is around, that we do as Heman does. We cry out to God. This allowance of death in his life has caused his companions to go. He knows that death and wrath belong to God, and it is there that Heman goes. God, why have you allowed this? My friends are gone. I am shunned. God, do something about this! You are my salvation.
Application: Here in these verses is a declaration of the state we are in. Are we being truthful and honest with the Lord God? In our lament, are we speaking with him about how we feel, about our situation? Are we being truthful about our feelings and emotions? And who is to whom we truly address and rely upon in these times. When we face the impossible, when it seems like God has put us in the pit of death, when our friends and companions have abandoned us, who do we go to and lament to?
And you may be here today and you are struggling. You are hurting. You feel like everything is falling apart on you. Whether it’s your own doing or from the doings of others. The waves of wrath seem to break over you, life is difficult, and you wonder, would it just be better to die than to live? Go to the Lord with that.
And those that are not in this place, will you come alongside your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and walk with them through it? Will you lament with them? And sometimes, will you just close your mouth and try not to explain it away? Sometimes we try to come up with the spiritual answer and say “everything is going to work out.” That may be good for some, but for some, they just need you to hear them, lament and cry out with them. They need you to cry with them. To hurt with them. The mother that lost their child. The couple that can’t have children. The man that struggles with depression. The lady in the church that has lost so many of her friends and family, and she struggles. The one that has endured great sin against them. The one that has brought disaster upon themselves.
And do we as a church corporately lament? Do we cry out to God when we see the atrocities we see in our world? When there are school shootings, natural disasters, lamentable sin all around us, are we trying to pull the blame game and blame something and get our political points, or are we getting on our knees and crying out to the Lord: God, why? Hear us. Save us.
II. Ceasing of Doxology (9-12)
II. Ceasing of Doxology (9-12)
Heman has talked about his condition, and now he goes to the Lord and laments about what will happen if he is left there in the grave, in his current state. In death, how will the praises of God continue?
A. Can you do wonders for the dead? (9-10)
A. Can you do wonders for the dead? (9-10)
Will your wonders continue for those that are dead? If I’m dead Lord, will you continue you work? Can you show yourself wondrous and glorious through me if I’m in the grave? Death is the end, and it death is that final enemy. The Psalmist hasn’t seen what we see in the NT, but it is nonetheless something we think about. Death isn’t pretty. Death really wasn’t meant for us, for Adam and Eve were created not to die. But sin entered. And in that death, how can God work? How can he do his signs and wonders?
“Heman’s appeal seems to assert that if the Lord allows him to die, the Lord will not have Heman among the living to do a wonder for him—perhaps the wonder of delivering Heman from death.” - James Hamilton
B. Are you glorified by the grave? (11-12)
B. Are you glorified by the grave? (11-12)
The second question is very closely related to the first. How Heman glorify the Lord if he is in the grave? Yes, we know that God doesn’t need us. That is a doctrine that we must hold to. But also at the same time, God has chosen to use us to glorify himself. He doesn’t need us, but he has chosen to use us. And through God’s love for us, his desire to show his power and his glory, he has redeemed people for himself and called them to love, honor, worship, and glorify HIm. Those that God delivers in turn praise him with their lives.
So the question remains for Heman, “If this is the case, how will you be praised through my death, my struggle?” The question is also an appeal.
God, deliver me so that I can praise you. Be with me. And that deliverance may not be the deliverance that we expect. The trouble may not go away, but His presence is evident in our lives. He walks with us through the hurt, the heartache. And maybe it is literal death we face, and if we do die, God can glorify himself through it. Why? Because God glorified himself through death. Jesus, the Son of God, gave himself up to death so that those that are dying will be raised with him, able to glorify him. Even in the death, the believer’s glorifies God. For when we die, we continue in eternal praise. Even in our death, we can make much of Jesus.
Application: In the deepest darkest pits of life, it is difficult to praise the Lord. But its in the cry of Heman here that we also find praise. He understood his meaning of life. He understood that when everything was closing in, he understood that God could deliver and that God can be praised. He is worthy. And we know today that through Jesus Christ’s own death, God is glorified. Death really isn’t the end. The struggle you are going through, whether it feels like death or you are facing real death, its not the end. And you will be able to praise him as he delivers you from it, whether in this life or in the life to come. How? Because Jesus has defeated that death for you.
III. Companion of Darkness (13-18)
III. Companion of Darkness (13-18)
But Lord, I cry to you. Despite this condition, this prospect that I won’t be able to praise you because I am in this pit of death. But I cry to you. Heman doesn’t give up. He doesn’t cease in prayer. He keeps on crying out to God. In the morning, he prays. When the darkest times come through the night, he keeps on til morning. From night to morning, our prayers continue. Our insistence and continual prayers are important into our laments. Keep on crying out to the Lord.
A. Are you hidden from me? (13-14)
A. Are you hidden from me? (13-14)
The laments don’t stop though. He prays in the morning, but here is what he prays. He prays and prays, yet, God is your face hidden. Is my soul cast away? I pray and pray and I don’t seem to hear you. I don’t seem to see an answer to this.
God, why are you hidden? Nothing seems to be going well. Nothing seems to be getting better. Do you hear me? Have you left? These questions are not a declaration that God is unjust. Rather, quite the opposite.
“Heman knows God’s character, and he knows that God loves him. These questions are meant to provoke the Lord to prove his love by delivering Heman from death.” - James Hamilton
These questions are questions that come from a knowing that God is loving, that he does care. It is meant to provoke the Lord. I know that you are this way God. I know you haven’t left. It sure feels like it, but I can’t rely on these feelings. I got to trust in You, Your ways, Your goodness. So I’m gonna trust. I’m gonna pray.
B. I am helpless (15-16)
B. I am helpless (15-16)
And even in this prayer, Heman acknowledges that there is nothing he an do. The reality of sin means we face its consequences, and without God, we face a life of terror and dread. Heman is making it clear that he lives in a broken world. This is the terrors of sin and the consequences of it. And he can do nothing about it. He can’t stop sin. He can’t fix it. He can’t reverse the consequences of the fall. Wrath has swept over us, the assault of sin destroys us.
Here are some of the hardest verses to read and to pray, but real nonetheless. Its the acknowledgment that we ultimately face what we do because of sin. And without God, we are helpless to stop it. God, only you can deliver us. We are helpless.
IN the very same way, we cry out to God to save us, for he is the only one that can stop the consequences of sin, the consequences of death.
C. I am alone (17-18)
C. I am alone (17-18)
The troubles I face close in on me. My beloved, my friends have abandoned me. And the final line of the prayer is the acknowledgement that his only companions are darkness itself.
And that is the end of the prayer. Total and complete honesty. Brutal. Helpless feeling. Yet Heman was bold enough to pray it. Bold enough to write a song about it. God inspired him to write it and God put it in as Scripture. So, that says a lot. This isn’t someone writing a book about lament and saying these off the wall things. This is the Bible. This is Scripture.
I am alone. It kind of feels like a movie or episode of TV that just ends on a bad note. The bad guys won. The Empire stuck back. Gandalf died. Dumbledore died. The serial killer gets away with it in No Country For Old Men.
Yet, we know that this isn’t the end. Sometimes we need to end our prayers and just let them be. Sit. Meditate. Wait. There was no praise at the end of this Psalm like others in the Psalter.
CONCLUSION: Jesus, the answer to our suffering
CONCLUSION: Jesus, the answer to our suffering
And yet, if we were to continue on through the Bible. The laments don’t stop. Yet an answer comes. The God of the Bible, Yahweh, makes good on his promises. Jesus, the Son of God, puts on flesh like us. And if we were to go back and read this again, would you read it as though Jesus said these things? Do you think as he was put on that cross, as he was facing death, the wrath of God for our sins, that these things could be said. Do you think that Jesus was...
Counted among the dead, like us?
Cut off from his Father, like us?
Abandoned by his friends, like us?
Do you think he cried out for deliverance himself?
39 And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
Do you think he felt alone on that cross?
So, we then see, that Jesus knows every bit of what you are experiencing. Whatever it may be. Jesus was made like us in every way.
7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
So, this day, this Lord’s day, whatever you may be going through, cry out to Jesus. But also know that suffering is real. We live in a fallen world. And that Jesus didn’t die so to make life easier.
C.S. Lewis says this: "The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His."
We are reminded that it is often in the sufferings we find God clearest and loudest. It is often where we pray most often and most reliant upon God. But we also rest in knowing that Jesus went through all of it himself. He knows and loves us so much that he suffered to save us, to give us life, and to restore us to Himself.
The pattern of Heman's experience was fulfilled in the one who was forsaken that his people might be comforted, who was made a curse that his people might be blessed, who bore the sins of his people in his body on the tree, who was baptized in the waters of wrath that his people might rise with him to newness of life, who suffered outside the camp to open the way to the holy places.
There’s a song that I really like called “Thou You Slay Me” by Shane and Shane, because it is a song of lament and worship. Maybe we day we can incorporate it into worship. I think it sums up well how we should respond to the most troubling and heartwrenching times of our lives, how to cry out in desperation:
I come, God, I come
I return to the Lord
The one who's broken
The one who's torn me apart
You struck down to bind me up
You say You do it all in love
That I might know You in Your suffering
Though You slay me
Yet I will praise You
Though You take from me
I will bless Your name
Though You ruin me
Still I will worship
Sing a song to the one who's all I need
My heart and flesh may fail
The earth below give way
But with my eyes, with my eyes I'll see the Lord
Lifted high on that day
Behold, the Lamb that was slain
And I'll know every tear was worth it all
Though You slay me
Yet I will praise You
Though You take from me
I will bless Your name
Though You ruin me
Still I will worship
Sing a song to the one who's all I need