A Sermon on the Most Hopeless Man in Scripture
Hello all,
Every once in a while I am disturbed from the privacy and comfort of my counseling office and have to step into the pulpit to preach. Usually the sermon still sounds like a counseling meeting, which was indeed the case a couple of weeks ago when I preached on Psalm 88, the darkest Psalm of all. What would it be like to counsel the author, Heman the Ezrahite, the most hopeless man in Scripture? What do you do when life has knocked the hope out of you, and you find yourself “in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep?”
Click below to listen, or feel free to read the transcript below.
In Hope,
David
Psalm 88
O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you.
Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!
For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
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 hand.
You have put me in the depths of the pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah
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;
my eye grows 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? Selah
Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.
The church historian Martin Marty tells a story about Psalm 88. His wife had cancer, and every night he would have to wake up and help her with her treatment. It was a very dark, hopeless time for both of them. Part of their routine in the wee hours of the morning was to read a psalm. Well, one night, it was time to read the nightly psalm, and he turned to where they’d left off the night before, at Psalm 88. Glancing at it he thought to himself, there’s no way I’m reading that to my wife, that will just depress her even more. So he started to read Psalm 89 instead. And his wife stopped him and asked, “What about Psalm 88? You skipped it.” And he said, “I don’t think you need to hear that one.” She replied, “No, that’s exactly the kind of psalm I need to hear.” Why would she say such a thing? Why would a hopeless person need to hear a hopeless psalm? That’s what I hope to explore with you this morning.
Psalm 88 does not sound like other psalms. Rather than the careful construction of many psalms, that progresses to a hopeful ending, Psalm 88 just repeats itself over and over, ending in darkness. Literally, the last word is “darkness.” For this reason, theologian Derek Thomas says this Psalm should have an R rating. To some commentators, this psalm is an embarrassment. It’s sacreligious! An example of someone whose faith is failing, an example of God failing his faithful follower.
I have a different take on this psalm. It sounds to me more like someone who has bottled up their feelings for too long and just can’t take it any longer. And so they go and find someone who will listen and pour out their sorrows in a flood. Now, I’m sure that being a counselor colors the way I see this, but if you ask me, it sounds like the beginning of a counseling meeting. Someone has just poured out their heart, and now they stare at you in silence, wondering what if you have anything to say to these things.
The Psalm tells us in the inscription that this was written by a man named Heman. Ironically, 1 Chronicles tells us that Heman was a musician appointed by David to the sing songs of praise and thanksgiving at the tabernacle. Now, whatever is going on in Heman’s life, we’re not going to be able to fix it. Our job, instead, is to help him find hope in the midst of his hopeless circumstances. But there’s one catch. As with every counseling meeting, in order to help a person, you have to meet them where they are. In this case, we have to descend into the darkness, we have to meet Heman in the depths of the pit. We have to feel his hopelessness. Only then will we be able to speak words of hope that he can hear. So that’s how we’ll structure this sermon. First, we have to go down into the pit, where Heman is. And second, hopefully, we help Heman find his way out of it. As we help Heman, perhaps we’ll find hope ourselves, for whatever dark circumstances we are going through.
So let’s take our first step into the Pit. To put it simply, something hurts. He’s in pain. So much, in fact, that he says in verse 3 “my soul is full of troubles.” We aren’t told what kind of trouble, what kind of pain he is in. We aren’t told what he is hopeless about. I think that is because we are supposed to fill in the blank with our own trouble. What’s troubling you? Think about that for a moment, even though you may not want to. What are you hopeless about? Is it sin? Suffering? A combination of the two? Perhaps you feel hopeless and have no idea where it’s even coming from.
For Heman, it seems to be all of the above. He says in verse fifteen, “[I’ve been] afflicted and close to death from my youth up.” He has experienced what Paul called “sorrow upon sorrow.” The minute he thinks he’s turned a corner with one trouble, he runs into another. Just when he thinks he can’t take any more, more sorrow is piled on. As he puts it in verse 9, “my eye grows dim through sorrow.” He’s so consumed by his constant troubles he barely has the strength left to open his eyes!
Let’s take another step into the Pit. Heman’s not just in pain, he’s stuck in pain. In verse 6 he says “[I’m] in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep.” Verse 8 goes further and says, “I am shut in so that I cannot escape.” He’s stuck in darkness and there’s no way out.
A few weeks ago I was in Arkansas and went to visit the Blanchard Springs caverns. To get to these underground caves, you cram into an elevator with twenty people and go 240 feet down into the earth. From there, you go through a tunnel into a massive, dimly lit underground cavern. Now, this was a safe, guided tour. But when we got down there and the guide said we’d be down there for an hour, I felt myself beginning to panic. Several times the guide even shined a flashlight in places and said, “You see that rubble over there? There was a cave-in there not too long ago.” I was literally in the depths of a pit, in regions dark and deep. I was fighting off panic because I felt trapped, shut in, and without an escape. Now, imagine that you’re down in such a cave, but without a guide, in utter blackness, with no end or escape in sight. That’s where Heman, our psalmist, is. As he puts it in verse 17, “[my troubles] surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together.” Have you ever felt suffocated by your circumstances? Ever had a problem that cast a darkness over your entire life? That’s where Heman is.
Taking another step into the Pit, we see that our friend Heman is alone. In verse 8 he says, “You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horror to them.” Pain has a way of isolating us. Heman’s friends have abandoned him. Perhaps they judge him for his troubles. Maybe they think he’s lost his mind or is being melodramatic. Or maybe they got tired of caring and distanced themselves from him, because he was too needy and it just got too heavy for them. The Psalm ends in verse 18 with this: “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” If you go by the ESV footnote’s translation, “darkness has become my only friend.” Simon and Garfunkel translate this as “hello darkness, my old friend.” This is Heman’s poetic way of saying that he has no one. No one to comfort, no one to help, no one to guide, no one to weep with, no one to speak to. No one to love, no one to love him. He is alone.
Now, taking another step into the Pit, we see that being alone and stuck and in pain has left the psalmist feeling like a dead man. More than any other metaphor, he describes his hopelessness as an experience of death. He refers to himself as drawing near to Sheol, like the dead, the slain that lie in the grave, the departed, and close to death. Living without hope has a way of dehumanizing you. The longer you go without hope, the less you are able to experience life, and the more you resemble the dead.
Recently I’ve been watching Lord of the Rings with my son Judah for the first time, a day I’ve been waiting for since he was born. In the story, the longer Frodo carries the ring, and the closer he gets to Mordor, the more hopeless he becomes, until he’s like the walking dead. His hopeless quest is draining him of life, leaving him a shell of a person. At one point near the end in Mordor, Frodo’s companion Sam tries to encourage him by reminding him of their beloved home, the Shire. He says, “Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon, and the orchards will be in blossom; and the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket; and they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields; and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?” Now, you hear that and think, surely that will encourage Frodo, surely that will get to him. But Frodo is in the land of Psalm 88. He says, “No Sam, I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing - no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see [the enemy] with my waking eyes.” He’s so hopeless that his greatest earthly joy has become meaningless. That’s where our friend Heman is.
Now we’ll take one final step into the Pit, and we see that Heman has decided that he must be under God’s judgment. That’s the only way he can make sense of the train wreck of his life. In verse 7 he says “your wrath lies heavy upon me.” In verse 14, he asks, “why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” He goes on, in 15-16, “I suffer your terrors, your wrath has swept over me, your dreadful assaults destroy me.” I am being punished. When he looks at his life, that’s the only rational conclusion. In fact, if you re-read the whole Psalm, he claims that all of his suffering is God’s doing. You have put me in the depths of the pit, you overwhelm me, you caused my companions to shun me, you made me a horror, your wrath has swept over me.” Now, we could argue with him on this point. After all, just because you are suffering does not mean God is angry with you. Suffering does not equal judgment. Sometimes it does, but there’s no reason to assume that, especially for a believer. For now, we’re not going to argue with Heman on that point. We’ll have to circle back to that.
Ok, everyone take a deep breath. We’ve gone deep enough into the pit. We’ve located Heman. We have sufficiently tasted Heman’s hopelessness and can actually speak into his experience now. We’d better stop now before we, too, become lost in the darkness. So now that we have descended into Heman’s hopelessness, how do we find our way out? When life is as hopeless as Psalm 88, where is hope to be found? Believe it or not, there is hope in this psalm. In inspiring this Psalm, the Spirit has left us a trail of hope to help us find our way out of the Pit. A trail of breadcrumbs, no doubt, but one that will show us the way to hope.
We begin our way out of the Pit and towards hope by recognizing the fact that this psalm is in Scripture at all. Why would God include such a psalm in his Holy Word? Why would he breathe out of his mouth such a hopeless psalm? Because he wants us to know that there is room for people like Heman in his kingdom. He wants us to know that his people throughout history, even godly writers of Scripture, have walked in darkness too. He wants to give us words, even his words, for life in the pit. Counselor Ed Welch says “Whoever describes a person best wins their ear.” This psalm is God putting words to the experience of despair, that he might win our ear. If this Psalm describes your experience, then give him your ear.
We continue our way out of the Pit and towards hope by pouring out our hearts to God. Heman feels sure that God has rejected him, that God does not care, or, simply, that God isn’t even there. And yet, he continues speaking to God. The Psalm begins with, “O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.” In the middle, he says, “Every day I call upon you, O Lord, I spread out my hands to you.” At the end, he says, “But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.” Well done, Heman! He’s doing what Jesus calls believing without seeing. Or what Paul calls “hoping against hope.” Every bit of the psalmist’s experience is telling him to give up, but he prays anyway. He cries out to a God that by all appearances has rejected him. He cries out into the void and reaches out his hands into the darkness. He continues to hope when there is no logical reason to do so. This is a major step in the ascent from the Pit: pouring out our hearts to God. Despite your certainty no one is listening, put into words the darkness that is troubling your soul. Perhaps, in spite of everything, God is listening.
Next, we continue our way out of the Pit and towards hope by placing this psalm in the mouth of Jesus. Psalm 88 is actually one of the clearest depictions of the experience of his suffering. When you consider the psalm with the Cross in view, it all becomes literal. His life was truly drawing near to Sheol as he lost all his strength on the Cross. His closest companions, his disciples, shunned him and were horrified by his suffering. He died on the Cross forgotten and cut off from his Father, set loose among the dead, put in the graveyard with the slain. His dead body was literally put in a dark pit, an underground tomb. And as he lay in the grave, the only friend he had left was darkness.
There is hope in this because his suffering assures us of his compassion. Have you ever noticed suffering has a way of making us compassionate? The most compassionate people are always those who have suffered most and have persevered. The aftertaste of darkness is still on their tongue. Their hands have not forgotten the feel of the Pit. If you are looking for compassion, find the person who carries the most scars, who walks with a limp. Your pain will move them as if it is their own pain. Hebrews tells us this is why Jesus had to suffer, so that he would be a compassionate High Priest who knew weakness and suffering. So that he would know what it’s like to be one of us. And now that he does, our pain moves the heart of Jesus as if it were his own. And so when we cry out in the darkness, we can have confidence that he hears. Even if we can’t see him, his suffering assures us that he has moved toward us in compassion. Even if we can’t feel him, his suffering promises that he is right next to us, sitting with us in the darkness. And one day, somehow, someway, he will rescue us from it.
Next we continue out of the Pit and toward hope by recognizing this: the judgment mentioned in Psalm 88 was literal for Jesus, but not for us. In other words, when we, as believers, are hopeless over our sin and suffering, and begin to feel rejected by God, we can be sure that as painful as those feelings are, and as certain as they seem to be, they are only feelings. Whatever reasons we are in such a place of hopelessness, God’s judgment is not one of them, because Christ entered into judgment for us. Though we have no clue why God’s plan for our life included this darkness, we can be sure that it is not because he is angry with us, for Jesus propitiated God’s anger. He absorbed it. He diverted judgment away from us to himself on the Cross. Therefore, whoever trusts in the work of Christ, though they suffer, they are assured that it’s not for judgment’s sake. So when we suffer and pray and wait and our prayers go unanswered, we can be sure, as John Newton said, that our unanswered prayers are held in hands that bled for us.
And now, our final step out of the Pit and into hope is this: God has given us his answer to the questions in verses 10-12. We haven’t mentioned those questions yet, and they are probably the most important part of the Psalm. Heman asked, “Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave?” This is Heman’s poetic way of asking, ‘Is there any hope…for someone like me? What are the chances a guy as wretched and hopeless as me gets rescued?’ About a thousand years later God answered Heman with three words: “He is risen.” Beside a tomb in a graveyard, just a few miles from where Heman likely wrote these words, an angel delivered God’s reply to Heman: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He has risen, just as he said.” If ever it appeared that someone was beyond hope, it was the man hanging on the Cross. If ever there were a case more hopeless than Heman, surely it was Christ crucified, forsaken by God and friend. If ever there were a lost cause, surely it’s that Messiah whose body is in the grave. And yet, he lives. And because he lives, so too, may we. So too, may Heman.
For if God did wonders in the darkness for Jesus, and we belong to Jesus, couldn’t he do the same for us? If God declared his steadfast love into the grave of Jesus, and we are united to him by faith, can we not hope for the same? If we pray in the name of Jesus, who was delivered from death and rose up to praise the Father, why shouldn’t we hope for deliverance too? In this way, the resurrected Jesus is our hope of rescue from the Pit.
When we come out of the Pit with hope, does that mean all our problems will be fixed? Not likely. But the hope of the Cross makes it possible to face those problems. Will the pain have ceased? Maybe not. Even so, the hope of the Resurrection makes it possible to flourish in the midst of pain.
I’ll give Paul the last word, from 2 Corinthians 1:8-9: “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
