(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you
to our look today at Psalm 88 in drive time devotions.
Psalm 88 begins in verses one and two with these words.
Oh 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.
And then Heman who we're told is the writer of this Psalm
begins to list the reasons that he needs God's help.
And I gotta tell you, it's a downer of a list.
Every depressing song that you've ever heard
seems to be seen in this Psalm.
From total eclipse of the heart
to hello darkness my old friend,
as Taylor Swift knows all too well
and you two sings in heaven and hell.
There's something about music
that lets us express the deepest emotions of our hearts.
Even the negative emotions and the Psalms are music.
They're the hymn book of the Old Testament.
And he sings his heart of despair in Psalm 88.
I want you to promise me as you start listening to this,
that you won't listen to just the first half
of this day's drive time devotion.
We're not gonna ignore the message
of what many call the darkest of all the Psalms, Psalm 88.
But you also need to hear the hope at the end.
So what's the message of despair?
See if you can relate to this list of reasons
that Heman said he was in this spirit of despair.
First in his list is I am close to death.
Verses three to six, for my soul is full of trouble
and my life draws near the grave.
I am counted among those who go down to the pit.
I'm like a man without strength.
I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.
You've put me in the lowest pit and the darkest depths.
I told you it was pretty depressing.
Verses three and four in the message paraphrase,
I have had my fill of trouble.
I am camped on the edge of hell.
I'm written off as a lost cause.
One more statistic, a hopeless case.
I want to encourage you, take that verse
and put it on your refrigerator.
Anybody comes over and sees it,
you're gonna have some very interesting conversations.
He's talking about the despair of the fact that
in this world we're all gonna face death someday.
And he's just honest to God about it.
In this list he also says your wrath is on me.
In verse seven, your wrath lies heavily upon me.
You have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
Waves is a perfect picture of how we feel
when we're in this kind of discouragement or despair.
They just keep washing over us.
The moment we feel like we've stood up,
we feel like we're pushed down again.
And he senses in this, God, somehow you're doing this to me.
Somehow it's something I've done to you.
Whether that's true or not, it's how he's feeling.
And whether you know it's true or not,
you know it's how you felt sometimes.
God, why are you letting this happen?
It feels like you're mad at me, God.
It feels like you're punishing me, God.
The waves just keep coming.
He goes on with his list.
Third thing in his list is I've lost my friends.
In verses eight to nine, you have taken from me
my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape.
My eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, O Lord, every day.
I spread out my hands to you.
Now the good thing about Heman is
he's talking to God about this.
He has enough faith to talk to God about his despair.
That takes a lot of faith.
And in his despair, he says, I feel all alone.
And you felt that.
You feel all alone.
Even if there are people around you,
you begin to feel that no one can understand
what you're going through.
I've lost all my friends.
And then a fourth thing, a final thing
in this list of despair is I don't see any pathway to hope.
In verses 10 to 12, do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do those who are dead rise up and give you praise?
Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness and destruction?
Are your wonders known in the place of darkness?
Are your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
I'm gonna be dead, he says.
There's no hope for me.
Now, you know that we're a people of hope and joy
as followers of Christ.
But even in knowing that, there are circumstances
that we go through psychologically, internally,
emotionally, soul circumstances
that are influenced deeply maybe
by our external circumstances
where you just can't see any way out.
You feel like there is no possible path
from where I am to a place of hope in my life.
Now, it's interesting, having said all of this,
having prayed all this despair,
then in verse 13, Heman prays this.
But I cry to you for help, O Lord.
In the morning, my prayer comes before you.
But, he says, but can be one of the most powerful words
in the English language, in any language.
The despair is real, but God is real, but God is real.
The discouragement is there, but I can cry out to God.
Now, I think the words in the morning are important here.
When you're discouraged, you start the day with God.
You don't wait till the end of the day
because you need it all through the day.
But God, but I can trust in God.
Now, he's not finished.
He's prayed all this despair, and then he says,
but God, I'm bringing this prayer to you.
And then beginning in verse 14, you know what he does?
He repeats the same list one more time.
Death, wrath, friends and family gone,
darkness, my closest friend.
Listen to what happens.
Verses 14 to 18.
Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?
From my youth, I've been afflicted and close to death.
He repeats that one.
I've suffered your terrors.
I'm in despair.
Your wrath has swept over me.
Your terrors have destroyed me.
All day long, they surround me like a flood.
They've completely engulfed me.
You've taken my companions.
There's a friends again and loved ones from me.
The darkness is my closest friend.
And then the Psalm ends.
It really is hollow darkness, my old friend.
The last word in the Hebrew language
of this Psalm is the word darkness.
Very fitting.
Despair is simply the hunger for hope.
So what do you do when you're hungry for hope?
Wait for your circumstances to change?
Sometimes they do, but what if they don't?
You may be facing the worst of circumstances,
but you do not have to live without hope
the rest of your life.
Heman, the author of this Psalm,
is a reminder to us that leaning on circumstances
to find a way out of our despair is not the place to lean.
The title of the Psalm notes Maskell,
a song of Heman the Azerite.
And you can read about him.
He's mentioned throughout the Old Testament.
And his life shows us that the circumstances
of this life are not enough to keep us
from the discouragement of despair.
The Heman in Psalm 88 is a Levite
mentioned with his family line in 1 Chronicles 6-33.
From the Kohathites, Heman, the musician,
the son of Joel, the son of Samuel.
So Heman was the grandson of Samuel,
the final judge of Israel
who has some Old Testament books named after him.
The judge who anointed King Saul and anointed King David,
Heman's life is a reminder
that you can have a great heritage,
but also you can face times of great despair.
So if you're thinking, if I only had a better heritage,
I wouldn't be facing this despair,
Heman says, no, not true.
In addition, Heman is listed
as one of the three main musicians appointed by King David
for the ministry of prophesying and accompanied by hearts
and liars and symbols in 1 Chronicles 25-1.
So here he has great success,
but he also faced great despair.
So if you're thinking, if I just had a little more success,
I'd get out of this despair, not true for Heman.
And a lot of us know the despair
that's on the other side of great success.
You thought the success would bring you joy and it hasn't.
So what do you do now?
We're gonna talk about it in just a minute,
but let's go through Heman's list.
Heman's family was well known.
Mentioned again in 1 Chronicles 25, 4-6,
part of which reads,
all these were sons of Heman the king's seer.
They were given him through the promises of God
to exalt him.
God gave Heman 14 sons and three daughters.
He had a great family, but that wasn't enough.
He still faced great despair.
Heman and his family were present
when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Jerusalem,
2 Chronicles 5-12.
He had great experiences in life, great worship experiences,
but he still faced great despair.
We're told that Heman was still serving
during the time of King Solomon, the son of David,
and he was considered very wise.
Solomon, the wisest of all, was compared to Heman.
He was wiser than anyone else,
including Ethan the Ezraite, wiser than Heman.
He had great wisdom, but he still faced great despair.
Now, I say all this to say,
if you've been blaming yourself, thinking,
if only I had this, I wouldn't be in despair,
or why do I have despair when I have this?
Heman's life is a recognition
that the circumstances of this life
cannot keep us in despair or out of despair.
It tells us that the way out of our despair
is facing it head on,
and recognizing that the way out is not circumstantial.
It is not circumstantial.
It is really spiritual and emotional.
Heman's life reminds us that you can have great heritage,
great success, great family, great experiences,
great wisdom, and still face great despair,
because you're still gonna face death.
You're still gonna lose friends.
You're still gonna feel distant from God sometimes.
This is honest-to-God talk in Psalm 88.
And so Heman teaches us, when we feel this way,
to simply cry out to God for help,
because he is our only help.
It is a lie to think that you can find hope
in your circumstances,
but it is a certainty that you can find hope in God,
in his love, and his grace, and his power.
It's as certain as the fact that Jesus died on the cross.
It is as certain as the fact
that Jesus was raised from the dead.
It is as certain as the fact that the Holy Spirit came
and filled those people in the day of Pentecost.
It is as certain as the fact that God came to you
and brought you into his family.
There is a phrase that seems very cliche to most of us.
You don't know that God is all you need
until God is all you have.
But for most of us, there's a moment in our lives
when that phrase stops being a cliche,
because God really is all that you have in that moment.
And he really is all that you need in that moment.
The spirit of this Psalm is this.
Hope does not always instantly erase your despair.
There are times in all of our lives
when we will feel hope and despair together
at the same time.
But if you keep your hope in God through those times,
gradually, but certainly, the hope that is greater,
the hope that's gonna last for eternity,
the hope will outweigh the despair.
And so, Father, as we come to you today and pray,
especially if we're in great despair
in our hearts right now, we choose to say, "But God."
But God is the one in whom I trust,
not my circumstances.
And although everything around me tells me that all is lost,
I know that it is not, because God, I'm not lost to you.
I'm still loved by you.
I'm still chosen by you.
I'm still gonna spend eternity with you in hope.
And I may not feel that truth today,
but I have that hope today.
And so in that hope, I pray that the weight of that hope
would speak to my soul right now.
And I pray it in Jesus' name, amen.
Glad you were with us for Psalm 88 today,
even though it's a tough Psalm to look at.
Tomorrow, we're gonna look together at Psalm 89.
(upbeat music)