I'm going to ask you to turn with me this morning in the Word of God to Psalm 88. But before we read that, I'm going to ask you permission for me to break tradition. May not be your tradition, it's certainly mine. I tend not to say anything, including announcements before service or at any other point, but today I just want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude for the privilege to be here today to worship with you and to bring God's word to you. As it's been referenced, my wife and I were members of this church at least three different times, I think. In fact, this church holds a very special place in my heart. I met my wife in the lobby out there, I think about 37 years ago. She doesn't remember the day, but I do. Eventually, it caught up. But this church has a very warm place in my heart, going back to the Southside Chapel days, where I remember worshiping in the middle of a field. We weren't worshiping in a field, there was a church building in the middle of a field, and I'm sure it's surrounded by track houses now, but I don't forget it. I remember how excited I was at one of the reform conferences that a movie star spoke, John Quaid. But the pastor of that congregation was very near to me, dear to me, Pastor Jefferson Duckett. And then later on, as I became a member here, Reverend West was very gracious with his time while I was in college, listening to me think through my call to ministry and talking theology with him. And I was very much blessed by his ministry. And then your pastor now, Reverend Walker, my advisor for an internship, a summer internship my middle year of seminary while he was at Grace in Bakersfield. And it was just a tremendous opportunity for me because as a young seminary student, I got to sit there and pick the brain of this theological genius. And we had many times when we sat and spoke at great length and then at times, I think once per week, his family would invite our family in for fellowship and meal and conversation. So it was just a great opportunity to learn under him. And then I would also remember that this particular congregation sent me off to cemetery, as Pastor Duckett used to say. And little did I know if I just waited a couple more years, I could have stayed right here in Sacramento. But very grateful for all the changes that have happened here. I look out upon this congregation, I see some faces that I remember, and I'd say most of them I do not, because I don't think you were here. But I would welcome it if at some point today you come up to me and just introduce yourself and let me have opportunity to shake your hand. I promise I won't remember your name. I have a great memory, it's just short. But I would love to at least meet you. And again, I'm very grateful for the privilege and opportunity to be here and to worship with you. And my family is here with me. Two of my sons were baptized in this church, and they're with us worshiping today. So we're very thankful that you have greeted us and brought us here. So if your Bibles are open, turn with me to Psalm 88, and I'm gonna ask you to stand now out of respect for the reading of the holy, infallible, inspired, in an air word, of the living God. And let's start with the superscription. a song or psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief musician upon Mahala, Leonov Moskiel of Himon the Ezraite. O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee. Let my prayer come before Thee. Incline Thine ear unto meet my cry. For my soul is full of troubles, and my life doth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go down into the pit. I am as a man that hath no strength, free from the dead like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more. They are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me. Thou hast made me an abomination unto them. I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Lord, I have called daily upon thee. I have stretched out my hands unto thee. Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee, Selah? Shall their lovingkindness be declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark, and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But unto thee I have cried, O Lord, in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee. Lord, why castest thou off my soul? Why hidest thy face from me? I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer thy tears, I am distracted. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, thy tears have cut me off. They came round about me daily like water, they come past me about together. Lover and friend thou hast put far from me, and mine acquaintance in the darkness. Father Almighty, we pray that you would send forth now your spirit of illumination, wisdom, and great abundance, that we would see Jesus. And the things that you teach in the psalm, we would lay up in our heart and put into practice in our life. And this we will do by your grace. Help us now in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. I heard testimony not long ago from a man who bluntly stated God has abandoned thee. And then this man went on to confirm what he meant by disclosing a highlight reel of horrors that were more heartbreaking than the saddest country song you've ever heard. He had been in a horrible car crash that left him with no kneecaps, broken elbows, and a ruined back. Sorrows didn't end there, though, because that was just one set of the sorrows that had stretched all the way back to his youth. He explained that his mother had given him the middle name Jezreel, the son of Gomer, Hosea's adulterous wife, in order to curse him. His father was physically and emotionally abusive. And in his late teen years, his brother betrayed him by sleeping with his girlfriend and ruining an intense two-year relationship with the person he said is the only person in this world he's loved. A man of unspeakable sorrows. In his fifties, riddled with severe pains, living out of his car, no family, no friends, and no hope. He believed, as he said, he had been abandoned by God. You know what's challenging? What's challenging is to come alongside that person, right next to their hospital bed, in that moment of them disclosing the soul's deepest agonies. and looking them in the eye and telling them if they cry out to God with faith and repentance, they can know mercy. I know that's unquestionably the thing to do. It's what we must do. It's what we have to do. But it's hard. And the difficulty is bound up in the intensity of that word abandoned. Because it literally means to be left without protection, care, or support. And this man said he wasn't just abandoned by his mother, he wasn't just abandoned by his father, he wasn't just abandoned by his brother, he wasn't just abandoned by his girlfriend, the only person whom he loved. He said he was abandoned by God. And the receipts he had to confirm that belief was the misery of his life. So I come back to the question, how do we do this? How do we come alongside of people and their depths, the depths of their misery and of their woe and their very real heartfelt pain and bring Christ under them? Well, as I got to thinking about that, I thought maybe the answer is Psalm 88. Maybe the answer is Psalm 88. If there was ever a passage in scripture where a believer basically says, I've been abandoned by God, it's Psalm 88. In the Psalter, there are roughly 50% lament Psalms in proportion to the rest of the 150, which means there's a lot. only to end without some sort of expression of confidence in God's victory or answering the prayer. This one is Psalm 39. And this psalm literally concludes with the word darkness. Gloom, secrecy, abandonment, horror. That last Hebrew term of this psalm shades in the entire tenor and tone of Psalm 88. John Calvin picks up on the dark tone and he offers this explanation. I want you to hear this and tuck it away as we work our way through this psalm. He says, we should rest assured the spirit of God by the mouth of Haman has furnished us with a form of prayer for encouraging all the afflicted who are on the brink of despair to come unto himself. If I can put that in modern English, John Calvin said the reason why Psalm 88 is in the Bible is because God sovereignly gave him on a miserable life. That the Spirit of God might inspire this Psalm for your comfort and your consolation. And the main point of our Psalm this morning is that God sometimes abandons his people to intense sufferings. in order to exercise them to faith and hope and identification with Jesus Christ. We're gonna unfold that main point of the three parts. We're gonna cover, first of all, lament, move to faith, and finally, resolution. Lament, faith, and resolution. I'm gonna throw those bullet points out as we go so you can track with me. But we begin this morning with lament, and as you look over Psalm 88 and you cover the territory of it, you can say it fairly reasonably breaks down into five categories of abandonment. And I'm gonna repeat them for you here. Abandoned to die, abandoned to wrath, abandoned to lowliness, abandoned from youth, and abandoned to darkness. Abandoned to die, abandoned to wrath, abandoned to lowliness, abandoned from youth, abandoned to darkness. So now I wanna go over these one by one. I don't want this to be tedious to us this morning, okay? The reason for going over this and grasping the scope of the range of the miseries and afflictions here is so that we have a sense of the misery of this psalm so that eventually we can connect to Christ. So let's think through these categories and first of all he says, abandon to die, look with me at verse 3. For my soul is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. And I want you to begin with that conjunction for. It looks back to the first two verses and it looks back to the exclamation of prayers and faith and all of that. And now for signals as he's moving forward, he's explaining the reason why he is crying out to God. And I want you to see here the reason why he's crying out to God is because he says here that his soul is full of troubles. The soul, the deep interior part of the human person, that thing which makes us unique because it's what's created in us by the hand of God. It's what makes you you. His soul is filled, he says. And that verb filled there means to be filled up to the brim and overflowing. It's a word that's typically used to speak of your appetite being filled after eating at hometown buffet. It's full to the point of excess. And so he says here, it's full, and normally it's used in a positive sense, and here it's obviously shaded in with colors of darkness, but he says, I just can't take anymore of trouble. And the word trouble is full of emotional anxiety and intensity. He's at max capacity. And the reason he's at death's door. Now we begin to work our way through this first aspect of the psalm here, the abandonment to death category. And between verses three through six, we have seven references to death. Verse three, we have, my life is drawn near to Sheol, the grave. That's the overwhelmingly common term for afterlife in the Old Testament. Verse four, I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit, and the verb means a hole that's been dug out, and obviously in this case, to be a grave. He is among the dead, forsaken it says in verse five, which means set free. It's a touch of irony because we do not think of death as freedom. And then in verse 5b, it says he's slain, lying in the grave. He's slain. He speaks of death. And then in verse 5d, cut off from your hand. It means to be severed, and he says here he's been entirely cut off from divine protection. And in verse six, he says, you have put me in a lowest pit here, which means below the surface of the earth. And again, he ascribes it to God's doing, your hand, God, you have done it. And then finally in 6B, in the dark places, in the depths that we refer to watery depths. This is a metaphor for the grave. Seven references. to death and dying. Now, look at verse four. Fear of the grave. I am accounted with them that go down to the pit. I'm as a man that has no strength. So we see the affect of this abandonment. Affect. I'm without strength. It's a word for vigor and robust health. And he says it's consumed. And this is how people feel when they stand over the top of that grave. When they stare death down with the eyes, what they find there is an abyss. And it saps a person and their strength. I'm dealing with a man right now, who by all accounts should be dead. He should have been dead a long time ago. He hasn't had anything to eat or drink in three and a half weeks. And he won't let go. And he moans and he groans and he cries out. His wife says, why don't you just die? I found out through some discussion the man had abandoned his faith. He married a woman who was a Buddhist. It's my heartfelt belief here now that as he looks into that grave without Christian faith, he's terrified. It's worse than being alive in all of his miseries. It's just a reminder to us young people, if you're considering marriage, make sure you marry in Christ. One of the devil's tools to separate believers, covenant children from their faith in the church is marrying into unbelief. We call it evangelistic dating, right? It doesn't work. But I'm thinking of this man here as he sits upon this deathbed, hovering over the grave. It's sapping his strength. That's what He-Man says his life was like. Abandoned to wrath. It's bad enough that he feels he's been abandoned to death, but now he says he's been abandoned to wrath. He's got one foot in the grave, and what he does feel on this side of it is living hell. Thy wrath lies hard upon me, verse seven. Thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Notice he knows exactly the reason he's experiencing this misery. He says it's yours. It's not from the universe. It's not the human situation. He says, your wrath, it rests upon thee. And it's a severe and intense term, which would be like 500 pound barbell resting on your shoulders. It's squeezing him and crushing him. It's intense anger. He speaks about waves in verse seven. If you drop down to verse 16, you see some more of the poetic language. fierce wrath that goes over me. Again, we're back to the image and the metaphor of tidal waves and breakers, and it has the very uncomfortable language of going over me. In verse 17, coming around me, this is the feeling of suffocation due to drowning. What misery that must be to make your last moments in life gulping in water till your lungs fill and you die. He says that's what it feels like to him, but it's not water. It's the sense of divine intensity. He says he suffers God's terrors, that God is angry with him. Abandoned to loneliness. We've seen abandoned to death, abandoned to wrath, and now we see abandoned to loneliness. Imagine you feel like you're gonna die. Imagine you feel like God's wrath is upon you, and now you're all alone in it. Look at verse eight. He says, thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me, thou hast made me an abomination unto them. I'm shut up, and I cannot come forth. The word for acquaintance means close friend, somebody that is your confidant, somebody with whom you share your soul. And what does he say about that? It's not just that they've disappeared or they've been taken away, but no, God, you have removed them. His sense here is placing them as far away as the horizon is and its greatest point from you. God has scooped them up. And worse yet, not only is he in isolation, but he says he feels their scorn. Thou hast made me an abomination unto them. I had an old police officer friend once who was talking about something and he said very animatedly, and you know what? The word of God says it's an abomination. I don't know the Hebrew word for it, but it just sounds bad. That's the reality of it. That's a good dynamic equivalent idea. It's just bad. It's detestable. And here he's saying it's not just that he's been severed, it's that the very people who were his support system in life now look upon him with contempt. And notice the affect in the midst of his alienation. He says, I'm shut up. It's the language of a prison cell and I cannot go out. He repeats the same agony again in verse 18. Lover and friend thou hast removed from me the closest confidant, the closest acquaintance, the one with whom you share the most intense emotional bonds in life. He says, God, you have taken them from me and put them far from me. Himong's misery is abandonment to death, abandonment to wrath, and abandonment to emotionally crippling social isolation. We could stop there, but I'm not going to. You need to get the whole thing. Abandoned from youth. Here's your fourth category of lament and suffering. Abandoned from youth. Verse 15, I was afflicted and about to die from my youth on. If you were to appear to him on his bedside as he waited at death's door and said, well, how long has it been this way? Slowly and quietly and cautiously he'd bring forth and say, well, it's always been this way since I was a child. Remind me of that man who I shared the story about here in the introduction. Someone who had only known suffering their whole life at the hands even of the people who were the closest to him. And so if you showed up to him to do a sort of life review as he pondered and reflected and as he took lessons from life to think about in order to strengthen him in the moment as he prepared for death and you said to him, what is it that helps you get through this? I don't know. Because unlike the song Glory Days, there weren't any to think about. What He-Man would tell you was that life is short and miserable and you die alone. Abandoned to die, abandoned to divine wrath, abandoned to crippling social isolation, abandoned throughout life. Well, how do you top that? Well, look at the last verse. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me and mine acquaintance in the darkness. I would have you zero in on the very last clause there because it's really disputed. I know we have it in our translation this way, but literally it reads, those known by me, darkness. The KJV, and I usually use the New American as I preach, don't hold against me, has into or in. It's an interpretive decision to say you've, it's as if saying that God has placed them in there, but it doesn't seem to match the force and the scope of the whole lament thus far. And so there are many scholars who say on very solid exegetical grounds that he would be saying that his only friend is death and darkness right now. And so what does it do is it leaves this lament in the midst of the deepest darkness you can think of. To say your only friend is darkness is to speak of the epitome of human suffering and misery. Abandoned to die, abandoned to wrath, abandoned to isolation, abandoned from childhood, abandoned to darkness. No friends, no help, no hope. Psalm 88, and I'm just gonna take a stab at it here, ends more darkly than any other text, I think in all of scripture. The last word sums up the misery of it all. Can I quote from John Calvin? It greatly concerns us, I say, to look on this spectacle that our distresses, however grievous, may not overwhelm us with despair. I love reading John Calvin, especially on the Psalms. It's a dose of truth. He says, basically here, our takeaway is that Psalm 88 points us to a silver lining. No matter how bad your day is or how bad your life is, it could be worse. God has put Psalm 88 in the Bible under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to encourage you this morning that you are not alone in your suffering. By providence, I was sitting with a chaplain colleague last week who shared with me that he was on a death visit and he pulled out his Bible and he read from Psalm 88 He said he felt very uncomfortable reading it because of how dark and depressing the psalm was, and he knew the man's condition. He said the more he read, the more horrible he felt. That can happen. You're there to be a consolation. You end up making things worse. But you know what that man said? When he finished reading the psalm, he sat there in silence, which only made the forehead of my friend sweat. He said, thank you. Now I know I'm not alone. Now I know I'm not alone. It concerns us to look upon this spectacle. People of God, listen to me now. As you read about this, it connects to your life. It connects to your life. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not the only person who's climbed up that steep and terrible and awful mountain of distress and stared down the steep cliffs of despair. And I say that it's so important because sometimes believers get caught off guard in the Christian life wondering how could all this happen if they were a child of God. And sometimes they'll sit there and tell me, I don't think I'm saved. Because if I was a child of God, why would my life be in such ruin? The answer is because sometimes God gives you a miserable life so that you'll learn to trust him. This is a hard thing to do, to go through this kind of pain and suffering and feel like you are in isolation, everybody else around you seems like they're doing fine. You may not be suffering today, and I pray that you're not, but your time is coming. And I want you to remember Psalm 88, and I want you to remember that as you sit there in your misery, and it may be a physical pain, it may be an emotional pain, it might be a psychological wound, you may have been betrayed by somebody who's close to you. I don't know what your pain or your suffering will be, but that day is coming. And what I want you to know is it does not mean that God has abandoned you. It means that God has sent you misery so that you will lift up your eyes to the heavens and to Christ and to find where your help comes from. Think about that carefully. I'm not trying to sell you a cup of cold comfort. We are the church under the cross, and it means our afflictions will come and they will be real. The Christ will be with you. That's lament. Let's look at faith. I'm going to quote from Calvin again, I can't help it. But he at the same time, while struggling with sorrow, declares the invincible steadfastness of his faith. You see that? Side by side here in Psalm 88, we have lamentation and we have faith. I have zeroed in on the lamentation because I want us to think about what is our encouragement in this. Faith. And you know what, people of God, it begins the psalm. Look at verse one. Oh Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee. Faith expressed, first of all, isn't it? Faith expressed. And I want us to think about this because sometimes when we read a psalm through from beginning to end, we think that it's to be read sequentially in terms of the unfolding of its narrative timeline. That's not always the case. Many Psalms present a discarnologized timeline. What I think you wanna see here is this is after all of the lamentation, after all of the prayers and crying, this is his expression of faith. And this should color in our understanding of this lament. He says he's crying. God is his salvation. What I think we take from the order of this Psalm is that when the midst of this misery came, when the sufferings were so intense, he felt like he was gargling in divine wrath. He ran to Christ. He ran to Christ. He acknowledges that Christ is his Savior, that God is the God of his salvation, that mercy is found in the wounds of Jesus Christ. He confesses he has been bought with a price, and the price is the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That his only comfort in life and death is that he's not his own. He belongs to his faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. People of God, there is something so instructive in there for us. When you go through your seasons of misery and sorrow and affliction, don't fix upon them and cling to them. Because they'll break you. You take all of that to Christ. You bring all of it to God in Christ. You look upon the face of Jesus Christ and what you will see there is the invisible God. A God of mercy, a God of grace, a God of love, a God of kindness. But listen to me, if you've not done that, you need to do it now. There is no consolation for you from Psalm 88 if you have never run to Christ. And since I don't know you this morning, I do sincerely hope and believe that all of you are blood-bought saints, quickened by the Spirit of God and adopted into His family. But if you're not, let me tell you, there is no consolation in Psalm 88 for you this morning. Unless you've run to Christ. And the reason is because of your sin. The Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Bible says there is none righteous, no, not one. And then after all that, it says the result of that, the wages of that sin is death. And so there's no comfort that comes out of Psalm 88 and feeling like you can identify with him on this morning because he had a horrible life and you have a horrible life. It doesn't work that way because this Psalm isn't about him. This is about Christ. And so what you need to do this morning is you need to do a Himantan. Is you run straight to Christ and you bring all of your sins under His blood. You take all of your failings, you take all of your corruptions, you take all of your brokenness, all of your addictions, everything in your life that is in ruin. And you bring it to the cross of Jesus Christ. And you bring it to His precious blood. And you exercise faith in Christ. and you will find mercy. One of our treasured verses in the New Testament is 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, what? He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I think I've worn out that Bible verse in my life. It's for you. The consolation is God will not fail to cleanse you with Christ's blood. So we have faith expressed. We have faith appeal. Look at verse two. Let my prayer come before you. Incline your ear to my cry. Here is the prayer request that Haman brings to the throne of grace. And oh, it's so full of palpable emotion. He says, incline, pay attention to me. He asked God to look at his life and his misery and his isolation, his pain and to open up his ears. And we have another word for cry here and it means pleading. So you get the impression that this is not lukewarm prayer. This isn't a prayer sitting on ice cubes. This is prayer on fire. Doubles down on fervency. Reminds me of James 5.16, the effectual and fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. And this term effective is a term for energy and strength and action. And so here Haman does exactly what James would have exhorted him if he was alive at the time. He would say, cry out to God from the bottom of your soul. Is that how you deal with your troubles? Is that how you deal with your troubles? You know, I used to hear that language when I was a kid and grew up in the church. It sounded so repetitive. It sounded pious. It sounded like just the right thing to say. But you know, as you get older in life and you start dealing with its perplexities and trials and its miseries, there's nothing more precious in life to hear from somebody else than to say, I am praying for you. I hope you're doing what Himan is doing. You're praying for yourself. When you hear of other people's miseries and sorrows and pain, that you say, I'm praying for you. And that you mean it. Notice faith exercised here in verse 9. My eye has wasted away by reason of affliction. Lord, I have called daily unto thee. I have stretched out my hands unto thee. It's interesting to note where this is positioned. This is positioned right after he is expounded upon feeling abandoned to death. And yet we have an interjection of faith expressed here. He clings doggedly to prayer. It's as if he won't stop committing himself in faith to God. I've called out every day. I've spread out my hands to you. He's praying with his whole heart. Look at verse 13. But I, oh Lord, have cried out to you for help. In the morning, my prayer comes before you. What catches my eye here is the morning, huh? At dawn, will God help her? Psalm 46, five, right? When the church is under attack, when the believer is under attack, God helps in the morning. He aligns his prayers and faith with the time of divine operation. In full faith and confidence that God hears, faith is expressed. We see the appeal of faith, the exercise of faith, I can't get around verse 14. Why castest off my soul? Why hidest thou thy face from me? I think this may be the emotional and spiritual low point of this psalm. That why is such a piercing and penetrating question. Why? I just want to know the cause. It doesn't seem sensible. It doesn't seem reasonable. You know, I would say I wrestled with Psalms of Lament for years because I was taught not to ask these questions. Maybe you were taught that way, too. It's almost impious. And yet so often in the Psalms, whether it's Haman or David or somebody else, you hear them asking questions like this, and you almost put your hand over your mouth when you read it. But then I remember that this is the Spirit of God, not Haman. And he shows us, as a believer, sometimes our sorrows and our sufferings are so intense that we say this in faith. Because you know what he wants here? He says, I want your face to shine upon me. I think we should be thinking of the Aaronic Benediction here, right? He would just love a taste of the radiance of God's face. He says, why are you hiding it? And here's what he's thinking of, of that great benediction, Lord, make his face shine upon you, be gracious to you and lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. He longs for the gracious rays of God's faith. You see, he knows what a dejected and dispirited and weak faith needs. It needs Jesus. These are painful verses. So we thought about lament, we've looked at faith, and now we come to resolution. We said at the start that God sovereignly, according to John Calvin, I think he's right, sovereignly, gave him on a life of misery, the Spirit of God might inspire him to compose a psalm of horrible darkness to provide encouragement for me and you and all the saints throughout history, that gray cloud. But how does it get us to Christ? There may be more ways than one. Spurgeon said just make a beeline to the cross, I'm good with that. But I'm gonna work with the word darkness. The very last word in our text seems to help me connect this to Christ, because you remember what Mark 15, 34 says, in the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is translated, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In the ninth hour, that's what Jesus said, but what about the sixth to the ninth hour? Well, Mark 15.33 tells us that darkness filled the whole land before Jesus cried out with those agonizing words. And so I tie together darkness, And the theme of abandonment, loneliness, and all of the categories of abandonment that we read here in this psalm. And what we find is that the resolution to him on suffering and complaint, his desire for the rays of divine grace to shine upon him is Christ. is the one who was strung up between thieves. It was the one who went to the cross with the weight of the sins of the world imputed to his account. The one who was the righteous for the unrighteous. The one who, as the catechism says, bore all of the agonies, terrors, and expressions of hell in his soul. on the cross, the one who plumbed the depths of abandonment in our place. And then at the end of it all, when he gave up his spirit and he perished, he was abandoned finally to the grave as Heman complains about. You see, Jesus experienced all that Heman speaks of, abandoned to death, abandoned to wrath, abandoned to social isolation, abandoned from youth, abandoned to darkness. Psalm 88 is about Christ's sufferings for you. And that means then, that no matter how intense your sufferings are, Romans 8, 38 and 39 is true. Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ. Why? Because Jesus plunged himself in the depths of divine abandonment and came out on the other side victorious. So people of God, what do you do with your sufferings? The answer is that you take your sufferings, and all of your woes, and all of your agony, and all of your misery, and all of your pain, and all of your sorrow, and all of your hurt, and all of your wounds, and you run to Jesus Christ. The Belgic Confession has a beautiful statement. I believe it's at the end of Article 29. It says that the true believer runs constantly to the blood, death, and sufferings of Jesus Christ. How do you do that? Let me give you some assurance this morning. And I plucked this from the words of the preacher in Hebrews chapter 13. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have for he himself said, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you. Do you know what's so great about this? Well, everything. I mean, but this is such a clear, categorical promise. But you know, this promise is given to Israel, the church in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 31.6, and then it's given to Joshua before he is commanded to rise up and conquer the land. And now the preacher reaches across the centuries and the millennia, and he brings it home for the church. And he says, here's your promise. But you know what he does is he reframes it for a new situation. To all of the concerns of life, notice how he says here, make sure your character is free from the love of money. And by doing that, what the preacher does is he brings this massive promise of divine help and protection and aid, and he hauls it across time and he unloads it upon the mundane things of life that trouble you. Your checkbook. Your salary. Your bank account. Your sense of your lack of life's provisions. And oh yeah, it includes your broken heart and your physical wounds and your emotional scars and everything. But to broaden it like that is to give you just something that you can wrap your arms around in all of your infirmities and know that when you do, you have the deepest assurance. God has not abandoned you. God will not forsake you. He is yours in Jesus Christ. What you never have to fear is that you will be abandoned by God. And so the next time you feel your soul filled to the brim with troubles, you remember Psalm 88. And then you remember that last word, darkness. And you take that word to the cross of Jesus Christ and you remember that that symbolizes and proclaims a great fact to you that because Christ was abandoned to wrath, you will never be forsaken by God. And as you take your faith, however fragile and weak and unassured it is to that great promise, you will find peace. the peace of God, which passes all understanding, which is able to guard your heart and mind through Christ our Lord. Amen.