Psalm 88:1 O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee
Dad and Mom know all the answers until a kid gets to be about six years old. Someone has said, “Fools can ask questions that wise men cannot answer,” and a little kid can ask all kinds of questions that he may not even understand, and to which dad and mom cannot give an answer. Why is the sky blue? Why are the clouds white? Why is the grass green? Why? Why? Why? Why is perhaps the hardest question to answer. But God is not a human parent. God knows everything beginning to end. That is why in Psalm 88 you have some very profound questions from the psalmist to God.
The psalm begins by saying, “O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; for my soul is full of troubles.” He goes on to say that he has no strength as if he were in the grave or a pit, overrun by waves of the sea, or contagious and all his friends have fled him.
He has a series of rhetorical questions, by which I mean they have an assumed answer. They are not questions to get an answer; they are questions to make a statement. Verse 10 says, “Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead?” The answer obviously is no. It continues, “Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy 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?” He is saying, “God, if I am dead, how can I praise You, pray to You, or anything?” These are rhetorical questions, but they strengthen the real question, which is one that all of us have at some point. It is perhaps the most fundamental question. Why?
Verse 14 says, “Why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?” It is a why question. Suppose God gave the psalmist an answer. Would that even answer his question? In other words, God knows things I do not, and I’m not sure I would always understand the answer even if He gave it.
If you look at the rest of the psalm, it does not end happily. The psalmist ends by saying that “lover and friend thou hast put far from me, and my acquaintance into darkness.” He is saying, “I am just abandoned like I am in the grave or a pit, like I am contagious, and like I am being overrun by the waves of the sea.” Yet, this psalm is not characterized by the last verse so much as the faith of the first verse where the psalmist says, “O LORD God of my salvation.” It is better to know God than to know why.
Verse 2 says, “Let my prayer come before thee.” Verse 9 says, “LORD, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.” Verse 13 says, “But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent me.” Did the psalmist know why? No. Did he ever know why? The psalm ends without him knowing why, but he knew God and the nature of God. He knew that God was sovereign, the eternally self-existent God of creation and of salvation. It is better to know God than to know why.
The last line is not the end of the line. Verse 18 is not the end of the line. I read psalm 84 as well this morning, and it is interesting to notice all the names of God. God is called the living God. He is not the God of the dead; He is the God of the living, the God who still exists. God is called the LORD God of hosts, the God of armies and great power. He is called the God of Jacob, a personal God. I’m not Jewish, but I am God’s by faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ who is of the seed of Abraham. He is called our shield, our protection. In short, He is the God of our salvation.
The last line is not the end of the line. You can take a snapshot on any given day and think, “Is this a good day or a good life?” You take that snapshot one day and say, “Life is good.” You take a snapshot another day and life does not seem good. What if the not good day is the last day? That is the point, the last day is not really the last day, the last line is not the end of the line.
Prayer is the constrained appealing to the infinite. By constrained I mean being in a straightjacket, bound. In verse 4 David says he has no strength. Verses 10-11 indicate he had no understanding. It is like a fussing child in a highchair who is red-faced with eyes bulging out. He wants something, but he can’t get it. He wants to say something, but he can’t say it. He wants to express something, and even that is imperfect. We are the child. We don’t understand. We are constrained by our lack of knowledge and ability, but God is not constrained. Prayer is the constrained, me, appealing to the infinite, God, the God of my salvation.
There are so many things I want to know that I don’t know. I don’t think it is wrong to ask why or to want to know why, to research and study, but it is important to know since I am constrained by knowledge and ability, that even if I had the answer, I may not understand it. But God does. God knows everything, and I know God. It is better to know God than to know why.