Psalm 88 -- The Sorrows of Our Lord -- Verses 10 to End

--continued from Verse 9, October 30,2010--


Now we will consider Verses 10-12 of Psalm 88 as a grouping.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Selah
11 Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

Verses 10-12 are spoken by a person contemplating death. As applied to Jesus, these verses indicate that His death was real. A real man was about to die a real death.

Clearly the speaker at this point did not wish to die. Death was repulsive to Him. Why? God would not be there, at least not as the living experience Him.

Verse 10a: "Do you show your wonders to the dead?" Implied answer, "No." No miracles in the grave.
Verse 12a: "Are your wonders known in the place of darkness?" Again, no. No miracles by God. In fact, death is here considered a very dark place; God is not active there. He makes none of His righteous deeds known. The words "darkness" and "oblivion" (other translations say "forgetfulness") signify that the mind, or what we experience as human understanding, has been turned off. This is the point of view of one who is now alive and contemplating what death must be like.

Secondly, not only would God not be there, but there would be no praise of God in death, either. Clearly, praise and worship are very precious and necessary to the Psalmist's well-being.

Verse 10b: "Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?" 
Verse 11: "Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?"

Again, the implied response to these questions is, "No." The grave would destroy praise, worship, and all declarations of God's love and faithfulness.

So clearly, the Psalmist expected to die a real death, a human death, and death would not be pleasant, due to its separation for those there from the knowledge and worship of God.

13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?
15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.

Verse 13, as applied to the life of Christ, reminds us of Mark 1:35 -- "Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed." In fact, prayer characterized the life of Christ. Just by way of example, we see Him in the gospels always lifting His eyes to heaven and praying. We see Him praying all night before choosing His disciples; we see Him praying for His disciples and all believers in John 17; we seeing Him praying at Lazarus' tomb; we see Him teaching prayer and fasting concerning the demon in the young man who would throw himself into the fire. And, we see Him praying in the garden.

Verse 14: "Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?" This verse is so reminiscent of both Psalm 22:1 and Matthew 27:46.

Psalm 22:1 "...My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning."

Matthew 27:46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Verse 15a: "From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death;"

This verse, as applied to Christ, reminds me of Isaiah 53:3 "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

15b ...I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.

Verses 15b through verse 17 of Psalm 88 again speak of the wrath and terrors of God against the Psalmist. We saw similar statements in verses 6 and 7. As I mentioned at that time, as a lay person, I have had to dig and search to find places in the New Testament that tell me explicitly that Jesus died on the cross as punishment for my sins. Since earliest Sunday school days, we are taught this truth, but where in New Testament scripture does it directly say so? Indeed, Paul does spell it out in the letter to the Romans, but it's a fairly lengthy treatise there.

I am thankful to the genre of gospel tracts, because they sum up in plain, concise speech the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. I myself cannot find a clear, simple expounding of such in the New Testament. (Am I stupid?) But as applied to Jesus Christ, this psalm explicitly teaches in verses 15b through 17 that it was the wrath of God that was poured out on Him. Isaiah 53 does the same thing in far greater detail, very thoroughly. As a Christian, I am so very thankful for the Old Testament, because without it, so much that is in the New would remain sketchy and incomplete.

18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.

Finally, verse 18 ends on a quiet note of darkness. As commentators write, Psalm 88 has a single tone of lament throughout. The Psalmist does not, as in most or all of the other psalms, include thoughts of hope, encouragement, praise, and worship.

In verse 18, we find the Psalmist alone. It's not that he had never had had friends and loved ones. Worse than that, he had had them, but he ascribes to God Himself that God took them from him. As applied to Jesus Christ on the cross, we find this to be true.

First, His disciples were His friends. John 15:15 "...I have called you friends..."

His disciples were also His family, His loved ones. Matthew 12:49 "And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, "Behold My mother and My brothers!"

It was part of God's plan to remove all these from Christ at the time of His crucifixion. Although some were standing there, they were not close to Him at that hour. There was an impassable gulf between Him and them.

The darkness described in Verse 18b is so thick and dark as to be palpable. This, too, is an accurate foretelling of Christ's death. Luke 23:44 "It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour." Eclipses of the sun never last three hours. This was a deep darkness of a supernatural sort.

Why would the Psalmist call this deep darkness His friend? May I venture that in His complete abandonment by humans; suffering the wrath and terrors of God, His God, His Father, there was nothing left Him. The darkness was all that remained. It covered His sorrows and sufferings, His deep pain, like a blanket. 

Conclusion: Making an application of Psalm 88 to the life of Jesus Christ opens to me His heart of love and the heart of the Father's love towards His lost creation. I am able to identify with Christ as a man. He becomes concrete and real to me. In my own moments of loss and pain, I am able to get something of a fellow feeling of His. Even so, I am enabled by God to thank Him for my moments of loss and pain, simply because they help me to better appreciate the great gift of God in sending His Son.

When applied to Jesus Christ, Psalm 88 shows me that God is not far off. He is very close. Having given His Son in such a dramatic, real, and totally painful way, I believe Him when He says to lost sinners, such as I was and am, "Come!" Verses such as the following make great sense to me in light of Psalm 88 --

Matthew 11:28-30 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  29 "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  30 "For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. 16 Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Dear Reader, If you have never personally spoken to this great God of love concerning His dear Son, please do so today.  It's very simple. Just talk to Him in your own voice from your own point of view. Confess your sins to Him; tell Him you believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for those sins, or that you want to believe in Christ (in the latter case, ask Him for His help, remembering that just the mere fact of your addressing Him indicates a certain amount of belief already); and that you want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, living for Him. God will do the rest.

Then obey God's Word, the Bible; continue to read your Bible; continue to pray (talk to God); and look for a body of like-minded believers and meet with them regularly to live out with them all the aspects of your new-found faith!

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Father, Please accept my offering today. Use it for Your glory. Thank-You, dear Creator-God, for the cross of Your love. In Jesus name, Amen.

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