The Only Friend Left is Darkness Text: Psalm 88:13-18
Introduction: The Darkest Room in the Psalter
The book of Psalms is the prayer book of the saints, and it contains a room for every conceivable human emotion and spiritual condition. There are psalms of exhilarating praise, psalms of quiet confidence, psalms of royal celebration, and psalms that call down fire from heaven upon the heads of God's enemies. But there is one psalm that is unique. Psalm 88 is the darkest room in the entire Psalter. It is the one psalm of lament that does not end with a turn to hope. There is no "but I will trust" or "yet I will praise Him." It begins in the dark, it descends into deeper darkness, and it ends in darkness. The final word is "darkness."
Modern evangelicals, with our therapeutic sensibilities, often don't know what to do with a psalm like this. We want to rush in with a flashlight and a four-point plan for a positive mental attitude. We want to tack a happy ending onto it. But the Holy Spirit inspired this psalm to be included in Holy Scripture precisely as it is. He did not make a mistake. This psalm is not a record of spiritual failure; it is a profound expression of godly faith in the face of utter dereliction. It is here to teach us something about the nature of true suffering, the reality of God's wrath against sin, and the depths of the dereliction our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us.
This is not the psalm you read to your grandmother when she is feeling a bit down. This is the psalm for the man who feels he has been locked in the deepest dungeon of God's prison, with the water rising and no hope of rescue. And yet, it is a psalm. It is a prayer. It is addressed to God. The very act of crying out to God from the abyss is an act of profound faith. It is a faith that refuses to let go of God, even when it feels like God has entirely let go of him.
This psalm is ultimately a messianic psalm. It is a prophecy that finds its truest and deepest fulfillment in the experience of the Lord Jesus on the cross. Heman the Ezrahite was a real man who experienced real and profound suffering, but the Spirit spoke through him of a greater suffering to come. As we walk through these final, desperate verses, we are walking on holy ground. We are approaching the mystery of the cross, where the God of our salvation was forsaken by God.
The Text
But as for me, O Yahweh, I have cried out to You for help,
And in the morning my prayer comes before You.
O Yahweh, why do You reject my soul?
Why do You hide Your face from me?
I have been afflicted and about to breathe my last from my youth on;
I bear Your terrors; I am overcome.
Your burning anger has passed over me;
Your horrors have destroyed me.
They have surrounded me like water all day long;
They have encompassed me altogether.
You have removed lover and friend far from me;
My acquaintances are in darkness.
(Psalm 88:13-18)
Persistent Prayer in the Face of Rejection (v. 13-14)
We begin with the psalmist's dogged, desperate persistence.
"But as for me, O Yahweh, I have cried out to You for help, And in the morning my prayer comes before You. O Yahweh, why do You reject my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?" (Psalm 88:13-14)
The word "But" is crucial. Despite everything he has described in the previous verses, his nearness to Sheol, being counted among the dead, being put in the lowest pit, he still prays. This is the grit of true faith. It is not a faith of feelings, but a faith of covenantal obligation and desperation. He cries out to Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God. He is not just shouting into the void; he is appealing to the character of the God who has made promises.
"And in the morning my prayer comes before You." This is a beautiful picture of disciplined, hopeful prayer. Every morning, he gets up and sends his prayer out like a messenger, hoping this will be the day it is received. But the tragedy of the psalm is that the messenger never seems to arrive. The heavens are brass. This is a profound agony. To pray and feel nothing is hard. To pray day after day, morning after morning, and feel nothing but divine silence is a torment of a different order.
And so he asks the question that lies at the heart of all true lament: "Why?" "Why do You reject my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?" This is not the "why" of petulant rebellion. This is the "why" of covenantal confusion. He is saying, in effect, "Lord, You are the God of salvation. I am Your servant. This does not compute. What is happening here?" The hiding of God's face is the ultimate terror for the saint. To be in God's presence is life; to have Him turn His face away is the foretaste of hell. This is precisely what Jesus experienced on the cross. He who had known nothing but perfect, eternal fellowship with the Father cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Heman tastes the bitter dregs of that cup, but Jesus drank it to the bottom.
A Life of Terrors (v. 15-16)
The psalmist then describes the lifelong nature of his suffering, and identifies its source.
"I have been afflicted and about to breathe my last from my youth on; I bear Your terrors; I am overcome. Your burning anger has passed over me; Your horrors have destroyed me." (Psalm 88:15-16)
This is not a temporary crisis. His entire life has been lived on the brink of death, "from my youth on." This is a man acquainted with grief. But notice who is the author of this grief. He does not blame fate, or circumstances, or his enemies. He says, "I bear Your terrors." The affliction comes from God. This is a hard doctrine, but it is a biblical one. God is sovereign over our suffering. And for the psalmist, this is not just the general providence of God; it is the specific, active wrath of God.
"Your burning anger has passed over me; Your horrors have destroyed me." The waves of God's wrath are breaking over his head. He feels utterly undone, not by some impersonal force, but by the personal, holy fury of the God he is crying out to. This is the central mystery of propitiation. On the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the only innocent man who ever lived, bore the full, undiluted, focused wrath of God against the sins of His people. The horrors that Heman felt in part, Jesus absorbed in full. God's fierce wrath went over Him, and His terrors cut Him off. Why? So that the same wrath would not have to pass over us.
Total Isolation (v. 17-18)
The psalm concludes with a description of total, overwhelming, and divinely orchestrated isolation.
"They have surrounded me like water all day long; They have encompassed me altogether. You have removed lover and friend far from me; My acquaintances are in darkness." (Psalm 88:17-18)
The terrors of God are not a distant threat; they are an immediate, suffocating reality. They surround him "like water," a powerful image of drowning. There is no escape, no high ground. He is completely engulfed. This is the state of the sinner under the judgment of God, and it is the state of Christ on the cross, bearing that judgment for us.
But the final blow is the most personal. "You have removed lover and friend far from me." Again, God is the active agent. God is the one who has engineered his abandonment. This is not just bad luck. God has taken his friends, his loved ones, his companions, and put them away from him. This was fulfilled with excruciating precision in the life of our Lord. "Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled" (Matthew 26:56). He was betrayed by one, denied by another, and abandoned by them all. He faced the wrath of God utterly and completely alone.
And so we come to the final, devastating phrase. "My acquaintances are in darkness." Some translations render this, "darkness is my closest friend." The Hebrew is stark. The only thing left in his life is the darkness. His friends are gone, and where they used to be, there is only a black void. The psalm ends without resolution, without a single ray of light. It just stops. In the dark.
Conclusion: The Light on the Other Side of Darkness
So what do we do with this? Why does the Holy Spirit lead us into this pitch-black room and then leave us there? He does it so that we will understand the cost of our salvation. This psalm is the receipt. This is the price that was paid.
Jesus Christ entered into the reality of Psalm 88 so that we would never have to. He was rejected by the Father so that we could be accepted. He bore God's terrors so that we could know His peace. He was surrounded by the flood of God's wrath so that we could be brought safe to shore. He was abandoned by every friend so that He could call us His friends forever. He made darkness His only companion so that we could be brought into God's marvelous light.
The reason Psalm 88 can end in darkness is because the story does not end with Psalm 88. This psalm is the cry from the cross on Good Friday. But we know what happened on the third day. The Father who hid His face from the Son at Calvary vindicated Him in the resurrection on Easter Sunday. The darkness did not have the last word. The last word was, "He is risen!"
Therefore, when you find yourself in a dark place, when you feel abandoned and your prayers seem to hit the ceiling, you can take this psalm on your lips. You can pray it knowing that Jesus has prayed it before you. You can cry out from your own darkness, knowing that He entered the ultimate darkness for you. And you can have faith, even when you cannot see, that because He was truly and utterly forsaken, you will never be. The Father heard the prayer of His Son, not by delivering Him from the cross, but by raising Him from the dead. And because He lives, He hears you too, even when His only answer for the moment is a profound and holy silence.