Sermon: Summer Psalms - Dealing With Hopelessness -Psalm 88, August 23, 2026
Scripture: Psalm 88
Preacher: Ryan Slifka
Sermon: Dealing With Hopelessness
For the month of August we’re doing a sermon series “Psummer Psalms,” hosting texts from Book of Psalms, the prayer and song book of Jesus. And we’re posing questions to them about how we deal with urgent issues in our lives. The first week we listened to Psalm 10 and asked the question, “how do we deal with injustice?” And last week we hosted Psalm 38, asking “how do we deal with guilt and shame?”
This week our question is this: “how do we deal with hopelessness?” How do we deal with the kind of sadness that leads to despair?
And to answer this question, we’re going to listen to the eighty-eighth Psalm.
It’s not exactly the feel good hit of the year. “If ever there were a song of sorrow,” said the great 19th century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. “If ever there were a song of sorrow and a Psalm of sadness, this is one.”[i] If you’re looking for hopelessness, this is your Psalm.
It starts off okay… “O Lord, God of my salvation,” an affirmation of God’s liberating power. But then it’s all down hill from there:
“My soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like those who have no help, like like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they were cut off from your hand.”
Pretty dark, even just in hearing it, isn’t it? It’s even darker when you know what that word Sheol means. Sheol is the word the ancient Israelites used for life after death. It was an “extension of the grave. Its name was Sheol, the Pit, Abbadon. It was deep and dark and silent… in Sheol one continued to exist as one of the shades, in a way that was the opposite and negation of every characteristic of the living.”[ii]
If you’ve seen the latest Odyssey, think of it like the scene where Odysseus goes to Hades, the Underworld to hear blind Tiresias’ prophecy, and is confronted by Sinon, the loyal soldier he deceived.
Sheol is a short of dark, joyless shadow existence. And this is how the Psalmist says he feels–it’s like he’s there. “You have put me in the depths of the Pit. You have caused my companions to shun me, my eye grows dim with sorrow. Do you work wonders for the dead? do the shades rise up to praise you? I cry out to you, but you hide your face. I’m close to death, wretched, like a flood it’s closing in, up to my chin. And the ending says it all: “you have caused friend and neighbour to shun me, my companions are in darkness.” Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in his Message translation: “the only friend I have left is darkness.” An image of utter loneliness. He’s abandoned by all. Darkness is all he’s got.
He’s “camped on the edge of hell, written off as a lost cause.”4 He’s not there in Sheol, quite yet. But he might as well be. Things are as dark as they get. And that’s how it ends. Sad and sorrowful, indeed.
One of the things about the Psalms is that if you search it, you will find a description for the state of your soul. Some scholars believe that this Psalm was written by this fellow Heyman as a description of the Babylonian Exile. Where the world’s greatest super-power invaded, knocked down the temple, raped and plundered from one end of the country to the other, and deported the wise and educated back to Babylon.[iii] It’s a few from the rubble. Burnt buildings and charred remains. It’s a testimony to the most traumatic of traumatic human events.
And in that way, it has the power to speak to our own deepest suffering and sorrow.
All the times where you slid down into a pit that your couldn’t claw our way out. All the times you felt like the world was sitting on your chest, unremembered and alone. All the times where you felt like you were treading water but your legs just kept screaming “let go.” All the times when you’ve cried out for help, with your words hitting nothing but the shadows hanging in the door-frame. As disturbing as it is, this Psalm is tailor made for me at my most hopeless… and you in yours.
This Psalm’s inclusion in the Bible suggests that one way we deal with hopelessness, is by telling the truth about it. By speaking the words aloud.
I’m not talking about posting our feelings all over the internet as a kind of “trauma porn.” I’m not talking about purposely dwelling in our anguish, before the world at large. But what I’m saying is that in the company of God’s people, in the community of the church, it’s ok to be honest with who we are before the Creator of the universe. Not only in our joys and accomplishments, but especially our weaknesses and the worst of our trials. To see each other face-to-face, when we feel like everyone else has abandoned us, and God has hidden her face. It’s therapeutic in that way.
Now, having said that, there’s only so far speaking our experience aloud will go. Why? Because we can only shout into the void so many times without hearing any kind of answer. We can only sit in sorrow alone so long, without it finally getting to us. And that’s the case in our Psalm. There’s no last minute rescue. Ultimately, God is silent. And our Psalmist remains at the bottom of the pit. All by herself. There’s only so much comfort speaking our experience will bring. We need something more.
And this is where the gospel comes in. We need that something more, and we’re given that something more. Just not in the way we might expect.
The 6th century theologian Augustine of Hippo reads this Psalm not only as a description of human life at rock bottom. But it also points us forward. “Here,” he says. “Here the passion of our Lord is prophesied.”[iv] The Psalm, says Augustine, points us forward to Jesus. And his crucifixion.
Jesus, who Christians believe is the Messiah of the Lord. The only begotten Son of the Father. The alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end… Wasn’t rescued from his suffering and agony at the last minute, but faced it in its totality. In fact, darkness covered the whole earth.[v] His last words were “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”? Then he breathed his last. He not only felt like he was in Sheol, but he actually went there. Went all the way. The Apostles’ Creed says either he descended to the dead or he descended into hell. Either way, he’s been in Sheol. The Psalm not only gives word to our experiences of abandonment, but to the experience of Jesus. Of God’s own abandonment on the cross.
Of course, the difference between the Psalmist and Jesus is that Jesus didn’t stay there. Unlike the Psalmist, Jesus’ cry was ultimately answered in his resurrection. The Psalmist didn’t know it, but there, even there, the Lord was right there with him in the pit. He didn’t know it, but when he cried out, the Lord of heaven and earth was crying out with him. And when he stared into the darkness, he was staring through it and into the empty tomb. That Easter was on the other side. The Psalmist “may let go of God,” in the words of the great Karl Barth. “He may let go of God, but God does not let go of him.”[vi]
The biblical scholar and theologian John Collwell puts it like this: “Faith,” he says.
“Faith is trusting God in the darkness. It is not a quasi-magical means of turning the darkness into light. It’s not that I don’t believe that God can and does turn darkness into light–ultimately he will, but here and now he calls us to trust him, even in the darkness… faith is not more a magical power than it is a feeling; faith is a settled trust in God even in the continuing darkness and silence, even when we cannot see and cannot hear.”[vii]
Faith is trusting God in the darkness. Faith is trusting that the Lord is with us, even in the deepest, darkest pit. That Lord is with us even when we’re at our most lonesome, even when we’re at our most lost. The cross means that even in Sheol, the land of the dead, even in the grave, even in hell itself, God is with us. Faith is trusting God in the darkness, that even if we let go of God, God does not, will not, let go of us.
In his book Finding Jesus in the Storm, the mental health nurse and theologian John Swinton tells the stories of many Christians who are living with mental health challenges. One story he tells is about a woman named Karen, who struggles with times of intense depression. “It feels like you’re always mourning for something,” she says, “but you don’t know what it is that you’re mourning for, so it can never end… you ask God to take it away, and God says… nothing…” In that way, Swinton suggests that her experience mirrors our Psalmist. “I remember being really low,” she says.
“I remember being really low and one night telling God that if he didn’t intervene, I was going to end it because I’d had enough. And nothing happened, and there was no sense of intervention.”[viii] Like our Psalmist Karen, too, felt darkness and the absence of God. She cried out for help, and heard nothing.
And yet… even in the silence, Karen came to see God’s hidden presence.
“There was no sense of intervention,” said Karen. “There was no sense of intervention. And yet actually I guess God did intervene because I didn’t take my own life.”
Though Karen felt completely alone, and heard no answer to her cry, she came to believe that God did give her an answer. God didn’t pull her out of the pit, but was with her in it. And carried her through. That even though she felt completely abandoned, even though she’d more or less abandoned God, God never abandoned her.
This is how we deal with hopelessness, dear friends. How you can deal with hopelessness. The cross is the answer. The cross tells us, it tells me and tells you, that even when you feel totally abandoned, God has not abandoned you. That even in the pit, even in Sheol–like Karen and her depression– where ever and what ever your hell might be, God is there beside you… Even on a cross, even the darkness of the grave, even the pit of hell itself, there is nowhere the Lord hasn’t been, and there is nowhere the Lord hasn’t promised to be. Faith is trusting God in the darkness, believing that even beyond your seeing, beyond your hearing, even beyond your feeling, God is with you and for you. That even when you let go of God, he has pledged to never let go of you. Because in the death and resurrection of his Son, he has pledged to be with you and for you always, until the end of the age. By grace, he’s right there with you… by grace he will get you through.
Even in the silence, dear friends, this Word rings out through all creation. Meaning that you and I can’t be silent anymore. Because this Word isn’t just meant for you and for me, but our friends, and our neighbours, even our enemies–especially our enemies. All those who dwell in the shadow of death–I’ll bet there’s someone who comes to your mind right now, someone who is desperate to hear something that will make even the smallest difference. And the good news is that this is exactly what we’ve been given to share. That there is a light in the darkness. And that even when we can’t see it—especially when we can’t see it–it’s there. And it can not, will not, shall not be overcome.
You have been given a living hope, and needn’t be hopeless anymore. And so when the right time comes, may you be given the words—and the courage—to give an account of the hope that is within you. When it’s needed most.
I offer this to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[i] Charles Spurgeon, “Psalm 109,” The Treasury of David, from The Spurgeon Archive https://archive.spurgeon.org/treasury/ps109.php
[ii] James Luther Mays, Psalms: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Westminster: John Knox, 1994), 282.
[iii] James McCann, “Psalms,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol. 4 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 1027,
[iv] St. Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 88, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801088.htm
[v] Mark 15:33
[vi] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. II/2, The Doctrine of God, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 317
[vii] John Collwell, quoted in John Swinton, Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 110.
[viii] Quoted in Swinton, Finding Jesus in the Storm, 97.