Bible Lessons

From: Messages of God's Love: 1931

Psalm 88

If we have read with profit the psalms which have been-bore us week by week, we have learned much of the experiences, the sorrows, dangers, persecutions and the hopes and prayers of those among the people of Israel who will seek God when they shall have gone in far greater numbers than now back to the land that He gave their fore-fathers.

Many of the psalms we have examined speak of the God-fearing Jews’ enemies, —enemies among their own people and the Gentiles, but Psalm 88 speaks of neither class. Every psalm and group or series of psalms was designed of God to foretell some part of the circumstances and feelings of those who will turn in heart to Him in the age to come.

Psalm 51 describes the sorrow and repentance of the Jews over the blood guiltless that is theirs through the cross of Christ, and Psalm 88 pictures their realization of the guilt of the whole nation on account of the broken law.

When God gave Israel the law (Exodus 20), and the statutes and judgments which occupy so much of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, they quickly turned to idols (Exodus 32), and not once only (see Amos 5:25, 26²⁵Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? ²⁶But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves. (Amos 5:25‑26); Judges 2:12-19¹²And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. ¹³And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. ¹⁴And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies. ¹⁵Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed. ¹⁶Nevertheless the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. ¹⁷And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so. ¹⁸And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. ¹⁹And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way. (Judges 2:12‑19); Ezekiel 8, and many other passages). Thus they broke both the first and second commandments. And these early sins were quickly adopted by the nation; deer and deeper in transgression went Israel as is told out in such solemn scriptures as Isaiah 1; Amos 3 and 2 Kings 17:7-17⁷For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, ⁸And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. ⁹And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. ¹⁰And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree: ¹¹And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: ¹²For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing. ¹³Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. ¹⁴Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. ¹⁵And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them. ¹⁶And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. ¹⁷And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. (2 Kings 17:7‑17). Other scriptures foretell the state of Israel in the future as worse than ever before.

Psalm 88 will have its season when the Lord has come to deliver the remnant of Judah and to set up His earthly kingdom. It will be then that the believing Jews will realize how the nation has offended God; their consciences will be thoroughly searched.

The ten commandments are “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not,” without any provision for passing over the transgressor. The great distance between themselves as Israelites and God, whose wrath they have incurred and whose severe judgment they deserve, must be realized bore they can enter into blessing.

Psalm 88 is addressed to the “Lord (Jehovah) God of my salvation,” so that there is a knowledge of and confidence in Him, but it is without a single word of comfort; for this we must look to the next-psalm.

ML05/17/1931

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