Series: Honest to God
When The Last Word is Darkness
October 02, 2016 | Bob Kerrey
Passage: Psalms 88:1-18
Big Idea: The end of the song is not the end of the story.
Psalm 88 (ESV)
A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil[a] of Heman the Ezrahite.
88 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 your waves. Selah
8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a horror[b] to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow.
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 land of 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.[c]
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 shun me;
my companions have become darkness.[d]
Series Information
Hide. Run. Withdraw. Shut down. Clam up. Fall back on clichés. Fake it. It’s what we tend to do in our relationship with God when things aren’t going well-when we’re bothered by injustice, faced with failure, plagued with doubts, oppressed by illness, dogged by a depressing darkness in our souls.
If you were a good person, you wouldn’t feel this way, right? Must be something uniquely and irreparably wrong with you, right? Better hide that internal mess so nobody finds out, right?
Wrong! In the Psalms we find followers of God--some of them Bible heroes--variously and openly struggling with anger and doubts and questions and disillusionment. They don’t stuff it; they sing about it. And sometimes there’s cursing involved. Far from hiding this kind of thing in the fine print, it’s smack dab in the middle of the Bible, showing us how to be honest, authentic, real--and liberated by it. How refreshing! Join us as we study the Psalms.
