The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): There's an intense feeling of spiritual anguish when the believer feels abandoned by God. Psalm 88 reflects that anguish in what has been called the darkest and gloomiest of Psalms, and a Psalm filled with one wail of sorrow from beginning to end.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically.

Guest (Male): Even this darkest of Psalms has a purpose. It reminds us that despite our faith, our lives are sometimes filled with trouble, and often there seems to be no end in sight.

Guest (Male): Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 88 and reminds us that while life doesn't always have a happy ending, nothing happens in God's universe without purpose, and we are to continue to lay our requests before our faithful God.

Dr. James Boice: We're studying Psalm 88 today, and I've given it the title The Dark Night of the Soul. That's a phrase that is not very common today, but it was in the Middle Ages where it was common on the lips of the European mystics. It probably comes to us through the title of a book by the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross. The book has a different title in English, but the original title was that, The Dark Night of the Soul.

Dr. James Boice: It describes that state of intense spiritual anguish in which the struggling, despairing believer feels that he or she has been abandoned by God. That's what Psalm 88 is about. It's not unlike other Psalms that also speak from a gloomy perspective. But the other Psalms all more or less move toward a resolution, or to a happier outlook or an uplifting final note, and that is not what we have here.

Dr. James Boice: Psalm 88 begins with God. It's a prayer to God. You find that in the first line, the word, O Lord, occurs several times throughout, but it ends with blank despair, and the last word of the Psalm is darkness.

Dr. James Boice: Derry Kidner, one of the commentators said, "This is the saddest prayer in the Psalter." Leopold, another commentator said, "It is the gloomiest Psalm in the scriptures." The Psalmist is as deeply in trouble when he has concluded his prayer as when he began it. And Stuart Perowne said, "This is the darkest, saddest of the Psalms. It is one wail of sorrow from beginning to end."

Dr. James Boice: Now it's good that we have a Psalm like this, but it's also good that we have just one. I say it's good that we have it because it's a reminder that life, even the life of a Christian, is filled with troubles. And sometimes there are things in our lives that we just are unable to understand. There's no way to understand it at all.

Dr. James Boice: Psalm 88 is by an inspired writer, after all. His name is given at the top, his name is Heman the Ezrahite. He's one of the sons of Korah. His Psalm has been included in the Bible. And so God has placed it there in order to tell us that he knows that there are times like this in our lives. It's not the final word, but it nevertheless is a word we need to hear, and it's honest.

Dr. James Boice: Some time ago, I was talking to somebody about Christian literature, and the person I was talking to asked why there's so little outstanding Christian fiction today. The answer is that it's not true enough to life. Somehow when you read a Christian novel or a Christian essay, it has to come out right. Somehow we have to write it in a way that proves, by the time you get to the end of it, that everything really was good after all.

Dr. James Boice: Now, you can go to the other extreme. A lot of the literature we read today has no hope whatsoever, and it's utterly pessimistic. It's meant to prove that there is no meaning to anything. And Christians don't believe that. We believe there is a meaning, but we do not believe that you can always see it. And Psalm 88 is a proof that you can't always see it.

Dr. James Boice: There may be a perfectly good moral from God's point of view. I believe it is. I believe that all of life has a divine purpose, and that we're going to see it one day, but it doesn't mean that we're going to see it now. Marvin Tate, another commentator said, "Psalm 88 is a witness to the intent of the Psalms to speak to all of life, to remind us that life does not always have happy endings."

Dr. James Boice: Martin Marty, another commentator says, "The Psalm is a scandal to anyone who isolates it from the rest of the biblical canon, a pain to anyone who must tear it apart from more lively words." Well, that's true. We want to look at it for what it says, but as we do, we want to keep in mind that although this is true, it's not the whole truth, and there are other things also to be said.

Dr. James Boice: Now, how do we consider it? I suppose various outlines have been given, a fairly long Psalm after all, 18 verses. But probably the best way to deal with it is simply to take it in the sequence of its thought, because this is building. This is a very emotional Psalm. And just see how the thought flows along. The best way probably is on the basis of the stanzas that are given to us in the New International Version.

Dr. James Boice: Now, the only hopeful line in the whole Psalm is the first. He says, "Oh Lord, the God who saves me." That's not to be dismissed lightly. We're going to see that although this man is in despair and he sees nothing around him but darkness, and he expects to die and he doesn't even have any hope then. Nevertheless, he's praying.

Dr. James Boice: And so the fact that he begins by an address to God is not to be dismissed. On the other hand, that line is more or less a formal beginning, and from this point on, as we would say, the path is all downhill. The writer is calling on God, but God hasn't answered. And not only has God not answered, he's been calling on God for a long time, and God hasn't answered.

Dr. James Boice: He says verse 15 that he's been afflicted from his youth, and yet God hasn't acted to remove the cause of his suffering. Sometimes it's interesting to try and connect these Psalms with other Psalms, and there are phrases in this that remind us of the very first of these songs of the sons of Korah. This is the next to the last one, no more after we get out of this book, and into the fourth and fifth book of the Psalter.

Dr. James Boice: The very first of the songs of the sons of Korah was the 42nd one, a much more hopeful Psalm, but nevertheless it has phrases in it that are like this. My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, where is your God? Well, there seem to be a lot of gloomy notes here.

Dr. James Boice: Now, we can't fault the Psalmist for failing to believe in promises that he didn't have. He had not yet received the promise of the resurrection, the kind of things that we know because we stand on this side of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But nevertheless, when we come to it, we remember that we do have this kind of promise. Here's a man who feels that he's been calling upon God, and God hasn't listened to him and hasn't answered.

Dr. James Boice: We can't read that without remembering some of the things that Jesus taught about prayer. Remember that story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge? Here was a woman who had a case and had been bringing it before the judge, and because he was unjust and she didn't have any money to bribe him so that he would hear her case and decide favorably, he's simply been ignoring her.

Dr. James Boice: And yet she kept it up and she prayed, and she prayed, and she prayed, and she prayed all of this in the form of a suit to the judge, and finally he said to himself, "Oh, I'll give her justice so she'll stop bothering me." And then Jesus made a contrast between that and God. He said, "Look, here's an unjust man who'll do it because this woman persists in her prayer, won't God do the same?"

Dr. James Boice: And suddenly Jesus' point is that although it may seem to us a very, very long time that God doesn't answer and that God is silent, nevertheless God is a hearing and prayer answering God, and he will answer. So Jesus encouraged us to keep on praying.

Dr. James Boice: We look at the next stanza, this is verses 3 through 5. It certainly gives us a clue early on as to where this is going because it just gets darker and darker phrase by phrase. Look at how it works. First, the writer's soul is full of trouble, first half of verse 3. Then he's drawing near the grave, second half of verse 3. Third, he is counted among the dead, those that go down to the pit, perhaps even by his friends. Fourth, he is without strength. And finally, he is even set apart with the dead like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from all your care.

Dr. James Boice: And that last section, he sees himself almost as if he were laid out in the charnel house or the mortuary. Not only dying, but dead and abandoned by all the living. This description of death, according to one of the commentators, is the central focus of the Psalm.

Dr. James Boice: Now C.S. Lewis has a little book on the Psalms, which is very helpful. It's called Reflections on the Psalms, and it's valuable because Lewis isn't afraid to tackle the problem areas. We tend to read the Psalms that are easy and comforting and filled with faith, and Lewis does that too, but he also tackles the difficult ones. And he has a chapter in that book that deals with the Psalmist's view of death.

Dr. James Boice: Now sometimes it's hopeful, but at other times it really seems gloomy. And Lewis says, when they talk about Sheol or the grave, we tend to think, well, you know, that's just the earthly grave, and you die and you go to be with Jesus, but that really isn't what many of the Psalmists meant. He said, "They speak of Sheol the way somebody will talk about the grave today who has no hope in the afterlife at all." Somebody talks about the grave, they mean it's over.

Dr. James Boice: And Lewis says, some of the sections of the Psalms seem to say that. Listen, here's what he says: "The clearest of all is the cry in Psalm 89." That's the next one we're going to look at, verse 46. "O remember how short my time is, why hast thou made all men for nought?" In other words, we all come to nothing in the end, according to C.S. Lewis.

Dr. James Boice: Or again, "Therefore every man living is altogether vanity." Psalm 39:6. Or "Wise and foolish men have the same fate." Psalm 49:10. "Shall the dust give thanks to thee?" Psalm 30, verse 10. "For in death no man remembers you." Psalm 6, verse 5. And then referring to this Psalm that we're studying, verse 12, "Death is the land where not only worldly things, but all things are forgotten."

Dr. James Boice: Now, as I say, we can't think that way because we stand on the other side of the resurrection, and we remember the words of Jesus. He said, "I'm going to prepare a place for you, and when I've done that, I'll come again, I'll receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also." We just can never quite be this gloomy, although emotionally we may feel that way.

Dr. James Boice: But we want to remember that even in the Old Testament, this is not the only testimony we have. How about David's well-known 23rd Psalm? He said, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." And again, he said in the same Psalm, "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Dr. James Boice: God has never left his people entirely without hope, even though that hope was dimmer in the Old Testament period than it is today. God tests our faith, but he never leaves it without a sure foundation in his word.

Dr. James Boice: Now I use that word darkness to refer to the second stanza, verses 3 through 5, but it actually occurs for the first time in verse 6: "You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths." What makes this depth so dark, according to this third stanza, is that God has caused it. We've seen that many times in the Psalms before.

Dr. James Boice: Here's a man who feels abandoned by God. He prays, and God doesn't answer, but he hasn't lost faith in there being a God. He knows that God's nevertheless in charge. That's what makes it so bad. Notice his references to God here: "You have put me in the lowest pit. Your wrath lies heavily upon me. You have overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends." And if you run down later in the Psalm to the very last stanza, verse 16 says, "Your wrath has swept over me, your terrors have destroyed me."

Dr. James Boice: It's worth noticing the similarities between this Psalm and Job. Remember the story of Job? Job was a righteous man, but he lost everything. Lost all of his possessions, lost his family, finally even lost his health. There he was, sitting on the ash heap in the posture of a mourner. And his friends came and they tried to explain how this could happen. They had superficial answers.

Dr. James Boice: Job knew that their answers were superficial, but he didn't have the right answer. And so you go the whole way through that story of Job, and he doesn't seem to get the right answer at all. We get it because we have an introduction to the book of Job that explains that this has to do with cosmic forces, and we get to the end, and we find how things turn out, but the explanation is never given to Job. Job is simply called upon to trust God.

Dr. James Boice: That's the kind of thing we have here. Here's a man in the pits, going through all of the suffering that some people know, and he's not getting an explanation. The similarity between some of the things that are said in Job, and that are said in this Psalm, has caused one of the old commentators at least to suggest that they have the same author. He suggests that the person who wrote the book of Job was this man Heman the Ezrahite.

Dr. James Boice: Well, I don't know whether that's true or not, but I do see the parallel. The patriarch Job didn't know what was going on, and the man who is experiencing this kind of despair doesn't either. Both works are present in scripture to remind us that we do not necessarily know what God is accomplishing in our own suffering either, though he has a purpose.

Dr. James Boice: Now the next stanza, this is the one from which C.S. Lewis got one of his quotations showing that the ancient Jews didn't always reflect very much on life beyond the grave if they believed in it at all. Verse 10 seems to deny the resurrection. Verses 11 and 12 seem to say that the dead are not even awake or conscious enough to remember God.

Dr. James Boice: Now that isn't true, of course. We know that there is life beyond the grave, and even those who die without faith in Christ survive beyond the grave in punishment in what the Bible calls hell. It's not true, but nevertheless it's true enough from our perspective.

Dr. James Boice: You see, that's what we have here. What we have here is an honest reflection of the way it seemed to the man who was going through it. Maybe it seems that way to you because of things that you're going through. Listen, here's what Derry Kidner, one who writes a commentary for InterVarsity says: "From the standpoint of God's congregation and his glory in the world, all that is said here is true."

Dr. James Boice: It's among the living that his miracles are performed, his praise is sung, his constancy and acts of deliverance exhibited. "Death is no exponent of his glory. Its whole character is negative. It's the last word in inactivity, silence, the severing of ties, corruption, gloom, oblivion. The New Testament concurs, calling it the last enemy."

Dr. James Boice: Now nothing is to be gained by denying that. It's not the whole truth, as I said, but it's part of the truth, and it has its place in scripture.

Dr. James Boice: You're all looking very gloomy. It gets worse. Look at the next stanza. Not only are the dead silent, since they are unable to rise up and make God's wonders known, but God is also silent toward them, so far as the Psalmist knows. That's one reason he feels so close to death, as good as dead, we might say, is that God isn't speaking to him now.

Dr. James Boice: God seems to have rejected him, not answering his prayers. Do you ever feel like that? Well, if you do, if you pray and you don't seem to get answers, if you seem far from God, if you experience what the mystics have called this dark night of the soul, it's no wonder.

Dr. James Boice: Remember what Jesus said when he was tempted by Satan? Satan wanted him to turn the stones to bread, and Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." So if you seem cut off from the words that proceed from the mouth of God, it's no wonder you seem dead or feel dead or close to death, which is what this man experienced.

Dr. James Boice: Now, you come to the end, that is verses 15 to 18. And this is the point where we've learned to expect in a Psalm like this that something should become positive. However dim the positive hope might be, we expect it to say something like this: "Nevertheless, I know you hear me anyway, and that you're going to answer me before very long." Right?

Dr. James Boice: Or we expect it to say, "Now I'm just going to wait and see what wonderful things you will do." We don't find that here, not in this Psalm. Instead of optimism, we find the gloomiest, darkest words of all. It's as if the Psalmist looks about in every direction he can, and he sees nothing but misery, despair, death, terror, and loneliness everywhere.

Dr. James Boice: Now look at it. First of all, it looks back. We sometimes, when things are going bad, the Psalmists look back and they say, "God's been good to me in the past. I've got to remember that. If he's been good to me in the past, he'll be good to me again." But the Psalmist, in his present state of mind, looks back and he doesn't see anything to be encouraged by. "From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death." He can't recall any happy days to cheer him up.

Dr. James Boice: Maybe there were some. But anyway, he can't think of any. And secondly, he looks forward. It's even worse when he does this. You say, if you, if you can look forward in hope and say, "Well, you know, it's bad now but things will get better," you can get cheered up. But when he looks forward, all he sees is death.

Dr. James Boice: He has every reason to suppose that these present bad circumstances will continue. They've plunged him into the very pit of despair, verse 15. And then he only has one other direction to look. He's looked back, he's looked forward, now he looks around at the present. These are his very last words, and they're no better. In fact, they're the worst description yet.

Dr. James Boice: He sees himself as having been destroyed by God, verse 16. Surrounded and engulfed by God's terror, verse 17. Separated from his companions and loved ones whom God has taken from him, and without God, to be all by himself in the darkness. It's interesting that in the Hebrew text, not in our English translation, but in the Hebrew text, the word darkness is the very last word.

Dr. James Boice: The Psalm ends by saying, "and my closest friend, darkness." And so the Psalm ends.

Dr. James Boice: Well, Heman's last word in this Psalm may have been darkness, but it doesn't have to be the last word for us because you see we have the Gospel, and we have salvation in Jesus Christ, and we have the assurance of things eternal in him. Now it is true if you're not in Christ, if you're not trusting Christ, the one who died for your sin, if you're trying to face it out in life on your own and one day are going to stand before God, trying to plead the merit of your own good works, then darkness is the word for you.

Dr. James Boice: Because nobody's going into heaven on the basis of his or her good works. The end result of that kind of life is hell, and Jesus himself, not mincing words, called it outer darkness forever. So for a person in a state like that, darkness is the final word. But you see it doesn't have to be, because Jesus Christ came to bring light. In him we have the light of the Gospel, and we have the very life of God bringing life out of spiritual death.

Dr. James Boice: I mentioned Derry Kidner a moment ago. He's very good in this Psalm, and he makes a number of points as he ends it. He's wrestling with it too, and he says with darkness as its final word, what is the role of this Psalm in scripture? Now then he makes a few suggestions, he comes to the conclusions. Number one, it's witness to the possibility of unrelieved suffering as a believer's lot. The happy ending of most Psalms of this kind is seen to be a bonus, not a due.

Dr. James Boice: That's really perceptive, you see. Even as Christians, we somehow think that God owes us a happy or a prosperous life. Now often he does that, he's a gracious God. And many of us have enjoyed happy lives and prosperity, but God doesn't owe us that. You see what Kidner suggests is that it's a bonus, not a due. And if God doesn't do it, that does not mean that he has abandoned us or that he's not doing what is important in our lives with us.

Dr. James Boice: The withholding of a happy life from God's people is no proof of his displeasure, just as a happy life or the possession of riches is no sure proof of his favor. Number two. The Psalm adds its voice to the groaning in travail, which forbids us to accept the present order as final.

Dr. James Boice: In other words, in spite of the kind of suffering described in this Psalm, the Bible teaches that there is a moral order to the universe, and therefore we look forward to a balancing out of good and evil in the end. Kidner says that the Psalm, Psalm 88 is a sharp reminder that we wait for adoption as sons, even the redemption of our bodies.

Dr. James Boice: It's an imperfect world now. It's a sinful world now. We don't look for the fullness of our salvation here, and so a Psalm like this points us to the future. Number three. The author like Job doesn't give up. He completes his prayer still in the dark, and totally unrewarded. The taunt, "Does Job fear God for naught?" is answered here once again.

Dr. James Boice: You see, like Job, the author of this Psalm has received no final satisfactory answer, but also like Job, he does not curse God and die. To the contrary, although he doesn't have an answer, he is still laying out his requests before God.

Dr. James Boice: And then finally, this lesson. The author's name allows us with hindsight to see that his rejection was only apparent. His existence was no mistake. There was a divine plan bigger than he knew, and a place in it reserved most carefully for him. In other words, it's an important part of God's revelation because this gloomy Psalm, expressing the dark night of the soul, has nevertheless been included by God in holy scripture.

Dr. James Boice: Thus, probably to his surprise, his painful lament is included along with all the happier songs in sacred scripture.

Dr. James Boice: Now I don't know your heart. I don't know how you react to something like this, but I do know that there are many people who go through very terrible times, and that may be true of you. And you may be saying to God, "Give me an answer," and you have no answer. You may be saying to God, "Relieve me in a certain way," and God has not done it.

Dr. James Boice: You see, a Psalm like this tells you that God knows what you're going through, and furthermore that it is not without purpose, even if you can't see it in the present life. And so it encourages us to do exactly what the Psalmist has done, and that is to continue to lay your requests before God. And who knows but what God might quickly answer from heaven and make himself very real to you once again.

Dr. James Boice: Father, we thank you for the honesty of your word. We know there are people who look upon Christians and Christianity as being utterly unrealistic Polyannas in the midst of a grim world. And so it's a healthy thing for us to study a Psalm like this, to realize that although there is much in which we do have hope and there are promises that are sure and a redemption, which is beyond the ability of human tongues to express.

Dr. James Boice: Nevertheless, there's the acknowledgment of the dark times. And so we thank you for the honesty. We would pray that you would give us grace to be that honest in our prayers to you, and even in our sharing with one another. And also that we might be found faithful enough to continue to trust you and pray, even in the dark times as the Psalmist did. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

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