Should THIS be in the Bible? – Praying Psalm 88

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Shabbat Shalom everybody. We are going to conclude our series on the Psalms today. And of course, that doesn't mean that we will never talk about the Psalms again, because I guarantee you that won't be the case. But when we started this series, and this is important, sometimes when God works, you don't really know or notice until it's behind you. And you look back and you're like, wow, God had this the whole time. When we started this series, it happened to be literally right when the pandemic hit. But we believe God knew what he was doing because this series is exactly what many people needed during this time. A series to become more familiar with the Psalms, see the beauty and the blessings of the Psalms, but mainly to be able to use the Psalms as a type of prayer or a template for a stronger and more focused prayer life. And we truly hope that it was.

A Psalm Like No Other

This week we are diving into the bleakest Psalm in the Bible. We saved this one for last because it's honestly one of the harder Psalms to cover just because of its sheer nature. And Psalm 88, which we're about to read, it's not the type of Psalm that you would expect to be in the Bible. I'll just put it like that, to put it bluntly. It's a very dark Psalm. The Psalmist is crying out to God multiple times and God is nowhere to be seen. The Psalmist continues to cry out as he's writing this, but all he gets in return from heaven is silence. He even begins to try to negotiate with God, telling God that you're going to lose face if you don't respond soon.

Silence. This is a Psalm of lament. But the thing is, all of the Psalms of lament, as we've been discussing through this series, they all, no matter how angry or how upset the author is at God, how disappointed they are, how sad they are, they always end up coming to their senses at the end. God always responds and they acknowledge that God is true. God is faithful. God is trustworthy. And they end their Psalm with praising God. But not here. Not in Psalm 88. The author finishes the Psalm neither acknowledging God's response or presence, but showing that he has actually traveled away from God as a result.

Which makes this Psalm so uncomfortable. At first look, the Psalm is about someone earnestly crying out to God and God is a no-show. Seriously, we have Psalms where the author is crying out to God in agony and depression, not understanding why they're going through what they're going through. But they all end with God somehow responding, giving hope, giving us some morsels to chew on to just keep waiting on God. He'll be here soon. He's going to come soon. That's not Psalm 88. And the thing is, if you're a Bible nerd, you find it kind of neat in a weird way. God allowed a psalm to be added to the Bible that shows the reality of a person going through a time of doubt, going through a time where their prayers are not being answered, going through a time of deep depression, crying out for God's help, and God never shows up.

What are we supposed to do with this? Why? Why would God allow this to be in the Bible at all? The psalm ends with the author being consumed by his new and only companion that he can find: darkness. Augustine struggled with understanding why this psalm was in the Bible. The only way he could make sense of it at all was to say that it was all just a bunch of allegory for the suffering of Christ, which, as we will see, can be a legitimate explanation, but it still cannot mute the deafening underlying message of the psalm. Others have attempted to make the psalm more encouraging by taking the motif of the darkness overwhelming and winning over the author near the end of the psalm as being about God's presence overwhelming him.

So, essentially another opinion to try to make the psalm more palatable is to say, oh, the darkness that overwhelms him at the end, that's really just God. And that's great, and I'm sure there's some sort of application that this is actually edifying depending on the circumstance that you find yourself in. But I don't think these explanations accurately portray the weight of the struggle with the seemingly divine and human abandonment that's taking place here.

Life as a Christian Does Not Feel the Way We Think It Should

And so let's go ahead and jump in and read Psalm 88 here. The thing is, and I'll be upfront about why I want to focus on this Psalm today. It's important to acknowledge that sometimes— and this is really the biggest reason—life as a Christian does not end up or feel the way that we think it should. And that doesn't mean that you're a bad Christian or a bad believer. Just because life is hard and you're having trouble comprehending it and you feel the weight of those things and the brokenness of the world around you and it gets you kind of down, that does not mean you're a bad Christian or a bad believer.

Every day in this life is not happy-go-lucky. Every day in this life is not filled with overjoyous excitement. Even with the triumphant victory of Yeshua over sin and death, being a believer that pledges allegiance to that kingdom, knowing and understanding and believing the power behind it, the journey of a Christian is not filled with rainbows and butterflies all the time. It just isn't. And it's a tragedy that there are churches and ministers that try to portray this life, a life that follows and grows and runs the race after Yeshua and His kingdom, as this thing that is just floating on cloud nine.

Because if you've been a believer for more than 15 minutes, you realize that's not necessarily the case when we're sent into a broken world. We're not meant to rise, we're not meant to float over it and just look down on it as if we're not called to actually do anything about it. And when we actually jump into it to help and to do something about it and spread the message of peace and love and the justice of God, guess what? We endure and it hits back. And that's what Christians do. And there are times when we as believers go through times of darkness. We go through times of despair. If I can be real, can we admit that?

We go through times where we struggle. And the thing is, many times we're taught, you know what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't feel that way. You know, conceal, don't feel, right? Like, it's not appropriate for a Christian to feel depressed because obviously you don't have the life-giving spirit of Jesus in you, right? Like, I've heard these things. I've heard this preached. And so making yourself vulnerable enough to even talk to someone at your church or to a friend instantly gets shut down and dismissed as the mark of some lukewarm Christian who doesn't have any faith. I mean, come on, you can't be a Christian and feel down in life.

Your faith obviously isn't strong enough if you have sadness. Oh, you want to acknowledge that God doesn't always answer prayers? No, no, we're not allowed to do that. And that attitude—it's not just horrifying, it's tragic and it's sad because the reality is life is filled with hurt and pain in times of struggle. Even for—and I would suggest especially for— Christians. Jesus himself gives a heads up on this, by the way. He doesn't just tell us to be willing to go through persecution. He says to pick up, carry, and drag that cross around. Paul's instructions are to die daily. Last time I checked, dying daily wasn't this pleasant, rosy rainbows and butterflies.

Dying daily is not a fun image if you expect to have this comfy, cushy life that's completely full of worldly joy. And Paul's point is that we need to be willing to not ignore the pain and the tragedy on the road ahead that we're called to walk down. The world we live in is broken. And as we learn to follow Yeshua through it, we mature. We experience the awakening of wisdom. We strengthen our faith. And the evolution of faith as we walk through this life usually happens through the harder times versus the times of blessing. So if you have ever gone through a time of darkness in your life, a time of struggle, a time where you didn't understand why God was not answering your prayers, I want you to know that you're not alone, and you never, ever should have felt like you were. For one, you have empathy from the author of Psalm 88, and likely more of your Christian friends than you think.

You're Not Alone

So, that being said, I do believe Psalm 88 should be in the Bible, and I believe that it was placed there by God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to remind us that it's okay to experience these times of brokenness, and to know that you're not alone. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that Psalm 88 is an embarrassment to conventional faith. And what he means is that it's a kind of thing that some Christians are embarrassed by. Some Christians don't know what to do with this psalm. Like, you're a Christian now, you will never experience sadness again, only blessing and joy. Yeah, and that's not very helpful.

That's not very helpful. If anything, you being a Christian should help equip you for those experiences, not blind you to them. And so when this conventional idea of pure prosperity that seems to be taught everywhere, Psalm 88 is embarrassing to people who believe that. It's a shameful psalm because it doesn't align with their perceived theology about life and how God works in this world. So, let's go ahead and read Psalm 88 without further ado. A psalm of the sons or lineage of Korah for the director of music according to Machalat Leonoth, a mascal of Haman the Ezraite. Verse 1: Lord, you are the God who saves me.

A Poetry of Despair

Day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you. Turn your ear to my cry. I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death. I am counted among those who go down to the pit and I am like one 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 have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have overwhelmed me with waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and I cannot escape. My eyes are dim with grief.

I call to you, Lord, every day. I spread out my hands towards you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits or shades rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? But I cry to you for help, Lord. In the morning my prayers come before you. Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth I have suffered and been close to death. I have borne your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me. Your terrors have destroyed me.

All day long they surround me like a flood. They have completely engulfed me. You have taken from me friend and neighbor. Darkness is my closest friend. Gosh, that is so raw and powerful. And I hope you were following along with that. This is not just a nice full cup of brightness and joy. So remember, before anything else, this is poetry. And so what we read, we need to understand the context and the category that we should be reading it and recognizing it in. It's poetry. This is not narrative. This is not historical genre. There is no demand for us to interpret a story here like we would in the Torah or Joshua or Judges.

It's poetry. There is a demand for us to emotionally engage with the story being told. And the thing about poetry is authors typically don't care if you get the whole scope or not. This is an expression of a man named Haman, the Ezraite. This is him crafting his own emotional journey that became a song that was sung by the priest. That's what the superscription says at the beginning, the maskil. It was sung. After reading it, maybe that bothers you more that this was like a song that was sung by maybe a choir or priest. This was a song that was meant to be sung in the tone of affliction. That's the nugget hidden in the Hebrew in the title and the superscription as well.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine singing this? And if you notice, there's no resolve here. There's no resolution. There's no rescue from God. God doesn't even respond. That's the whole point of this. Can you imagine being part of the choir? Okay guys, today is Misery Monday and up on the list is Psalm 88. You guys ready? Let's take it from the top. I cannot imagine. And if this psalm bothers you, I want you to remember something. If it bothers you, it should. The emotions you feel when reading this psalm, the questions that you have, the anguish you attempt to empathize with, I would suggest are intentional.

So, if you're a bit uncomfortable concerning the nature of this Psalm, good, embrace that and lean into that for whatever it's worth. God put this here for a reason. And so, let's dissect this.

Understanding the Psalm's Structure

Let's start with how the Psalm is actually written out as a launching pad for its possible theological and pastoral implications, as well as its relationship with the New Testament, because there is one that's asserted. The most common structural arrangement assigned to Psalm 88, Bible nerd Tom, is a fourfold division of verses 1 through 2, 3-9, 10-12, and 13-18. Those are the four sections that it's divided up in. And this primarily organizes the content based upon the sentence structures employed within the text. As such, the first section, verses 1 and 2, they serve as the address to Yahweh, who is the first word in the Psalm, Yahweh.

The second section, which is verses 3-9, contains metaphorical descriptions of the psalmist's suffering. Section -12 employs a series of rhetorical questions in order to describe the desperation that the author is feeling. And then of course the final section, verses 13-18, takes up the concluding descriptions of suffering. So the longer sections, which is verses 3-9 and 13-18, may be further divided up since verses 35 and 13-15 are first person descriptions and verses 6-9 and 16-18 are actually complaints against Yahweh in the second person. So we have two different types of first person descriptions and second person descriptions.

And I know that's a lot of detail, but I want you to respect that because a lot of detail goes into building and wording and writing the Psalms. These are not simply a bunch of random words a shepherd scribbled in his time in the field with the sheep. These were intentionally written the way that they were. And I want you to value that. Old Testament scholars such as Dr. Willem van Gemeren seem to suggest that we should look at Psalm 88 with the relationship between the first person descriptions and accusations against Yahweh. The first and the second person descriptions. If we choose to entertain this lens, and let me tell you what all that's going to mean.

If we choose to entertain that lens that he suggests over Psalm 88, we quickly see a very clear chiastic structure. And the thing about a chiasm in the text, as you should know, we've discussed it in this series. The text can help guide the reader to the central point of the psalm, the climax of the psalm, or the point of the psalm. And here is the chiastic structure that he proposes. We have section A, which is verses 1 and 2. We have section B that builds the psalmist's sufferings, verses 3 and 4. We have the next section, verses 6 through 9a, which is Yahweh's rejection or failure to listen and respond.

And then you have D, which is verses 9b through 12, which is the psalmist's petition and inquiry. And then it goes on to verses 13 through 15, the psalmist's suffering. And then finally, the form of Yahweh's rejection in the final two verses. And so yeah, that's the proposed chiasm of Psalm 88. And if you've never seen one before, don't let it intimidate you. I know it looks like a lot of information. It's simply illustrating where the tension builds in Psalm 88. And it's suggesting that the highest point of tension has been built up and is expressed right in between verses 9b and verse 12. In other words, this chiasm builds the psalm like a movie where there is suspense, there's action, and there's an expectation and anticipation of resolution and praise for and from the psalmist.

The Heart of the Plea

The psalm begins with his address to Yahweh. The psalmist trusts God enough to inquire. He has a resume of God from his past. He complains of his suffering, of everything he's going through, but he feels rejection from Yahweh. No answer ever comes. No response. Instead, he ends up crediting Yahweh for now placing him in the grave due to his inaction. And then, the high point of the chiasm is the psalmist's sincere, weighty petition and inquiry of God. I will call to you, Lord, every day. I spread out my hands to you. I cry for help. And then he gives a reason why he does this—pretty bold, right? But I feel like some of us have actually prayed like that before. I sure have. God, grant my prayer so that I can tell the world about your testimony. It's legitimate. But all the same, pretty bold, right? And so here the psalmist is setting up this movie, this film where we are at the high point of despair.

Like a Movie

And I love film. If you know me, you know I love movies, I love film. And I tried to think of a good film, and although there were many, I tried to stick with the safest one. And I think the biggest film over the past few years was the Avengers movie climax at the end of Phase 3 of the Marvel movie series, ending with Avengers: Endgame. And I'm sure you saw it. However, you may have never seen it. And if that is the case, I'm sorry, it was a great story. But those of you who did, do you remember, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, do you remember in Avengers: Endgame when Iron Man and Captain America were fighting Thanos on the battlefield?

Captain America did that thing with a hammer and everyone cheered and it was awesome. And Thanos rises up and he unleashes his entire army on the earth. This is the biggest army in the universe. And you could feel the tension. You could feel the tension because at that moment there was so much confidence for the bad guy. And you could feel the despair in Captain America and Iron Man. Like there was no way they were going to be able to win this fight. And the scene just pops up and gives enough time for the audience to gasp and go, like, what's going to happen? Like, how is this going to end? And at that moment, in that silent moment of the audience gasping, you see this little circle of sparks start to rotate behind them.

And you're still kind of gasping, wondering what's going to happen, but wait, is that Dr. Strange? And then more portals start opening behind them. And the next thing you see is Spider-Man swinging in. And you're like, yes, it's Spider-Man. You see the Hulk come in. And then you see this climactic, epic scene of the whole army of Wakanda marching into the battlefield. And if you watched this movie in the theaters, you were screaming at this point. I know you were because everybody was. They built the drama up so well in this film that the entire theater exploded all three times I went to see it. It was crazy.

The story was built to anticipate this coming resolution and victory. You were expecting a victory, but you weren't sure. All the tension was there. You weren't sure how it was going to happen. This scene where Captain America and Iron Man were joined by the rest of the team to take on Thanos once and for all. And if you haven't seen Avengers Endgame or the movie series, pick any actionadventure movie, and this is the standard flow and plot of how things play out.

The Tension Builds

And so we have here in Psalm chapter 88 this high point. This most tense part of the psalm, and it's found in verses 9b through 12. And you're waiting. You're waiting for praise and resolution to occur. You're waiting for the psalmist to be pulled out of the grips of death. The water, the black waters of death are flooding in around him. The cords of Sheol are grabbing him and pulling him down deeper and deeper into the earth. And then he gets overwhelmed by darkness. It just consumes him. And you're stuck as the reader going, what just happened? Where is God? Where is the praise for being saved? That's how Psalms of Lament work.

Like Psalm 22 and Psalm 73, that's how they end. We know how Psalms of Lament are supposed to be written. They're not supposed to be written like this. The Psalm is laid out intentionally to start with the words Yahweh and end with the word darkness. It's a journey of the psalmist from Yahweh moving towards darkness. To put it in a more understandable way, it's like those movies that you go and see sometimes that don't end with the entire team of good guys becoming victorious, but they end up losing in the end. It's kind of like how Avengers Infinity War ended. Imagine if Infinity War was the last Marvel movie ever made.

And I know a couple of us—I hope this is a relevant reference—just sat out in our cars after we saw it and just stared at our steering wheel for a good 10 minutes before we felt comfortable enough to drive. Let's be honest, imagine if that is how the entire series ended. This incredible battle and Thanos snaps his fingers and the universe is forever left in mourning. So that's what this distasteful conclusion that the poem of Hammond brings us to.

Without Hope or Happy Endings

Well, this message of Psalm 88, as we see, is not filled with hope or happy endings. It's dark, it's full of fear, loneliness, it's dirty, and it's dingy. Now, some of the possible resolutions to how to handle this psalm do include where it's placed in the book of Psalms. If you checked out our message titled The Savior of Psalms, you'll remember the book of Psalms was edited after the Babylonian exile, and the poetry was intentionally placed across five books, or five sections, mimicking the Torah. And within those five books, we have the Davidic collections, subsets of them, which kind of make up almost the seams of each of the five sections of Psalms.

Psalm 88 is around the end of Book 3, which details the fall of the Davidic monarchy, the promises of God that David would reign forever are disappearing, and David has fallen. And of course, this is what launches the entire downward spiral, which ends Israel in exile. If this is the case, this Psalm would have shown empathy for those in exile or post-exilic trying to piece their lives back together. Everything had been taken from them. How do we get through this? How do we get through this time in our life where hope has been stripped away from us, where the reality of where we are living now is just awful?

Our homes were taken, they were burned. We return and the land that we have is not fruitful. Even worse, we're still slaves subject to Persia. God was supposed to fix this. God was supposed to bring a new creation, a path in the desert that returned us back to His blessings. Where is our new king that was promised by the prophets?

Keep Crying Out

Something that you've likely noticed among the darkness in Psalm 88 is, despite God's silence, what did the petitioner keep doing? What did Haman keep doing? And this is significant. Well, Lord, you are the God that saves me. Day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you. Turn your ear to my cries. But I cry to you for help, Lord. See, if you notice that, awesome, that was intentionally put there. Despite the perceived silence, despite God being absent in the poem, the psalmist does not stop pushing. He will not stop praying. He will continue to cry out, even to the point of warning God that he's going to lose face.

You're going to lose face if you let me die. God, no one will hear about my testimony if I'm dead. He never stops. It's a similar trajectory to the book of Ecclesiastes, although it's still pretty different. But you have this entire book that's built on giving up. Ecclesiastes. What's the point? Everything stinks. It's all vapor. It just goes away. There's no point of any of this. Might as well grab some wine and enjoy life because death is coming, guys. The righteous make their bed there and so do the wicked. We're all going to be hanging out in the same place. It's a very pessimistic outlook at times.

Fear God and Keep His Commandments

But here is where I believe that Psalm 88 and Ecclesiastes have a connection. At the end of Ecclesiastes, after Colette rants for 12 chapters, finally the narrator takes back over. And upon reflecting on the words of this author, Colette, He comes to a place where he really doesn't know how to advise the readers at the end of Ecclesiastes. He's like, everything he said was right. That's actually really good wisdom because that's the reality of the world out there. He's kind of stumped on these words because all of it's true. And so what's he say? What's he say at the end of the book? What's he say in Ecclesiastes 12, 13?

Now all has been heard. Here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty for all of mankind. And that's all you can do. Like, go out into the world, and it seems like there's no winwin, according to the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. If you've read it, you understand. There's no win-win. So you might as well just stay as faithful as you can. And the context of this verse is not some positive encouraging pursuit of blessings through obedience. Please stop using it that way if you use it that way. It's literally the only thing the author can grab at to justify continuing on as a faithful Israelite.

That's all he has to grab onto as a life of an ancient Israelite. And this verse is taken out of context so many times, especially within the Messianic communities. I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that said, Real men keep Torah, with this verse plastered all over it. And don't do that. This is not supposed to be a verse of encouragement. The context is that's not that. Now all has been heard. Okay, well what's that mean? Now that I've heard everything, everything in the past 12 chapters of Ecclesiastes, now that everything's been heard, here's the conclusion to it all. Everything the author said in the first 12 chapters of Ecclesiastes.

I guess we just need to fear God and keep his commandments because that's all a man can really do after all. Like, that's it. It's a verse that, in my opinion, was penned out of desperation, not out of encouragement of standing on the Torah. That's really all we can do. It's not a highlight verse to brag about and show off. It's not good. It's not supposed to be this encouraging thing. It's supposed to be, all right. Life is hard. There are disappointments. So what do we do? Just keep pushing forward.

Just Keep Going

So imagine the mind of an ancient Israelite, again, especially exilic or post-exilic, during and after the exile. They went from the high point of ruling the world at the peak of Solomon's reign to tumbling down, down, down into exile. How can we ever recover from this? Is it even worth recovering? What can we do? And all of these authors are pinning to the ancient Israelites saying, Just keep going. Don't stop moving forward. Keep your eyes focused. Fear God. Keep His commandments. At least we know that to be true even when everything else stinks. And here in Psalm 88, we see, not quite the same attitude, but similar.

Don't stop crying out. Do not stop, despite how hard it is, despite what's going on in your life. The author could have put a happy ending at the end to make us feel better if he wanted to. But he wanted to let you know that happy endings don't always happen the way that we think that they should. That's truth. That's the reality of the world that we live in. But that's not an excuse. That does not mean we stop being faithful. It does not mean we stop crying out. It does not mean that we stop. This psalm was written for people who want to stop, who have an excuse to stop, who are going through things where they want to just give up, who feel like God is silent to their cries and all of their petitions.

The author, Haman the Ezraite, wants you to know that he understands living in that life and living in that circumstance. He understands what it's like to pray for something that is life or death. And guess what? Your prayer didn't get answered. It's as if God didn't even hear you. He wants you to know he understands being in that situation. But he also wants to tell you, don't stop. Keep pushing. Even when it seems the darkness may win. That's powerful. And that's why I don't like seeing people try to dilute or minimize the message of Psalm 88 because it's meant to be uncomfortable. Because the life that we...

How Warriors Are Born

This world right outside is uncomfortable. There are many of us who are facing uncomfortable circumstances. And some of us, that's probably an understatement. This is how warriors are born. Don't stop living. There are some implications that are neat in the New Testament for this psalm being referenced in Luke 23. So we're going to go ahead and check that out. Remember the last few psalms, we've spoken about how the story of the Old Testament, everything points to Yeshua. That was the mission of the New Testament authors. And here we go.

The Righteous Sufferer

So turn with me to Luke 23, verse 49. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching these things. So this verse is taking place during the passion scene in Luke's account. And Yeshua has looked into the eyes of death. The cords of Sheol have wrapped around him. And the black waters of Abaddon, the grave, rise over his mouth and his face. He sunk into complete darkness. And He's dead. He's dead at this point. And this verse indicated the moments right after He died on the cross. All of His friends stood at a distance. And here Luke asserts that Yeshua's followers, again, all the ones who knew him were standing at a distance far away as they watched the events of his crucifixion unfold.

And here Luke's phrase, all of those who knew Jesus stood far from him, in the Greek is roughly the same. It parallels the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament quoted by the authors in the New Testament. It parallels the Septuagint phrase version of Psalm 88:8. "You removed the ones who knew me far from me." And what's neat is it's too close to ignore. If this parallel was intentionally put in there by Luke, which I believe it was, then the comparison between the righteous sufferer of Psalm 88 and the suffering of Yeshua is intended to be seen here. Dr. Hans Joachim Krahs, in his commentary on Psalms, says so it's kind of neat. The significance of this connection can be seen in the fact that though the complaints of the psalmist in Psalm 88 were not resolved, seemingly, Yeshua, through His death, burial, resurrection, has provided a real answer to the problem of human suffering since He has conquered Sheol and its creation of separation between God and the dead who inhabit it.

Peculiar and Marvelous

Psalm 88 is both peculiar and marvelous in its place in the book of Psalms, where the author feels that they suffer needlessly. And while many other Psalms rejoice in their resolution, Psalm 88 lingers in its suffering. Within the canonical context, if you will, the canon, it is also a reminder that unresolved suffering may be part of a life for the righteous. Like, that's part of life. Though the Gospel of Luke may see the ultimate resolution as a victory run by Yeshua who entered into the suffering and was given victory over it. The needless suffering of the righteous is not resolved by the psalmist, but he still stands at a signpost calling out the reality that so many experience in this life in order to show the remedy of the incarnation and the resurrection of Yeshua, who stands victorious over death and suffering no matter what.

A victory to be shared by those who put their trust in him. Yeah, this psalm tends to stand as a unique entry among the collection of the poetry in the book of Psalms, out of all of the poems. This one stands out for its lack of theological or existential resolution. And I think it's a hard reality check that the unresolved and unanswered suffering found in the psalm provides an important model of a faithful sufferer who continues to cry out to God, though he feels abandoned by God.

You Are Not Alone

And if that's you today, if that's you today, I want to attempt to encourage you to not stop crying out. And maybe, maybe you're not facing a place where death is overtaking you. The life of a Christian in this world is not always happy and filled with joy despite the hope that we have. And sometimes that gets us. Sometimes the world seems a little bit too dark. Sometimes we wonder why we put in the energy of hope. Sometimes we wonder if there's even a point. And I want to tell you today that there is. And you don't have to travel this road alone. Reach out to someone. The principle of having a community of Yeshua is having a community.

Reach out. Because I think you'll find that you may not be as alone as you think when you make yourself vulnerable and you reach out to your friends, to your family, and your fellowship, and your community, to the church leadership that you attend. You may not be as alone as you think you are. And we need to encourage one another while we continue the race, as Paul calls it, in this world. So I hope Psalm 88 maybe piqued your interest. I hope you found it interesting. I hope it got you in the word and interested in the word. But I also hope that it encourages you that you're not alone in this world, that the Holy Spirit allowed this psalm to be in here for a reason.

And it was meant to be sung and it was meant to be prayed because there's a deeper weight to this message that was meant to prepare us for the world and the mission that we're out here now, that we're pursuing now in the name of Yeshua, that His kingdom is here now. We are the ones to be the hands and the feet of it.

Keep Running

Keep running. Keep crying out because there is hope. And that is the unified message of the Bible, that there is hope and it is only found in the place of Yeshua. Despite how dark the world gets and how dark it feels, there is always hope. Don't stop pushing. Keep going and reach out to someone. Shalom, I'm Matthew Vanderells and I hope you enjoyed this message. Founded in Truth exists to build a community that bears the image of God and lives the redeemed life only Yeshua gives. If this message impacted you or if this ministry has been a blessing to you, we invite you to take part in making sure the message of Yeshua and the truth of God's word continues to reach others. To make sure this happens, you can donate through our online giving portal at foundinatruth.com slash give or by texting any amount to 704-2750752. Don't forget to like and subscribe for new content every single week. And we thank you for your continued support. And we look forward to seeing you next time. Shalom.