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At Sandals Church, our vision is to be real with ourselves, God and others. This channel features sermons and teaching from Pastor Matt Brown and other members of the Sandals Church preaching team. You can find sermon notes, videos and more content at http://sandalschurch.com/watch
As we continue to pray the Psalms, we come to Psalm 88. O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer and listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles and death draws near.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left. They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave. I am forgotten and cut off from your care. You have thrown me into the lowest pit into the darkest depths. Your anger weighs me down.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:With wave after wave, you have engulfed me. You have driven my friends away by making me repulsive to them. I am in a trap with no way of escape. My eyes are blinded by my tears. Each day I beg for your help, oh Lord.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I lift my hands for your mercy. Are your wonderful deeds of any use to the dead? Do the dead rise up and praise you? Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love? Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds? Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness? Oh, Lord, I cry out to you. I will keep on pleading day by day. Oh, Lord, why do you reject me?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Why do you turn your face from me? I have been sick and close to death since my youth. I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors. Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me. Your terrors have paralyzed me.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long. They have engulfed me completely. You have taken away my companions and loved ones. Darkness is my closest friend. That's the end of the psalm.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Darkness is my closest friend. What a perfect way for the psalmist to summarize this prayer. Their life is not well. Verse three, they're full of troubles. They feel as though death is drawing near.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Their closest friends have left them. God feels heavy on this person. And it it appears as if there's no light at the end of the tunnel. I am grateful that this Psalm is preserved for us in scripture as a reminder to normalize the fact that yes, even Christians, the people of God can go through seasons of darkness. It's interesting too that there's no explanation as to why they're in darkness.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Like your life sometimes, like there's just confusion and maybe even mystery around why you're going through the season you're in without any light at the end of the tunnel. And it's, tragic that it ends in such a way. You know, darkness is my closest friend. You know, the translations say, God be away from me. Like, they're almost in prayer ironically saying, God go away like I darkness is my friend at this point.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:You don't seem to be. And what I think is so important for us to hold, to not dismiss our feelings of darkness, to not dismiss the the reality that these seasons come into our lives without answers, but realize that even in the darkness, the psalmist hasn't stopped praying. And even though this psalm doesn't end with a kind of resounding hope, our scriptures remind us that there was someone in Jesus who not just, you know, was born into darkness, having to deal with, the safety of his own life, but Jesus died in darkness. What he echoed on the cross is a similar cry you see here in Psalm 88. And the hope we have in the gospel is that because Jesus was forsaken for us, you and I will never have to be forsaken by God.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And so even in the midst of a dark season, maybe even in the midst of feeling today like you just you're confused as to why maybe you you sense a distance between you and God, to the point that it feels like darkness is your only friend. Don't give up on prayer. Even if it means you praying the same thing over and over. God, where are you? Rejected me?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And I think it's important for us to bear in mind that there's not always a nice little bow that's tied at the end of our prayers. Why? Because our human lives are more complex than that. And so it's important for us to be willing to protect this kind of space in our lives, to just say it how it is before God, but to not ever give up saying it to God and continue to offer it to him. And Jesus, we hear you now inviting us into the reality that our lives are oftentimes filled with darkness, even a kind of darkness without answers, even a kind of darkness that feels as though you're doing this to us.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And so I pray God specifically for people today who are maybe walking through this season, believe that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, would the hope of the gospel be their guiding light. And even in darkness, would we be reminded that you're at work. And sometimes that is even in the darkness, the darkest moments that you're doing your best work. And so we look to you in these situations. We ask that your spirit would lift up anyone who is feeling this kind of way right now.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.