Look to the God of Your Salvation (Psalm 88)
Today we are going to be in the most depressing song in the whole Bible. And I have reason for doing it. This most depressing song in the whole Bible will help us to understand the response we are supposed to have when we feel just as the psalmist did here.
There are times when I have felt as Heman did here. And I think other people here would say the same thing. Things had gone wrong for him in rapid succession. He felt alone. He felt as if he was near death. And he wondered if he’d ever really crawl out of this pit.
Have you been there?
I can remember things being this way for me on a few occasions. Big thing after thing kept going wrong for us. I was completely overwhelmed by the situation. And at one point, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “Why would God put us in this situation?”
I remember pulling up into the driveway, staring at the garage door, crying out to God and asking, “Why would You allow things to be this way?”
Have you been there? I’m sure some of you have.
Depression can be overwhelming.
I sat in the driveway, stared at the garage door, and cried out to God asking “Why would you allow things to be this way?”
I’m sure that people are in situations like that now.
Depression and anxiety can be overwhelming. You feel overwhelmed and alone. You feel like you don’t want to be around people at all. You feel like you are the walking dead at times. And all of that is discussed here by Hemen.
Psalm 88 is a psalm of Hemen. He is found a few times in the Bible. He is one of the sons of Kora. It was his relatives that rebelled against Moses and were swallowed up in Numbers 16. But the children were not swallowed up. And so, the family carried on.
By the time of David’s reign, they were song leaders. And Heman stands out among them. In 1 Chronicles 6:33, he was noted as a great singer among the people of Israel.
I hope that gives you a picture of who this person is. Among the singers found in Israel, Heman is of note.
In the psalm, there is only one bright spot. It is found in the first verse, which is technically also the title of the Psalm.
The point of the sermon today is that we are to hold on to the God of our salvation when all seems lost.
There are times when all seems lost. There are times when everything seems to be going under. And our response is to hold on to the God of our salvation when all seems lost.
There is no happy ending to the psalm today. But I hope you see this one thing.
God’s People May Undergo Depression And It May Be Long Term
Sometimes people say that Christians cannot be depressed, especially for months or even years. But this psalm definitely puts an end to that thought.
Is Heman a believer? Yes! He calls God, “God of my salvation.” But the rest of this psalm is filled wit deep and dark sorrow. And he immediately begins to recount them.
Heman believes that God is not listening to his prayers (Psalm 88:2). And most of the rest of Psalm 88 is a recounting of these sorrows.
His soul is filled with trouble (Psalm 88:3). He doesn’t feel anything but sorrow. The only emotion he feels in this moment is sorrow. And it seems to have been this way for a while. Now he feels near death. As he put it, “my life draws near to Sheol”. Sheol is the place of the dead.
Whatever plagues Heman at this moment has caused him to feel near death. I think that anyone who has been through this can relate. Deep, dark depression can do that. You can end up feeling as if you’re not really there, almost dead. I believe this to be why so many people that are depressed turn to drugs and alcohol. It is not a good way of dealing with the problem, but it is an attempt to deal with the problem.
Heman expands on this idea (Psalm 88:4-5). He feels like he is the dead among the living. He looks around at everyone else and they seem to be doing well. But he is not. He has no strength. He is technically alive, but feels “dead inside”.
Then, as part of Heman’s complaint, he states that God put him in this situation (Psalm 88:6). He feels as if he is in an ancient prison. But he didn’t put himself there. He was lowered into the pit. He is now in the darkness, abandoned, can’t escape, down in the regions dark and deep. And he said that God overwhelms him with an assault of waves. Wave after wave just keeps coming at him. It feels like an assault from the Lord.
Heman has no friends (Psalm 88:8). He feels lowered in a pit and separated from everyone. And this is a horrible situation for a person that is struggling to be in. One of the great comforts in life is being surrounded by friends and loved ones. But this also forces me to ask a question concerning him. Is he really separated or is the cloud of depression making him feel separated?
I don’t know the answer. I think either answer is plausible. I know that I have closed myself off from others and then felt all alone.
All of this is affecting him physically. “My eye grows dim with sorrow”, he says (Psalm 88:9). We know that depression affects people physically. There is an exhaustion that pervades the body. Tears are okay sometimes, but you can have too many of them. Your physical body will, at some point, just be overwhelmed.
And Hemen daily cries out to the Lord for deliverance. He is near death, feels dead, so he asks “Do the departed rise up to praise you?” (Psalm 88:10)
This is a statement that should cause you a lot of sorrow for Hemen. Remember, he is a prominent singer in Israel. He is known in Israel for praising the Lord. And can he, a person in this situation, really rise up to praise the Lord?
And then he asks it in a different way. Is your “steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon?” Abaddon is the pit where the dead are. In the Book of Revelation it is the bottomless pit. And the picture Hemen gives here is of himself near death crying out from the pit. Will people cry out to God from here. Are God’s wonders known in the darkness or righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? (Psalm 88:12)
He feels like the dead among the living. Will he be able to cry out from here?
Application:
We live in a highly psychologized age. Some people claim to have depression that are going through normal life circumstances. Sometimes there is a sickness and medical help is necessary. But it seems to me that our society just don’t leave room for people to be unhappy or depressed. We just don’t see it as being something that happens to people.
And this is especially the case within many churches where they say that believers will not be depressed. They read the fruit of the Spirit in the Book of Galatians and say that “joy” being present means that Christians won’t be depressed for long. But here is the deepest and darkest depression. Here is a description that many of you can relate to more than you’d ever like to admit.
I want you to look at this and see that you may go through bouts of deep depression sometimes. You may be quite despondent. You may feel like you are near death. You may feel like nothing in life is working out for you or has worked out for you in a very long time. So did Hemon.
So did many of the heroes of Church History.
Charles Spurgeon is well known to have had horrible bouts of depression. He would sometimes feel that he couldn’t force himself to get out of bed.
Martin Luther had similar bouts with depression.
It has been so common historically that Christians of the past had a name for it. They called it the Dark Night of the Soul. Martin Lloyd Jones would just later call it Spiritual Depression.
Whatever you want to call it? You should know that it happens. You should know that it is something that does take place. And it is something that you may go through at some point in your life.
I never thought that I would have gone through some of the instances that I referenced at the beginning of this sermon. If you would have told me that I would go through periods of depression when I was 18, I probably would have laughed at you. But I probably would have done the same thing at 25 and 30.
It may happen to you. And you need to know before it does that it is something that Christians sometimes must go through.
Do Not Abandon Prayer In The Midst Of Your Sorrow (Psalm 88:1, 13)
Read Psalm 88 a few times and eventually you’ll come to a powerful realization. Really dig into the emotions he is conveying and eventually you’ll understand what he is doing. He is struggling to get to prayer. This is the case in Psalm 88:1, but it is especially the case in Psalm 88:13.
Hemen felt dead, alone, unable to hold his head above water, and assaulted by wave after wave of adversity. But he struggled through all of that and got to prayer. This is extraordinary, not because it is some sort of hidden secret. Everybody seems to know that praying is the right response to adversity. But it is extraordinary because of how often this gets neglected. People seem to abandon prayer at the very time they need it most.
It’s stupid. But I’m not just hurling accusations. It’s something I’ve done myself. I’ve witnessed it in others. And I’ve read about this.
But what is this entire psalm? Is it not a prayer list.
He is going to God (Psalm 88:1, 13). And his example is one that we should follow.
But what is the content of his prayer list? Well, they’re mostly complaints. Why do You hide yourself from me? Etc.
Now I want to ask you a serious question about this. Have you been there? Have you been in a time when all you could pray about were the many complaints you have?
I hope you see from this that it is okay to go to God with complaints. It is found in his list of prayers here. Sometimes, when things get bad enough, it is all you can muster. It’s all that you have to say.
We can be so ungrateful and unthankful that every little thing that happens to us causes us to go into a fit of ungracious complaining. That can happen. We should remember our many blessings. But there are also times when everything seems to go awry. We can feel like we’re drowning in sorrow. At that point, the complaint is all we have to say. And here, it was all that Heman had to say.
As you read Psalm 88:14-18, it is a continuation of his prayer list. And again it is a list of complaints. But now he is fully giving God credit for his problems. Is that even okay?
Yes it is. God is sovereign.
“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” (Psalm 115:3 ESV)
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, (Ephesians 1:11 ESV)
“‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. (Deuteronomy 32:39 ESV)
And read Job 1:20-22. Who does Job credit with all of his problems?
“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.” (Job 1:20-22 ESV)
Who do we know caused all of Job’s problems? It was Satan. But Job credited God with all of it. And did Job sin or charge God with wrong? No. Why? Because God is sovereign. God is in control.
It was okay for Job to say it. It was okay for Heman to say it. And it’s okay for you to say it.
As I consider Heman’s actions, I don’t see someone who is rebelling against God. I see someone that is trying to submit to the Lord and questioning in the moment.
What do we see from Jesus on the cross?
Jesus cried out “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” I know that this is a quotation from Psalm 22:1. And that, at some level, Jesus was calling upon everyone to turn to that song in Israel’s hymnbook. But Jesus felt this in the moment. That is a lot of what Psalm 22 is about. Jesus felt this forsakenness as he bore the guilt of sin upon the cross. He felt separated from God and cried out why?
It’s okay to give the complaint and seek God. That may be the only thing you can feel or say in the moment.
Because Christ suffered for us. Because He took on human flesh and suffered for us. We are part of God’s family. We are adopted children of God through the finished work of Jesus Christ. It’s okay to ask why.
Don’t let sorrow keep you from prayer. But pray with an eye toward God’s love and care for us.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Romans 8:28-30 ESV)
This text was written amid struggles and hardships. And Paul called upon them to look to their future glory. They were to pray, understanding that God was working all things for their good and His glory.
You are to do the same.
Don’t let sorrow keep you from praying!
Don’t let the hardships keep you from going to the Lord in prayer!
That sounds easy. But it is not easy. And if it weren’t neglected most of the time, I wouldn’t even need to repeat it.
What usually happens?
We mope. We wallow in our sorrow. We look around and try to figure out a way out. We declare things to be hopeless. And then eventually we decide to go to the Lord in prayer.
I know that sometimes you don’t know what to pray. I’ve been there. And there are times when you bow your head and tell your Lord that you do not understand why things are the way they are. You tell Him that you can’t make sense of any of this, but you are trusting that He will. Sometimes that is the best we can muster.
Understand That All Is Not Lost When You Are Saved By This Covenant Keeping God (Psalm 88:1, 13)
Heman prays here using God’s covenant name (Psalm 88:1, 13). That may seem insignificant to you, but it is not.
In your Bible the word LORD is spelled with all capital letters: LORD. This comes from the practice found in ancient Hebrew of not writing the word Yahweh. The name was so revered that they would not write it. They would write Adonai instead. We write the word in all capital letters. So when you see the all caps LORD, it is the covenant name of God. It is Yahweh.
This is the name God revealed to Moses and the people of God before bringing them out of Egypt. This is the personal name of God known to the people of Israel.
The two times that Heman calls out to God in this text, he uses that name. He is praying to the God of His salvation. This is the hope within our text.
This passage feels completely dark, but it is not. There is a glimmer of light. And this glimmer of light is that God is the God of our salvation.
Speaking of this text, Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote,
“While the living God can be spoken of as the light of our salvation our hope will not quite expire.” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon)
And G. Campbell Morgan wrote,
“While the sense of God abides, darkness has not quite triumphed.” (G. Campbell Morgan)
Here is the great hope of this text. It’s not in something you can do. It is in the Lord. It is in God, your salvation-gospel.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died–more than that, who was raised–who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(Romans 8:28-39 ESV)
Because He is the God of our salvation. Because God the Son earned eternal life for us, we have hope. As long as we see that, all hope is not lost. As long as we can call God, the God of our salvation, we have hope.
It may be difficult to see any hope, we may have to squint and strain.
I used to go night fishing on Beaver Lake. We would go out there at around 10pm-11pm. And we were going when the moon was dark, or close to it. So it was really dark.
There was a dangerous boulder in the water that we knew that we had to get around. People had drowned there on a few different occasions doing just the thing we were doing. We had markers in the dark that we would look for that would tell us when we got around us. They were things we could barely see out on the dark water. But once we got past it, we would look to our right and see the streetlight that we would drive toward in the darkness. That little glimmer of light would get us to the place we’d catch a lot of fish.
I relate that story because it is something that we have to do as Christians. We can have so much sorrow that we can barely see. As we navigate the sorrowful waters, we look to Christ. We look to the captain of our salvation and can finally see the hope we so desperately long for. Every thing is dark around us, but because of Christ, we have hope.
I have a few books that I read that are Puritan books of prayer. I don’t pray the prayers, unless I just feel completely moved to do so. They work more like devotional material for me. I read them, then I read Scripture and pray. This one stuck out to me tremendously in a time of sorrow because it did exactly what I’m describing right now.
My Father,
Enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips,
supply words that proclaim ‘Love lustres at Calvary.’
There grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy Son,
made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for me;
There the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow;
There thy infinite attributes were magnified,
and infinite atonement was made;
There infinite punishment was due,
and infinite punishment was endured.
Christ was all anguish that I might be all joy,
Cast off that I might be brought in,
Trodden down as an enemy
That I might be welcomed as a friend,
Surrendered to Hell’s worst
That I might attain Heaven’s best.
Stripped that I might be clothed,
Wounded that I might be healed,
Athirst that I might drink,
Tormented that I might be comforted,
Made a shame that I might inherit glory,
Entered darkness that I might have eternal ligh.
My Saviour wept that all tears might be wiped from my eyes,
Groaned that I might have endless song,
Endured all pain that I might have un fading health,
Bore a thorny crown that I might have a glory-diadem,
Bowed his head that I might uplift mine,
Experienced reproach that I might receive welcome,
Closed his eyes in death that I might gaze on unclouded brightness,
Expired that I might forever live.
O Father, who spared not thine only Son that thou mightiest spare me,
All this transfer thy love designed and accomplished;
Help me to adore thee by lips and life.
O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise,
My every step buoyant with delight, as I see
My enemies crushed,
Satan baffled, defeated, destroyed,
Sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood,
Hell’s gates closed,
Heaven’s portal open.
Go forth, O conquering God, and show me the cross,
Mighty to subdue, comfort, and save.
If God is the God of your salvation, then you have everything. The things of this Earth are temporary and we stand here in this time, awaiting all that Jesus will one day give to us. It may be hard to see that right now. We may have to work hard to see it. But Christ has earned for you this great and glorious relationship with Him, and eternity with Him. Though we can scarcely see it now, it is there.
When your eyes grow dim, look with all your might to see the great and glorious salvation that has been given to you in Christ. As long as you can see that, then you won’t totally lose hope.
R. Dwain Minor