[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: For more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry, please visit CitizensChurch.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning, church.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are new here, first time visiting, thank you for visiting with us today, we're so glad to have you here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if Citizens Church is your home, if you've been with us for a long time, welcome back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we are finishing up a short summer series that we have done in the Psalms, specifically looking for Jesus in the Psalms.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the first Peter series that we did, Peter claimed that believers on this side of the resurrection can know more about the Old Testament than those who wrote it.
[SPEAKER_00]: More about the prophecies and the prophets, more about the Psalms than the Psalmists.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we've been reading the Psalms this way to test this claim.
[SPEAKER_00]: And today we will end our journey with Psalm, eighty-eight, a song of lament, crying out to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And before we read this song, I want to ask you a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever felt abandoned by God?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are we supposed to do when we feel like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can a real Christian even feel that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if so, is it even appropriate for us to admit that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm eighty-eight is considered the darkest and the saddest of all the Psalms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fully one-third of the Psalms are Psalms of lament.
[SPEAKER_00]: They cry out to God about something that's gone wrong in the life of the writer.
[SPEAKER_00]: but Psalm eight eight is different from the other songs of lament.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other songs complain to God about enemies that are attacking.
[SPEAKER_00]: They complain to God about external circumstances that are threatening to take over.
[SPEAKER_00]: They cry out to God about sin that's eating them up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Psalm eight eight has none of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no sin to confess.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the other Psalms of lament, say for one other Psalm, end in a note of hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: One Psalm might start off, why are you downcast on my soul and end with hope in God for I shall again praise Him?
[SPEAKER_00]: But Psalm eighty-eight has no such happy ending.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's tone from beginning to end seems to be full of anger, despair, sarcasm, hopelessness,
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the Psalmist ends off worse than he began.
[SPEAKER_00]: One commentator says, this is the saddest Psalm in the whole Psalter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another commentator says, this is the darkest place in the whole book of Psalms.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not even one ray of light.
[SPEAKER_00]: I intentionally chose this one because if there's a Psalm in which it should be difficult to find Jesus, it should be this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Psalm one describes the blessed man, this Psalm of all the Psalm described what it's like to be a cursed man, to be cut off from God, to have your prayers unanswered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your questions unanswered.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we dive into Psalm eighty-eight, my hope is that it will teach us three things about how we can cry out to God when we feel abandoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll teach us that we can cry out to God when we feel abandoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: How we can cry out to God when we feel abandoned and why we can cry out to God when we feel abandoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I mean by that is it'll teach us that we can cry out to God that it's okay to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll teach us how to do that the right way in the wrong way and why we can do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we know that God's even listening that this is not a waste of our time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I get into this, you know, this is just gonna be about thirty minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you guys have come in here with deep questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been praying for months.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you for decades and you've been living out this Psalm in many different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not gonna pretend to be able to answer all of your questions or give you a few verses to fix it around or change your mindset.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I hope as we look into the Psalm and we see the face of Christ, we're able to understand where our final hope is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So first point, Psalm mediate teaches us that we can cry out to God when we feel abandoned, that it's okay to do this, that this is how mature believers speak, that we are expected by God to speak this way to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's read the whole thing together.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's long, but it's worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we're going to go back through and go over the three points I mentioned earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm, eighty-eight, a song, a song of the sons of Korah, to the choir master, according to the Mahalith Leannoth, a mascal of Heiman, the Ezra height.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so that's just a little note in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a Psalm written by Him in the Ezra height, whoever that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it looks like it starts off pretty good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh Lord, oh Yahweh, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This man is praying every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the best part of the sermon of the Psalm.
[SPEAKER_00]: It only goes downhill from here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse two, let my prayer come before you incline your ear to my cry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, men are saying, God, I'm praying every single day, but you're not listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are these prayers reaching you at all?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you even there?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you are, do you even care?
[SPEAKER_00]: Starting in verse three, Hayman begins to tell God about his problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: For my soul is full of troubles and my life draws near to shale the grave.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm counted among those who go down to the pit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a man who has no strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like one set loose among the dead like the slain that lie in the grave like those who you remember no more for their cut off from your hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heyman says he has his soul is full of troubles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally it means his soul is saturated with trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means his heart is so full of trouble, it cannot fit anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever had that?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're so full of your troubles that you have no time to think about anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't have any other conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your mind is totally consumed.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all he can think about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after that, he basically says, and I may as well be dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a dead man walking.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the point of all of this trouble?
[SPEAKER_00]: But it gets worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse six, he begins to blame God for his troubles.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have put me in the depths of this pit in the regions, dark and deep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other translates and say, you have sent me into exile.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your wrath lies heavy upon me and you overwhelm me with all your wigs.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have caused my companions to shut me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have made me a horror to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am shut in so that I cannot escape my ego's dim through sorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every day I call upon you, O Lord, I spread out my hands to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, God, you did this to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are sovereign.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only am I suffering, but I'm also suffering alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, my eyes grow dim.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not about eyesight.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a Hebrew idiom for the light in his eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: His life is just seeping away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever cried so much that your eyes, when people look at you, there's no life in your eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice he repeats again when he said in the beginning, every day I call upon you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The implication is, but you never answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I spread out my hands to you to receive something, anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my hands are still empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, driven towards despair, came in, we're at just, it ratchets it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: His tone changes to sarcasm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Disrespect, bordering on blasphemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He asks these questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you work wonders for the dead?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do the departed rise up to praise you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abadhan destruction?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
[SPEAKER_00]: You may not know this, but the Old Testament Saints had almost no concept of a life after death.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost never spoken about in the Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a couple of places that hint at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, David, when he loses his child, he says, I will go to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: A go to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Job says, I know that my Redeemer lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know, in Psalm sixteen, it says that he will not let me go to Sheel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will not let his holy once he corruption.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a few verses like this that seem to hint.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fate of those who die seems to be basically unknown to the Old Testament saints.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when Hamon asks these questions, he's basically saying, when I die, every all of my memories will go with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a praise leader, a songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, basically, if you were to deliver me from this illness, I would write songs about this, and everyone would know, don't you want to be famous?
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you want to be celebrated?
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I die, who will I tell?
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you care about your own reputation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you do this to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: What was all this for if it all ends in ruin?
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, Hayman starts to ask God why.
[SPEAKER_00]: verse their team.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I, O Lord, I cry to you in the morning, my prayer comes before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you hide your face from me?
[SPEAKER_00]: A flick didn't close to death from my youth up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suffer your tears.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm helpless.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your wrath has swept over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your dreadful assaults destroy me.
[SPEAKER_00]: They surround me like a flood all day long.
[SPEAKER_00]: They close in on me together.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you notice in this Psalm, he's not prayed for deliverance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not asked for rescue or healing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just crying out to God, why are you doing this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now the last line.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have caused my beloved and my friend to shut me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My companions have become darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some translations have, and darkness is my only friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: My only companion.
[SPEAKER_00]: The last word in the Psalm in Hebrew is the word darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, my friends into darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: In essence, him and his saying, my health has left me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my friends have left me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now even you have left me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all I have is darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we don't know exactly what triggered the writing of this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can make some guesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems to be that this is a prayer of a person who has an agonizing or life-threatening illness that is not getting any better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only is the body and the health failing, but they've lost
[SPEAKER_00]: their friends and their loved ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the prayer of a sufferer who just does not see an end to their suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you can be in a valley and still see the horizon.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see a glimmer of light breaking out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not the case in this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no end to this tunnel.
[SPEAKER_00]: This person is walking through persistent darkness that surrounds them for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heyman compares it to be compared to the several images.
[SPEAKER_00]: He compares it to being buried alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: He compares it to being drowned and suffocated in a flood.
[SPEAKER_00]: He compares it to being abandoned and left to die totally alone in the darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever felt like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think some in this room
[SPEAKER_00]: have walked through that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some are walking through that right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But some of you have never experienced this yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's an easy way to begin a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this even in our Bibles?
[SPEAKER_00]: When I think about the people in the Old Testament or New Testament that this reminds me of the Old Testament picture, Job,
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see Job praying a prayer like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He speaks very similarly to this at times.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think about the new testament, the first person that comes to my mind is the woman who had the issue of bleeding for twelve years, who lost all of her friends and all of her money, she lost all of her hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see her praying something like this as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you've never been in this circumstance, it can be really easy to wonder what the world this song is doing in our Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: because surely spiritually mature believers don't ever talk like this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, there's a sneaky kind of prosperity gospel that can warm its way into your heart that says, if you're really tight with Jesus, if you're really walking with Him, yes, you can experience temporary setbacks, but nothing really bad could ever happen to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the keys to understanding the meaning of this Psalm and how to apply it is to really drill into who wrote this Psalm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at the first words in the Psalm again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm eighty eight, a song, a Psalm of the sons of Korah, to the choir master according to the Mahalath landoth, a mascal of Hayman, the Ezra height.
[SPEAKER_00]: So easy to skip over these little preface notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But these notes are inspired scripture two.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Psalm was written by Hayman, the Ezra height, who is Hayman?
[SPEAKER_00]: We learned in first Chronicle six and twenty twenty five that Hamon was a skilled singer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also he played multiple instruments the harp, the liar, the trumpet, the symbols.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was one of three men hand-picked by David to lead national worship in front of the arc of the covenant.
[SPEAKER_00]: He founded a singer songwriter guild called The Suns of Korah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And along with his brother, whom you may have heard of ASAP, they wrote most of the most famous songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cory last week talked about playlists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me read a few of the top hits from Hayman and Company, and let me see if you recognize these songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, oh God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm forty two.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is a refuge in strength of very present-held and troubled, therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, Psalm forty six.
[SPEAKER_00]: How lovely is your dwelling place or a Lord of hosts?
[SPEAKER_00]: Better is one day in your course in thousands elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness Psalm Eighty Four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hamon and his band, the sons of Korah, wrote and performed confident, joy filled songs about God's goodness and God's faithfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I picture a Hamon, the Ezra height, I picture a Michael Bleaker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always smiling, a joy-filled worship leader, confident in the goodness of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's lived it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a theory to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But not only was he accomplished singer-songwriter, first Chronicle's twenty-five tells us that he became David's sear.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, one of David's most trusted prophets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And more than that, after David died, and his son Solomon took the throne, God told Solomon, I'll give you anything, and Solomon prayed for wisdom, supernatural wisdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first King's fourth, thirty-one, it said that God made him wiser than all other men, and it has a list of guys, and it says he was even wiser than him.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the person you measure wisdom against.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, man isn't just some random guy who had a bad day and wrote this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's one of the most wise, most joyful, most spirit-filled, most productive, most favored, most blessed men who have ever lived.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had seventeen children.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of them became worship leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I read you some of the Psalms that are attributed to the sons of Korah that he co-wrote.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's only one Psalm that he gets credit for as a solo project.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is this Psalm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm eighty-eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only is it his only solo project, it seems to have been his last Psalm.
[SPEAKER_00]: He died after writing this Psalm.
[SPEAKER_00]: The scripture never says that Hayman received either healing or answer from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He died with his questions unanswered.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the heartbroken prayer of a mature spirit filled believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone deeply in love with God and deeply loved by God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Him and nose in His head, the God is the Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's His opening line.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Yahweh, God of my salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows what is true in His head.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is not His theology.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is that while His mind is filled with truth, His heart is empty and dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of you who have followed Jesus long enough, you have probably had this experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel like Jesus is so far away.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not like it was when you first got saved and the presence of Christ just seems so near and palpable every single day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many giants of the faith, Charles Spurgeon, John Bunyan, Martin Luther,
[SPEAKER_00]: struggled with what today would be called long-term depression, grief, anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: These men knew their Bible and these things did not evaporate after reading a couple of coffee mug Bible verses.
[SPEAKER_00]: A powerful example of this is C.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lewis.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a bachelor most of his life, and near the end, as he got older, he finally got married, but after only three years,
[SPEAKER_00]: His wife got cancer and died, suddenly.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote a series of reflections on the death of his wife, Helen Joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when they were published, they had to be published under a false name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me read.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, meanwhile, where's God?
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're happy, so happy, you have no sense of meeting him, so happy that you're tempted to feel his claim is upon you as an interruption.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you remember yourself and turned to him with gratitude and praise, you will be, or so it feels welcomed with open arms.
[SPEAKER_00]: But go to him when you need his desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find?
[SPEAKER_00]: A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after that, silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was recorded in his book, a grief observed.
[SPEAKER_00]: After he died in nineteen sixty-three, it was then published under his name and many of his admirers did not believe that this was one of his writings.
[SPEAKER_00]: They could not believe that an oncologist a mature Christian could have thoughts like this ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what Hayman is dealing with and maybe some of you may be dealing with and this point is so important because if you're not prepared
[SPEAKER_00]: It is possible to lose heart or even faith when you experience this.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think spiritually and mature Christians will never, ever experience this and you will be unprepared to meet your dark night of the soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that this song is in our Bibles is good news.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very good news.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because God is saying, I am not solely the God of the person who always says everything right and does everything right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the God of the person who feels like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So first, Psalm eighty-eight teaches us that we can cry out to God like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that it's not necessarily a lack of faith to feel this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I want to say two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you only ever pray, like Psalm eighty-eight, something is deeply unbalanced.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I think is more likely, if you never pray, like Psalm eighty-eight, something is deeply unbalanced.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mark Rogop put it this way in his book, Dark Cloud's Deep Mercy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder how many believers stop speaking to God about their pain?
[SPEAKER_00]: Disappointed by unanswered prayers are frustrated by out of control circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: These people wind up in a spiritual desert, unable or refusing to talk to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The silence is a soul killing.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants us to talk to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, next notice, it says something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: A masculine of a human, the Ezra height.
[SPEAKER_00]: A masculine is a specific kind of song.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a song of instruction.
[SPEAKER_00]: If any of you have been in our Bible classes, you know there's some texts or descriptive and some are prescriptive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some texts are just describing something and it's not giving approval.
[SPEAKER_00]: And others are saying, you should do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: A masculine is a prescriptive instructional song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not just peeking in on a diary entry of a sad man.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a manual.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm mediate isn't just teaching us that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can craft a God like him and it's teaching us how to cry out to God like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Hamon says a lot of unwise, unfair, uncharitable, even disrespectful things to God in this Psalm.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very raw.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the lesson isn't just like, yeah, you could say whatever to God, you know, it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just say whatever, anytime,
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the lesson.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually much more nuanced than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way I can illustrate this is a couple of weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: My baby, Tallahassee, she just turned two, couple days ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a couple of weeks ago, she was vomiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: She got sick, you know, daycare stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was just vomiting basically every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she wasn't eating anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was vomiting in her sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she was getting like one or two hours of sleep a night.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she just miserable.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's cranky all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the times I'm holding her, trying to feed her some milk, get something in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, what was something set her off, who knows, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And she just lost it on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She started slapping me in the face, pushing me away, throwing things at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's just, she's just learning how to talk, and she set a phrase that I never heard before.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said, Daddy, go away!
[SPEAKER_00]: Go away, Daddy!
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh man!
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got a fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll log in that toddler shout out.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't know what to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I put it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started walking around the corner, walking away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she cried even harder.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she ran over to me and demanded that I pick her up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as I picked her up, she started hitting me again, pushing me away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another time she was crying when she wasn't near me, I heard her crying, and then I heard her stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: She ran out of corner saw me, and then fell on the floor and just started crying again.
[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted me to watch her cry.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what's happening in the soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh Lord, God, my salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cry out day and night before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every day I call upon you, O Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, O Lord, cry out to you, in the morning, my prayer comes before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, I want you to see me crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't count if you're not watching me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The lesson isn't that Hayman is like a toddler.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I'm trying to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to remember the Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to children.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those who are like children.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not talking about immaturity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it the Talisman in me to watch her cry?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did she hit me but then want to hold me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did she want me close?
[SPEAKER_00]: as she was screaming in my face so she could hit me some more.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's for a strange reason it's because she knows that I love her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would not have done this with any stranger on the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only my wife and I get that privilege.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because she knows that I'm safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: She knows that when she's done and exhausted, I'm not going to be like, oh, okay, now it's my turn to hit you and streaming your face, let's go.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm just going to hold her because, and I'm going to take it because I'm a father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm stronger than her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I love her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see farther than her.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what this song teaches us.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a disappointment in a heartache that can pull our hearts away from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what the Bible calls grumbling.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is a disappointed heartache that pulls our hearts back towards God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what the Bible calls lament.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heyman is broken, hearted, but this heartbreak makes him pray more, not less.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't wait until his words are just right.
[SPEAKER_00]: He runs to the Father with whatever he has, even though it's a jumbled mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: because he trusts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us in this room make the mistake of complaining to everyone except for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk to anyone who listen except for the one who wants to listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And other of us, others of us make the mistake of never daring to raise a complaint at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: when we can take care of it ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: As if the fall and the curse and sin and suffering and death and decay are just mere inconveniences to tolerate rather than the horrors that demanded the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe it teaches us to cry out to God more, not less, to bring our honest Christ to God and not hide them away, to cry in front of God and not away from Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, Psalm eighty eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, teaches us why we can cry out to God when we feel abandoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really, really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've said this before, but I just really want to land a plane on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Psalms teach us how to do many things.
[SPEAKER_00]: They teach us how to pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: They teach us how to praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: They teach us how to cry it in this Psalm.
[SPEAKER_00]: They teach us how to grieve and to lament.
[SPEAKER_00]: How to cry out to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if that's all they did, teach us how to do things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Religious techniques.
[SPEAKER_00]: but they would be totally powerless to help us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing that empowers the Psalms to help us is that they don't just tell us how, but who?
[SPEAKER_00]: So many, it doesn't just reveal how to cry out, but who it is that we should cry out to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it that we can cry out to God, like in Psalm eighty eight, and know that we will be heard
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is because just like Psalm one, Psalm eighty-eight is about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were here last week, Cory taught on Psalm one-eighteen and the hallell, a little bit more cheerful than this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Cory reminded us of this hallell.
[SPEAKER_00]: This hymn would have been the hymn mentioned in Matthew and Martha.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus sang with the disciples right at the close of Passover, right before the passion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just before they all went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he would be betrayed and arrested and taken to the house of the high priest Caiaphas.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the last song they sang.
[SPEAKER_00]: But song maybe eight is on the right on the other side of that betrayal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the book end to songwriting.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to Israel today, you can visit Kifis's house.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is preserved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And below the house was discovered a deep pit carved out of the stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, our stairs that they carved into it, so tourists can go down and see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But originally, the only way inner out looks to a little hole bored through the stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it would have been on the way to this dungeon where Jesus would have locked eyes with Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: after he denied Jesus through times.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you visit that pit today, the only thing in it is a little wooden lectern in the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on that lectern is only one thing, Psalm eighty-eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this picture, you can see Jamen took a group of members from Citizens Church and he is reading Psalm eighty-eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I read these words, think about Jesus on the night that He was betrayed.
[SPEAKER_00]: My soul is full of troubles, and my life is drawing nearer to the grave.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you have put me in the depths of this pit, exiled me to the region's darkenedeep.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am shut in, I cannot escape, when I agrows dim from sorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have caused my beloved John and my friend Peter to shun me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My only companion is darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Psalm not only conveys what it must have been like in that pit where Jesus spent the entire night.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what Jesus must have been feeling that whole night, and even into the next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'll or cry out to you in the morning, my prayer comes before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why, Lord, do you cast my soul away?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you hide your face from me?
[SPEAKER_00]: A foot did and close to death from my youth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suffer your tears.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm helpless.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your wrath has swept over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your dreadful assaults destroy me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus placed himself under the wrath of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Earlier, I read a quote from C.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lewis about being abandoned by God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's another very famous quote by C.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lewis about friendship you may have heard this one before.
[SPEAKER_00]: C.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lewis said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another.
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: You, too?
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I was the only one.
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: You, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I was the only one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it that we can cry out to God even when we feel abandoned?
[SPEAKER_00]: Even when we feel hopeless and worthless.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we know that Jesus is our friend, even in the dark night of the soul, Psalm eighty eight?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when you feel hopeless, when you feel betrayed, when your body is failing, when you feel like you're dying, when you are dying, when you feel totally abandoned by God and all your friends,
[SPEAKER_00]: You can look up at Jesus hanging on the cross and say, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you too?
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I was the only one.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what it means to be friends with Jesus, to be a friend of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are never alone because Psalm eighty-eight is the words of the Spirit of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm mediate reminds us that when Jesus entered into our humanity, yes, he took our sin and God's wrath and our weakness, but he also took upon himself our lossness, our abandonment, our hopelessness, our despair, our darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm mediate describes the heart of Jesus on the cross, where for the first time in the history of the universe,
[SPEAKER_00]: The sun spoke to the Father and his father was silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hid his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone shows us how Jesus is the ultimate blessed man, Psalm eighty-eight shows us how Jesus became the ultimate cursed man.
[SPEAKER_00]: As it says in Galatians three-ter-teen, on the cross Christ redeemed us from the curse of a law by becoming a curse for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: and here's the thing he did not need to go through any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Out of all the people in the history of the universe who have suffered deeply, Jesus is the only one who knew why he was suffering and the only one who had the power to stop it at any time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had the power to make it stop instantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have performed one of his many miracles and just abandoned his mission, abandoned you, abandoned me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what his enemies were mocking him for.
[SPEAKER_00]: He saved others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why can't he save himself?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are your miracles now?
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus didn't perform any miracles on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or to think about another way, on the cross,
[SPEAKER_00]: When his breath was leaving him, and his friends were leaving him, and even his father was leaving him, the miracle that Jesus performed on the cross is he stayed.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Charles Spurgeon said.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the greatest act of strength and love in the history of the world, he stayed on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, so many eight isn't just a random journal entry of some old testament person you've never heard of that has accidentally snuck in its way into our Bibles.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the very word of God describing the very heart of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why we can cry out to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the beginning I asked you, have you ever felt abandoned by God?
[SPEAKER_00]: The cross tells us, yes, we can feel abandoned, but in Christ we will never be abandoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kim Keller put it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ experienced darkness as his only friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in your darkness, you can know that Jesus is still your friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus was truly abandoned so that you only feel abandoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Jesus didn't abandon you in his darkest hour, why on earth would you think he would ever abandon you and yours?
[SPEAKER_00]: He won't.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so so maybe it shows us that we can cry out to God and how we can cry out to God and why we can cry out to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's one last thing I want you to see.
[SPEAKER_00]: One last thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second Corinthians, one, twenty says, for all the promises of God find their yes in Him in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we sing that song.
[SPEAKER_00]: All you promises are yes and amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes and amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: You ever wonder what that means?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember back, verses ten through twelve of this song, those sarcastic, disrespectful questions that Hayman asks, not understanding how the afterlife works?
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't understand, but Jesus did.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Old Testament Saints did not understand immortality in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a second time, if he one tends to say this, Christ Jesus who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is the one who illuminated what happens after death.
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember the Pharisees are always asking what happens with someone gets married a bunch of times or, you know, they have all these questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have no idea they even argue whether there's a resurrection or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus knows.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the one who brought life and immortality to light.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing that was in the darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Old Testament's writers did not know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, he and his ignorance, he asks, do you work wonders for the dead?
[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus' answers, yes, I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do the departed rise up to praise you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus' answers, yes, they will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is your steadfast love declaring the grave Jesus' answers?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus' answers, yes, and amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Hayman wrote these words, he was being sarcastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though he wasn't being serious, Jesus took him seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though his words were messy, Jesus entered into his mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hayman died with unanswered questions, but now his faith has been made sight.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was so much he didn't know when he wrote that song, but now he sees Jesus face to face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hayman did not know what he was asking for when he wrote this song with Jesus' new.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew and he knew what it would cost him and he paid it anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: All his promises are yes, amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: even the disrespectful ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even the ones we don't deserve.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just how good Jesus is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've said this before.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus made his only friend darkness so that you can know in your darkness that he is your friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we Father, God, I just, we thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you are better than we deserve, than better than what we could have expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, in Christ, we see your face, we see your heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, we know you face the face.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, we thank you that in these last days you have spoken to us by your son.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I just pray for those in this room who are struggling with difficulty, feeling abandoned, feeling alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, I pray that you would hold them.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, that you would shepherd them, that you would love them.
[SPEAKER_00]: or we wait on you, knowing that you will restore all things that Jesus is the first fruit of resurrection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ.