Psalm 88:18

Psalm 88:18

The pain of darkness

This Psalm has not made pleasant reading. There is no praise or mention of gratitude and thanksgiving. There are no positive encouragements to be found, the writer is in the darkest of places with little hope of recovery or restitution. In this last verse his friends and neighbours have abandoned him, although he argues that it is God who has taken him from them. He continues to apportion blame, this is God’s doing; the imminency of death, the waning of physical strength, the loneliness of the grave, the intensity of the darkness, the waves of wrath, the rejection of friends and the pointlessness of prayer. This man has had a lifetime of suffering and it is all God’s fault! 

Personally, I draw back at the idea of blaming the Lord God for all of my troubles, not least because I have brought most of them upon myself! But what if I were a godly, moral, righteous man who had not put a foot wrong and who could see no reason for the trials that had come upon me, except that God had sent them? Then I might cry out as Heman the Ezrahite did. In fact, as we have seen, the only one who could justifiably quote this Psalm is the Lord Jesus. He is the only human being who could claim that none of His sufferings were of His own wrongdoing and none of them were justified. He alone dabbled with the tentacles of the grave and shook with terror in the darkness of death’s clutches. Only Jesus was completely abandoned for doing nothing wrong and then made repulsive to His friends and deserted wholly by God.  That is why I believe this is a prophetic Psalm written to warn Him of what was to come. It also gives us a glimpse of what He went through and what lies beyond death for those who refuse to believe in Him.

Phew! I’m glad we’ve reached the end, aren’t you? Having said that, there has been a lot to learn from this painful yet intimate Psalm.

 

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