How to deal with dark times | Tim Keller

I must apologize to you about the sermon I'm about to preach because the the service is filled with joy the worship up to now has brought us to a mountaintop and now I'm going to take you into the valley I I do seriously need to at least warn you that there is a mountaintop on the other side of this valley but we're going to be reading Psalm 88 it has to do with what how Christians should act when they are going through very dark times so I actually am warning you especially the first of the

four points of this sermon it's a real downer but there really is as we go into the valley there really is something wonderful on the other side now let me read to you from Psalm 88 I'll just read verses 1 to 2 and then 6 to the ends 18 Oh Lord the God who saves me day and night I cry out before you may my prayer come before you turn your ear to my cry you have put me in the lowest pit in the darkest depths your wrath lies heavily upon me you have overwhelmed me

with all your waves you have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them I am confined and cannot escape my eyes are dim with grief I call to you O Lord every day I spread out my hands to you do you show your wonders to the dead to those who are dead rise up and praise you is your love declared in the grave your faithfulness and destruction are your wonders known in the place of darkness or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion but I cry to you for help

oh Lord in the morning my prayer comes before you why o Lord do you reject me and hide your face from me for my youth I have been afflicted and close to death I have suffered your terrors and I'm in despair your wrath is swept over me or your terrors have destroyed me all day long they surround me like a flood they have completely engulfed me you have taken my companions and my loved ones from me the darkness is my closest friend now the Bible especially the Book of Psalms is filled with prayers by suffering

people people who are going through darkness but virtually all of them end on a note of hope so almost all the prayers that you read in the Psalms by people who are in difficult times that are going through suffering by the end of the the prayer there's always some note in which the psalmist says I see you here or I know I will see your goodness in the land of the living or I I know you're with me or something along those lines but there's two Psalms and I've we're looking at one of them there

are two Psalms in the Psalter psalm 39 and Psalm 88 that do not end on a note of hope at all in fact you'll notice the word darkness shows up three times in this Psalm including at the end it's clearly the theme and actually even though in the English translation the last line is darkness is my closest friend in in Hebrew the last word of the psalm is darkness in other words the very very end a more literal translation would be and my only friend my closest friend now is darkness and that's the end of

the prayer now what kind of prayer ends like that what kind of prayer ends not in Hope but in darkness what is this prayer doing in the Bible it's here I think that teach us a number of things four things this this psalm is going to teach us that darkness can be something that lasts a long time for a believing Christian a believing Christian can be in darkness for a good while that's the first thing secondly however it will teach us there's no better place to learn about the grace of God than in dark time

and also there's no better place thirdly to become a person of greatness than in dark times and lastly darkness can be relativized let's look at these three these four things first of all first thing we learn here is the darkness is something that for a believing Christian can last a good while this man says in the very beginning you are the God who saves me so he's actually trusting God as Savior he's trusting God a Savior and he's praying he says every day I'm praying to you and I'm coming to you and I'm calling you

and I'm trusting you as Savior now there's two kinds of darkness outer darkness has more to do with the circumstances of your life we don't really know exactly what's happening to this man we do know that he's losing all of his friends we also know that he seems to be facing death at least it's either imminent or possible because those questions where he says to the dead Reisman pray you praise you is your righteousness known in the land of oblivion he's clearly facing death we're not sure exactly what the problems are but actually I always

find that that in the Book of Psalms when I'm reading this prayer by a person suffering and I don't quite know what the person's going through it's easier to make it my own it's easier for me to enter in and have it help me so outwardly is the circumstances of his life are darkness but inwardly he's experiencing darkness too you see if outwardly things are going very badly in your life but inwardly you sense God's presence and love you can make it but that's not what's happening here he feels abandoned he feels God is angry

with him and has rejected him he feels that God is gone so he's experiencing both outward darkness and inward darkness and he's praying and he's trusting God his Savior and by the end of this of the the prayer he's still in darkness what is the teaching here then and the teaching is that you can be a believing Christian you can be trusting God's for his for your salvation you can be praying and doing doing what you think you should be doing and yet it doesn't get any better for a long time now you might say

well you warned me this this first point was a downer and it is on the other hand it's a mercy - why is it a mercy well first of all it teaches us something it teaches us about the realism of the Bible let me quote from that great work of art The Princess Bride that movie The Princess Bride there's a great line in that great work of art goes like this life is pain highness anyone who says differently is selling something well guess what the Bible isn't selling something if you're thinking about becoming a Christian

if you're wondering whether I should have anything to do with Christianity I want you to know Christianity is realistic it's not selling you anything it tells you you can do everything right and you can have pretty long times in which the darkness just doesn't lift but there's also a mercy here see our expectations Kathy and I over the years have had people actually literally say this or they've say it in different words they say when I became a Christian I figured that now that I'm a Christian now that I'm walking with God nothing really bad

could happen to me and you see when if that's your expectation now I'm a Christian I'm kind of safe bad things can't happen to me I'm a Christian I you know I'm a good person now I'm I've cleaned up my life that real bad things can't happen to me well you say okay I know somebody better than you way better than you Jesus Christ and he did not have a great life he was rejected he was tortured and killed in other words and and he actually says by the way Jesus says in John chapter 16

in this world you will have trouble and he even says servant is not above his master the world hated me it's going to hate you and and here's the mercy expectations are a big part of how you handle suffering because the suffering is painful and terrible but what if on top of that and this is your fault if you do it the suffering may not be your fault but the but false expectations the idea that well now that I'm following Jesus bad things really can't happen to me even though they happen to Jesus but they

won't happen to me that's not what the Bible says that's not what Jesus says and your expectations if they if they are aligned with reality knowing that the Bible is not selling anything to you they're aligned with reality it can have a it can help you enormous Lee face the troubles because very often half the pain that you're experiencing is not from the suffering it's from those false expectations how could this be happening it shouldn't happen to me a servant is not above his master or her master so this is the you know okay let's

let's just you should be glad you know this is the worst of the four points and yet there's a mercy in it that's just the Bible is not selling anything there's a realism about Christianity and therefore you really can stay in darkness a fairly long time and and and be a Christian and do and pray to God but point to it's in the dark times that are the dark times are really the best place in time to learn about the grace of God see I've given the man credit but let's let's take a look at

the way in which he prays here's here's some things he's not doing all that well for example some of this prayer is not really a prayer it's an interrogation so for example when he says do you show your wonders to the dead do those who are dead rise up and praise you as your love declared in the grave these are these are sarcastic rhetorical questions he says as your faithfulness known in the land of destruction here's what he's saying he says I want to be your witness I want to tell the world about you how

am I gonna do that if I'm dead if you have all these things I want to do for you you know that and yet you're not letting me do any of them what the how much sense does that make he comes very close to saying answer me God some people would call this intemperate some people would call it blasphemous it's probably somewhere in the middle but of course he's not controlling his heart he's not being deferential he's not being respectful he's not saying thy will be done Oh No also by the way many commentators point

something out that you might miss I certainly have over the years but there's another place where he says from my youth I have been afflicted and close to death from my youth I have suffered your terrors and am in despair now we're gonna see in a minute because the the heading of this Psalm tells us who this person is who's writing this praying this that this is almost certainly an exaggeration what he's actually saying is all my life I've been in danger of death all my life you have been abandoning me you know you've never

been there for me god never that's really what he's saying and and almost certainly that's an exaggeration and there's a tendency for us to do that when we're in despair when we're just out of our minds with anger and grief and and fear and despair we we tend to read everything in our life through that moment instead of standing back and say well lord in the past you did many good things for me and some of the Psalms do that this guy is not doing that this prayer is not doing that he's saying you've never

been there for me he's exaggerating he's cross-examining God he's being expressed incredibly disrespectful if not blasphemous and of course the last statement darkness is my closest friend is quite have charge you know what he's saying he's saying to God God darkness is a clue as a better friend than you are right now I'd rather have darkness than you even darkness is more of a comfort than you are so he's not doing things very well and you have to ask yourself the question why in the world is this prayer in the Bible and many years ago

this prayer and also Psalm 88 in Psalm 39 which are very similar Psalm 39 ends with the psalmist saying turn your face away from me God so I can get a little bit of peace before I die so Psalm 39 in Psalm 88 end with this despair and this anger toward God and it just ends that way and I always did I never knew what to do with these prayers I just sort of sort of skipped over them really quickly I would never imagine by the way preaching on them and then but many years ago

I read just two two sentences in a little commentary by Derek Kidner Derek Kidner was the warden of Tyndale house in Cambridge for many many years and talking about these prayers he said something that just went through me like a shaft it changed my life not only toward these prayers but it changed my life in understanding how to handle darkness and this is what he said quote the very presence of these prayers in Scripture is a witness to God's understanding God knows how men speak when they are desperate now do you realize what that means

what Kidner is saying is the very fact that God put these in the Psalter God put them there they're there because God put them there what does that tell us about God a lot see you don't have God looking at this prayer saying I don't want that in my Bible my goodness I don't I don't want anybody to think that it's okay to pray like that I don't want to identify myself as the God is someone who prays like that but God does put it in the Bible and that means God is identifying with those

of us who sometimes pray like that you know why he's a God of grace he's understanding he knows how we speak when we're desperate oh my word God is saying I am the god of this man even though he's not getting it right because I'm a God of grace and here's what he's saying to you God is saying to you through this psalm he says I am your God not because you put on a happy face in the morning I am your God not because you say everything right not because you do everything right I'm

your guy because I'm a God of grace do you know how liberating that is I can tell you I can ultimately just say I've learned 10 times more about the grace of God in dark times than I ever did in times of prosperity number three not only are dark times the best places to learn about the grace of God they're also the best places to become a person of greatness what do I mean well it's true that he's not doing things right he's saying a lot of things he shouldn't be saying he's insulting God saying

quite a few things he shouldn't be saying but he is saying them to God and that reminds us of the entire book of Job see let's think about the book of Job Joe the book of job starts with Satan coming in to the presence of God and God says have you seen my servant job there is none like him in all the earth and Satan says to God does job's serve God for not does job's serve God for nothing so what Satan's doing is he's he's questioning the idea that God that that job really serves

God or really loves God here's basically here's what he's saying he says when he says does job's serve God for nothing what he's saying is job is in a transactional relationship with you God job is doing XYZ but only because you do XYZ job is praying and he's going and he's making doing sacrifices and he's and he's obeying your commands but because you answer his prayers and you bless him and you give him your peace and you do all these things he's not really loving you for you it's all transactional he's actually loving himself and

using you he's doing things only because you are benefiting him so take away those things give him outer darkness and inner darkness and you'll see he'll curse you because he's just a mercenary he doesn't love you for yourself he's loving himself and using you now that's quite a charge especially when you that has probably happened to everybody in this room at one point have you ever thought that somebody liked you for you that they actually just loved you or liked you and then you found out they were using you because they felt like well you

could open a door for them or through you they could they could get to somebody else and it's a horrible feeling of being used you feel like hey I thought you liked me and you're just using me okay well how do you think God feels and how much less appropriate is that to use God that way so what Satan is bringing up is actually very important and of course don't forget that the book of Job was written to everyone to read whoever wrote the book of Job did not want us justice here that Satan was

saying that about job the author of the book of Job wants us to see that Jake that Satan is saying that about us Satan is saying do we really serve God for not do we serve God for nothing do we really love God for himself or are we at a transactional relationship okay so class is Satan right about you and me and I think the an honest answer please don't answer that on this preacher I think the right answer that is to some degree yeah at least we all start out that way let's be honest

about it we all come to God I doesn't mean I you don't really trust in Christ as Savior I'm not saying you haven't really you said I really want to believe and I really want to follow Jesus but to a great degree in the beginning we come because we got a problem or because we got a need or there's an emptiness or something and we come because we want something and if we stay in that state we'll be up and down depending on how things are going there's a certain there's still a self-centeredness in the

middle of our Christianity and it's the reason why we're getting all knocked around all the time everything something comes along and it you say why isn't God doing this and we really get cast on and get upset but here's what's happening an old test professor years ago trying to help me understand the book of Job said do you notice how after Jobe says all these terrible prayers because a lot of job's prayers are very similar to this he's always saying terrible things to God but at the very end Joe God says Jobe has honored me

and he actually turns to job's friends and says you better a better ask job to pray for you I'm gonna smite you Jobe has honored me and you have not and the old test professor said why in the world after all those terrible prayers would God say job honored me and he says the answer is they were prayers you see job was being angry and he was complaining and he was being angry but he was he was being angry and complaining to God he never walked away from God he said I don't understand you God

I'm angry at you but he never turned away he stayed with God when he was getting nothing out of it which means in the end Satan was defeated and what's happening here is this man even though he is not in any way praying the way he ought to pray he's still praying he says darkness is my closest friend but he's saying it to God which means Satan is defeated which means when you go through darkness if you don't feel God's there but you hold on anyway and you say you know what you're God and I'm

not and I'm not getting anything out of this but I'm still gonna pray I'm still gonna go to church and worship I'm still going to love my neighbor I'm still gonna do the things I ought to do that will turn you into a person not self-centered not in a transactional relationship up and down all the time it'll turn you into a person of endurance of stability of strength of greatness at the end of the book Lord of the Rings the book not the movie Sam you know the friend of Frodo they're on their way to

Mount Doom and they they getting close to the end and their strength is almost out and Sam looks up to the top of Mount Doom and he suddenly realizes we're gonna die no matter what happens we're gonna die and the thought comes to him just lay down curl up in a little ball and go to sleep and then what the text tells us then something begins to happen and it says this quote but even as hope died in Sam or seemed to die it was turned to a new strength Sam's plain Hobbit face grew Stern

almost grim as the will hardened in him and he felt through all his limbs a thrill as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness their endless barren miles could subdue he was being turned into something of greatness and it's in the darkness where you throw away that transactional approach it's almost like when bad things happen God is looking at you and saying okay now we're gonna figure out whether you got into the Christian faith to get me to serve you or an order that you would serve

me now we're gonna find out because right now you're not gonna get much out of a relationship with me now we're gonna see whether you're serving me or yourself whether you're loving me or yourself and when you say okay I'm gonna love you I'm gonna serve you it's gonna change you it's gonna make you an unflappable person it's gonna make you you know what it made Sam you know he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue now lastly it does begin to weave

we've actually up to now really not address the question he believed his darkness was objective and he believed his darkness was permanent he says so he doesn't believe he's not saying I just feel that you're not here God he's saying you're not there and he doesn't say that this is temporary says this is permanent in other words the this man believed that his darkness was absolute not relative it wasn't temporary it wasn't subjective very subjective it wasn't he wasn't saying subjectively I feel you're not there but object will be I know you're there no no

it was absolute but we know he's wrong we know his suffering actually was relative it was temporary and that God really was there for him how do we know that well because the the psalmist the man who wrote the psalm was a man named Haman not Haman who is the villain of the book of Esther but Heymann and what we know about Heymann is this that in first chronicles six Heymann was the leader the kohathites guild of musicians and poets who wrote many of the Psalms if you want to go see some of them they

were in there in the 40s the the 40s in the Psalms or the 80s and the Psalms now keep this in mind the Psalms the book the Psalms is one of the greatest works of literary history in the history of the world everybody understands that whether you're Christian or not and that means that this man wrote some of the greatest literary art musical art in the history of the world it means millions of people have been helped by him and what does that mean you know how pressure turns a piece of coal into a diamond

this suffering was not absolutely it was relative it was temporary and God was there because through this suffering this man was being turned into a great artist somebody who by the way do you think Heymann when he was going through this thought that 2500 years later several thousand people in the middle of London would be talking about his great works do you think that's what they would have thought absolutely not he couldn't have thought that but you see he couldn't see it but we can well we can see is that God was there that God

was working it was temporary God was turning him into something wonderful and great that he was gonna use the rest of it for centuries and you can know that too if God is your Savior if you're relying on him he is there even though you don't feel it he hasn't abandoned you he is working you say well how do I know that here's how you can know that at the end of the book of at the end of Psalm 39 God's face is turned away the end of Psalm 88 darkness losing God's face darkness does

that sound familiar to you Matthew 27:45 from the sixth hour to the ninth hour darkness came down over all the land at the ninth hour Jesus Christ on the cross cried my god my god why you turned your face for me No why have you forsaken me and at that moment the earth shook and the rocks split and the tombs broke open and the body of the holy people who had died were raised to life human thought he was getting the absolute total darkness he was totally abandoned by God no Jesus got the total darkness

that human thought he was getting when Jesus went to the cross he was abandoned really not just subjectively my God my God why has that forsaken me on the cross Jesus Christ really got the wrath of God not just I felt that right he actually got the wrath of God everybody abandoned Jesus so only Jesus Christ of all the people who have ever trusted God his Savior only Jesus Christ darkness really was his only friend his disciples had left him his people had left him his father had abandoned him darkness was his only friend you

know why he was taking the sins upon himself that we've committed Satan's right about us we do exploit others we are self-centered we do use other people we deserve to have God turn his face away from us we deserve that darkness but Jesus took the darkness so that when you believe in him your sins are forgiven or put it another way Jesus Christ experienced darkness as his only friends so in your darkness you can know that Jesus is still your friend he's still there Jesus was truly abandoned so that you will only feel abandoned and

you can know that God still there he's not going to abandon you no matter what you've done wrong because of what Jesus Christ has done he's taken the penalty it all fell on him it all fell into his heart when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and he felt that darkness coming down on him and he knew that he had to die in order to save us he stayed with us he did not abandon us in his darkness so why in the world do you think he would abandon you and yours now he won't

do it listen you remember that sarcastic question that sarcastic question that Heymann asked what he said he says do the dead rise up and praise you if you believe in Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior the answer is yeah you will rise up and you hold on to that you hold on that I know a woman with some chronic illness occasionally you ask her how are you feeling it doesn't it hurt aren't you in a lot of discomfort and she says nothing that the Resurrection won't cure and she's absolutely right hold on to that

cling to that Michael Wilcock is another guy who wrote a really great little commentary on on this Psalm and this is what he says close with these words he says in about Psalm 88 this darkness can happen to a believer this Psalm says it doesn't mean you're lost this darkness can happen to someone who does not deserve it after all it happened to Jesus that doesn't mean you've strayed this darkness can happen at any time as long as this world lasts because only in the next world will such things be done away with this darkness

can happen without you knowing why but there are answers there is a purpose and eventually you will know it [Music]