Today is the day that the Lord has made, so let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said, Amen.

The Christian faith is not all roses. Despite what perfect-looking pastors on a TV may tell you, the Christian faith can be a struggle at times. It can feel very dark at times. And yes while we do live and walk in the light of Christ We also live on this side of eternity and that means on this side of eternity. There's gonna be darkness There's gonna be brokenness. There's gonna be sickness. There's gonna be times of despair to be had even by those who love God the most and as we look to Unfortunately the back half of the summer. I know that right now we'd rather be talking about joyous wonderful happy things.

But today we're going to talk about some of the hard realities of the faith And why are we doing that because that's where scripture has led us to at this moment We are continuing a sermon series through the book of Psalms, but we're taking a unique approach to that what we're doing is We're looking at a psalm from every one of the identified authors. Now there are 150 Psalms in the Bible and there's seven identified authors, 48 of the Psalms are left anonymous. And so what we're doing is we're looking at one Psalm from each of the authors as they show us in various different ways how to have an honest-to-goodness, real, and raw faith. And today we are looking at what is the darkest Psalm of them all. Would you please turn to Psalm 88?

It is an infamous Psalm. And what makes this Psalm so powerful for me is not that it's just unlike any other Psalm in its death of lamenting, it's in its blatant rawness. As you read this Psalm, you just feel the pain and the loneliness, and the hurt that this writer is feeling. And because of that, it feels honest. Now hear me when I say that like all of God's truth is real, raw, and honest. But when you enter into this depth of lamenting, there's something unique, it just feels like it. And in this sermon series, it's called Honest to Goodness. As we're looking at how real honesty, being honest where you are, being as honest about your emotional state, being honest about your relationship with God, when you're honest about that, that leads to something good. That is actually how you continue to deepen in your relationship to God.

Now this happens through joy and praise and thanksgiving and lamenting. It happens when we're honest. And this Psalm shows us this in very unique ways. We're going to look at an honest-to-goodness approach. And so this psalm is, the authorship of this psalm is ascribed to, at least in part, by this man named as, this man's name, Heman. H-E-M-A-N. Heman. Or because I was a child of the 80s, I like to call him He-Man. Glad someone got that. But Haman teaches us and shows us a very dark psalm. He's speaking from a very dark and raw and hurting place, and he's not ashamed to show it and it's actually a very wonderful thing. So if you are in that place, a place of bitterness, if you've gone through a dark place, if you've gone through a place where there's nothing but doubt and uncertainty, and you're unsure of God's plan, if you're unsure if God is even there or with you at all, Psalm 88 is one to spend time in.

The writer of Psalm 88 is in a very dark place, and he writes from a very dark place. We don't know the exact context, but it's kind of irrelevant. Because it's a place that many of us have been to, and many of us will find ourselves in. And so with that, let's hear this writer's honest-to-goodness approach to a time of darkness. Would you hear the Word of God, Psalm 88? And this morning we are going to read all 18 verses. Would you hear God's Word?

Scripture

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 your waves. Selah

8 You have caused my companions to shun me;

you have made me a horror 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.

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.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

Prayer

Let's pray.

Father, as we come to this very sobering psalm, Lord, we are going to speak on lament today. Help us to learn to do this well. Help us to do this rightly. Father, even if things are going great in our lives, would you prepare in us a spirit that's able to lament when the time calls for it? Guide us, O Holy Spirit, into the truth of your word this morning, for we pray these things in Jesus name and everyone said amen.

Main Idea

So church as we look at this dark and infamous psalm here's something I want you to take home today here is the main idea

And for those of you who don't know what lament is, lament means to mourn. It's a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. It means to cry out to God, cry out to God with your true and honest feelings. Even when you will feel hurt, mad, angry, or sad, lamenting to the God of our salvation is good for the soul. Church, my prayer for you is that life is good for you right now. That your kids are healthy, that you're enjoying the summer, that things are going well for you, that you're feeling good. But I can't promise you it'll always be like that. On this side of eternity, things won't always be like this. Sin, brokenness, sickness, pain is part of the equation at times. And so when those times come, this psalm reminds us to lament to God.

And listen, like, I didn't know you could do this. Like when I came to Christ, like when I became a Christian, I thought that meant you always had to put on your church face before God. You always had to kind of present your best self. I didn't realize you could actually come to God in all your realness and rawness and all your openness with your sickness and everything before you and your depression and your death. I didn't realize you could actually do that. And yet this Psalm shows us this. You come to God as you are, letting him know how you feel. But the Psalm also gives us the right pattern to do this. And that's what we're gonna talk about. And I know that we don't talk about the word lament a lot, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, I love how one pastor put it. He said lament should be the chief way that Christians process grief in God's presence. I'll say that again. Lament should be the chief way that Christians process grief in God's presence. Lament means to cry out to God. And as we talk about crying out, lamenting to God, I want to give you our outline as we walk through this passage together. Eighteen verses. Dark, dark verses.

Outline

Here's our outline for this morning.

1. Verses one to seven, we're gonna look at how we are to cry out to God in our despair.

2. Then we're gonna look at how do we cry out to God in our depression.

3. How do we cry out to God in our doubt?

4. And then we're gonna look at crying out to God in our darkness. Despair, depression, doubt, darkness.

Aren't you glad you came to church today?

1. Lamenting to the God of our salvation is good for the soul

First one, lamenting to the God of our salvation is good for the soul. Let's talk about crying out to God in your despair. Please, we say this every week, but if you have your Bibles, whether on your lap or your app, whatever, have it open because you need to see the words here today.

Verses 1-2

Psalm 88 verse 1, do not lose this opening. It's critical. Psalm 88 verse 1 says, Oh Lord, God of my salvation. So while this is the darkest psalm of it all, it starts out with a strong statement of faith. It only gets more dark, but the psalmist starts by crying out to the God of his salvation, the God who saved him. He says I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you. Incline your ear to my cry he's crying out and saying God listen to me are you there listen to me what's beautiful about this opening is that even though we start by feeling immediately this writer's pain he's writing out to God he's crying out to the Lord church so often in our pain in our despair we cry out on social media. We post out on social media to garner support and to be reminded that we are loved by the people who like and comment on our posts. But I'm telling you, that's not the pattern. We are to lament, to cry out to God.

But here's what we do. We turn to addiction. We turn to something to numb us and to distract us from the pain.

But we are to cry out to God. One thing I can tell you about the world that we live in is that we are a people who are so averse to pain. We are the most medicated people of all time, both legally and illegally. But we are sometimes called to just sit and in a sense feel the pain. Feel the pain in order that we might be reminded of the only one who can truly ease our hurts. But we don't. The second pain comes, we immediately try to mask our pain.

We try to hide our pain. Like the second pain starts to come, we take a step towards it, and then we immediately recoil and we find something to numb the pain, to make us high, to make us distracted, to pull our mind off of it. Rather than entering into that space and letting the darkness consume us for a moment so that we would be reminded that there's a God in heaven and he's the only one who can truly bring light to our lives, who can bring healing to our pain. But we don't. We immediately try to mask the pain and we hide it rather than letting the pain draw us closer to God. We find other ways to relieve the pain, but it doesn't relieve us. It just postpones it.

Verses 3-5

Look at verses 3, 4, and 5. It says, My soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. That's a Hebrew word that simply means the grave, the downness away from God. It says I am counted among those who go down to the pit. I am a man who has no strength, 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 hands. This is despair. This is a writer calling out to God in the depths of despair. It's an emptiness and a loneliness that feels like death because despair feels like the end of hope. This is a person who has no hope left. So what does he do? He cries out to God, have you been in that place? Have you been in that place where you feel like there's no hope left? See, I think more of us should have been in that place, but the second we start to go there, we recoil and we find a way to drug ourselves so that we don't have to deal with the hard things of life, the loneliness, and the emptiness. But if we entered into those moments, I guarantee we'd be a people who are much closer to God. And I don't think our culture would be in the spot it would be.

Because just like the world around us, we drug ourselves to keep us from pain. And we live in this fantasy land when Christians are the ones who are supposed to be the people of truth and honesty and what's real. And pain is real. And Christians, if we are to be people of truth in this world, that means we have to truly experience the pain at times and one thing we need to remember God has put these words in the Bible God is not scared of you coming to him with your lament and with your pain and with your hurt He's given us a prescription to do it. He's given us a pattern to do this We are meant to go to God when things go dark. The writer continues and he turns this psalm, he turns in the psalm to point to how God, he thinks that God is the one who's actually doing all this, bringing all this darkness.

Verses 6-7

Look at verses six and seven. It says, you've put me in the depths of the pit and the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me and you overwhelm me with all your waves. See, this writer is poetically stating what many of us know, that when despair comes, and it comes to our lives, it can feel like all things are against us.

It can even feel like God is against us. And that is the uttermost aspect of despair, is when you feel like even God himself has turned on you.

But let me remind you, do not forget how this psalm starts off. Oh Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you. Church, even when things seem dark, even when it seems like God is the one against you, even when it seems like everything falls apart when your life doesn't go according to plan when your spouse cheats on you when you get that cancer diagnosis, when you feel betrayed when you fall when brokenness and sickness come when you've given everything and you feel like you get nothing back, this psalm tells us and reminds us, bring those cries to God, cry out to God in your despair. And then, and then we see this word, Selah. It's this word that you see randomly pop up every now and again in the Psalms. And there's not some super great way to translate this into English, but Selah is basically, it's a cause to pause.

In the midst of whatever you're doing, whether rejoicing or lamenting, it's a call to pause and breathe. Because our life and our faith can't be all words. Sometimes we have to just stop and in a sense enjoy the silence. We need Selah, we need rest, quiet. We need peace. How many moms in the house know exactly what I'm talking about? So here's what I want to say to you.

Next time the kids are acting up, next time things go crazy, just snap your fingers and be like, you know what kids, I need a Selah moment right now. Pastor Ryan said I could have it, so you're going to give it to me. Everyone's going to be quiet. This is me giving you a Selah card. You pull that out when you need it. And just say, we need to stop and breathe. And I'm not one to look for signs under every single rock, but it is kind of interesting that we're dealing with this Psalm on such a rainy morning.

So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a Selah moment right now. Just a brief moment where we're just going to pause. We're dealing with some heavy topics. Maybe you are in that heavy moment. Maybe you just need to practice.

But we're going to have a Selah moment right now. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to breathe in.

Here, other venues, let's breathe in.

Breathe out.

God is on the throne. You're being nourished by the word of God. Just have a moment of peace.

2. We are to cry out to God in our despair and we are also to cry out to God in our depression

Now, I'll confess to you right now, I don't deal with depression. I have gotten depressed at times, but properly speaking, I don't deal with depression-like so many of my friends and so many from our church family do. So I confess to you, I don't speak to this section from experience, I just speak to it from the truth of God's word. What starts out as a sense of despair quickly moves to areas of depression.

Verse 8-10

Look at verses eight, nine, and 10. Verse eight, you have caused my companions to shun me. You've made me a horror to them. I'm shut in so I cannot escape. Right here we see the writer beginning to express his feelings of abandonment and loneliness.

And then he says this, verse 9, My eyes grow dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O Lord. I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Do you hear the heart of this psalmist? He's saying, I'm losing sight of everything good. God, I'm calling out to you, I'm opening my arms to you, and you're nowhere to be found. It's like he's saying to God, he's like God, I must be nothing to you. I must be dead to you. I'm at my lowest moment. All my friends have left me, and so have you. Have you ever been that real and honest before God? If you haven't, I wonder what the nature of your relationship is like with him. We are meant to enter into those times but notice something, notice who the writer of this Psalm is speaking to. He's speaking to God. My friends, that is a pattern that we need to incorporate in our lives. This is what you cannot lose, whether in despair, depression, whether your spouse has betrayed you, whether life has crumbled when it seems like God has forgotten you, don't just cry out, but cry out to God, even in your depression. Selah.

Don't move past that moment.

So let's do this. Wherever venue you're in right now, just let's breathe in, breathe out.

God is on the throne and you're being nourished by God's Word right now. So let it nourish you. We're to cry out to God in our depression.

3. We are to cry out to God in our doubts

We are also to cry out to God in our doubts.

Verses 12-14

See, these next four verses are actually for questions. If you have your Bibles open, you'll see that. If you're wondering if God is even there and why he's not responding in the darkest of times, bring to God your questions. Bring to God your despair, your depression, and even bring to God your doubt.

That's why I love the Bible. It's so unlike any other religious book in its realness and its honesty and its rawness. God is not scared of your doubt, so bring it to Him. Look at this. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, God? Or your faithfulness in abandon? Now abandon is just, it's like a spiritual abyss. It's like a spiritual nothingness. Are your wonders known in the darkness or are your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But I, oh Lord, cry to you. In the morning, my prayer comes before you. Oh Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Church, church, do not forget, this is scripture. The Bible is letting us know that faith is going to have its ups and downs. And when those times of depression and doubt come, bring it to God. This is why I love the Bible and the Christian faith. The permission to be real and open and honest and raw is an invitation you're not going to find anywhere else.

Because real Christians deal with real emotions and we bring it to a real God who really works in our lives. But this cannot happen if we mask it or we recoil from it or we drug ourselves or we distract ourselves. That happens when we enter into that space. See, there's this caricature of Christians that are out there, and I love to burn every image of it, but I can't.

4. We are to cry out to God in our darkness

There's this character of Christians that we're this happy-go-lucky plastic people who aren't real. If we are truly Christians, then we're gonna be truly biblical people and truly biblical people cry out to God when we are in despair, depressed, and when we have doubt. And so church I'm pleading with you. Yes, we are the people who have a joy that the world both does not understand and cannot take away. A joy that's produced by the Holy Spirit working within us, but that does not mean you will not have times of depression and doubt and anxiety and darkness.

But when we do, we are to bring it to God. And lastly, when all seems lost, we cry out to God in the darkness. Listen again to how this Psalm ends. I know we like happy endings here, but we don't get it in this Psalm. We get it left in darkness. It does not end in hope.

Verses 15-18

Look at verses 15 to 18. It says, "...afflicted and close to my death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors, I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me and your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together." And then look at the very last verse of the darkest of all the Psalms. Look what it says, verse 18. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's where this Psalm ends. And so what do you do with this? With such a dark, helpless psalm, what do you do with this?

Church here's what you do with this.

We recognize that our faith does not prevent us from sitting in times of darkness. This passage reminds us that sometimes we are not supposed to medicate ourselves into a life masked by a happy haze of drugs, drink, and distraction. Sometimes the feeling of darkness is the very thing that God will use to bring us closer to Himself. Because the feeling of darkness in our lives helps us to remember that this is real. That we are the people of truth and reality and we live in those moments. We don't try to find a fake world to live in. We live in the real world that God has given to us. And while this psalm does end in darkness, the beauty of the scriptures is that the story ends in hope.

 But as we look at lament, there is no more beautiful example in all of history of faithful lamenting before God than what we see in Jesus Christ was on that Roman cross with nails through his hands and through his feet with the weight of his body Crushing in on him slowly suffocating him as he bled and died He cried out to God with these words and he said my god my god. Why have you forsaken me? Did you know that when he said that that was a moment of spiritually eternal? Weight as he was taking the punishment and the suffering that we should have been taking. It should have been us on the cross crying out those words, but Jesus took our place for us. The sin that we should be paying the penalty of, that's what Christ did on the cross for us and He lamented and He cried out to God. And do you know when He was doing this, do you know what He was actually doing? He was quoting the Psalms.

See, we have two quotes of Scripture from Jesus while He was on the cross. The only Scripture that we have Jesus quoting from the cross, both of them comes from the Psalms, which is why Christians need to know the Psalms so well. At the moment of His death, Jesus quoted Psalm 31 when He said, Into your hands I commit my spirit. hanging on the cross, suffering for us. He quoted Psalm 22 when he said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In his darkest moment, Jesus quoted scripture and cried out to God because Jesus shows us how to lament. Because lamenting to the God of our salvation is good for the soul. And again, this is the key to lamenting. We lament to God. In your hurt, in your pain, in your sorrow, in your anguish, we first and foremost bring it to God. You know, Psalms say something else very interesting that's important for us to know. In Psalm 139, verse four, it says, "'Even before a word is on my tongue, "'behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.'" You know what the Psalm is saying? Like, don't hide your feelings from God because He knows them anyway. Don't try to hold back from God. He knows what you're going to say anyway.

So just bring it all to God. Cry out to the God of our salvation. Cry out to the God who loves you. And while you may be in a moment of pain, while you may be in a season of pain, we know that the story for those who place their faith in Christ, we know our story ultimately ends in glory and hope. See, when Christ died on the cross, it's because he was nailed there, taking our penalty for our sin. And when we place our faith in him, we get his righteousness. We get his reward. We get eternal life with God because of what Christ did for us. And if you think this is all fancy fairy tale, let me tell you, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the proof of this reality.

Because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, that's how we can hang our hope on this. That's how we can have hope for the future, even when the present seems so dark. So no matter if you're facing despair, depression, doubt, or darkness, we have something the writer of Psalm 88 doesn't. We have a knowledge of the gospel, that Jesus died for us and rose again. And because of that, we are the people who can say, because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Whatever you're facing, and whatever you're going to face, if you place your faith in Jesus, I am telling you to repeat these words, because he lives, I can face tomorrow. So lament to the God of your salvation, because it's good for your soul. Amen.

Closing Prayer

Okay, let's stand up and let's prepare our hearts to worship. Let's bow our heads and let's pray.

Father, we come before you. Lord, I know that there are people who can hear my voice right now where things are going so well. And I know there are people who can hear my voice who are unsure of a doctor appointment tomorrow. Father, wherever your people are at this moment, Lord, I pray you would draw us together by the Gospel, by the blood of Jesus. So whether we are in the moment of despair, whether we've gone through it, or whether it's yet to come, Father, I pray that your church would gather together, united by the blood of Jesus, celebrating His life, because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Spirit, I pray that you will fill this place now, helping us to sing these words louder than we've ever sang because they're true. Be with us now as we worship you, because of the gospel of Jesus. God, you are so good, and you're so good to us. We love you, and we thank you, and we pray these things in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen.

Church, let's sing together.