The Unseen Redeemer- Psalm 77

Amen. Would you pray with me? Our gracious Heavenly Father, well,

our sermon text this morning is Psalm 77.

Psalm 77. You might have noticed there's a strong Exodus theme with a lot of

our scripture readings this morning, and this is no different.

You might notice several words repeated, several phrases repeated,

and undoubtedly the key event depicted in such a poetic way in Psalm 77.

But this is a psalm about the day of trouble. Of course, I do not know the hearts

of each of you, but this is a psalm that's good to hear when you're in the day

of trouble, but also just to prepare unto the day of trouble should that find you.

And so we'll be reading Psalm 77. We'll be reading the entirety of the psalm

and then I'll pray for us quickly. Let's pray.

I'm sorry, let's read Psalm 77.

To the choir master, according to the Jedithon, a psalm of Asaph.

I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord.

In the night, my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted.

When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints.

You hold my eyelids open I am so troubled that I cannot speak I consider the

days of old the years long ago I said let me remember my song in the nights

let me meditate in my heart,

then my spirit made a diligent search will the Lord spurn forever.

And never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased?

Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he, in anger, shut up his compassion?

Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.

I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old.

I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy.

What God is great like our God.

You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples.

You, with your arm, redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph.

When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid.

Indeed, the deep trembled.

The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth thunder. Your arrows flashed on every side.

The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind. Your lightnings lighted up the

world. The earth trembled and shook.

Your way was through the sea.

Your path through the great waters. Yet your footprints were unseen.

You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Amen. Would you pray with me?

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. For Lord,

your word is a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path.

Lord, we pray that your word would fall on good soil today.

Lord, that you would ready our hearts to receive it with gladness and that in

time it would bear much, much fruit.

Lord, grant us this grace.

Give us an extra measure of your spirit. for Lord we ask it in Christ's name, amen.

Well, I quite like it when the Psalms give us a little bit of context.

I've always appreciated those Psalms that open by telling us exactly what is

happening in the mind or the heart of the psalmist. Ones like Psalm 3, for example.

Psalm 3 tells us that David was fleeing from his son Absalom.

And that gives me a very vivid picture in my mind. David on the run,

Absalom and all of his luscious locks flowing behind him.

Or Psalm 51, for example, we were told that right up front, that was written

when Nathan confronts David about the sin of Bathsheba.

And that gives us a little bit of clarity, doesn't it? It colors the text.

It gives us a depth of repentance, the severity of the crime, if you will.

Psalm 57, about Saul's pursuit of David into the cave. I mean,

for lack of better expression, that brings a darkness to my mind.

Quite literally, a darkness, the darkness of the cave.

It brings its own picture and flavor to the text. And I've always viewed these

little snippets as very helpful guides, helpful aids that bring color to any

particular text. They've put us right in the shoes of the author.

We can almost visualize their surroundings, their state of mind.

It welcomes us right into the psalm. But as is the case with our own psalm.

I actually appreciate the lack of context, and for the very same reason, ironically.

We don't get much here at all, do we?

We know that it's a psalm of Asaph, the music leader, and that alongside its

place in the Psalter might tell us that it's a psalm written in the time of exile, maybe, maybe.

But we can't even guarantee that. That is unclear. But that's it.

That's all we got. And without that context, we're simply left with a man who is struggling.

We're left with a man who is restless, who is losing sleep, whose soul refuses

to be comforted. Why? We don't know.

We don't know exactly. But what causes someone to ask such heavy, heavy questions?

Will the Lord spurn forever? and never again be favorable?

Is it a deep-seated depression, a feeling of abandonment or loss or isolation?

Is it a season of prolonged suffering, maybe? No relief from the Lord,

grief that just won't relent?

Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time?

If this is exile, is it perhaps just dissatisfaction with one's lot in life,

your present circumstance.

Perhaps it's a long season of prayers unanswered or something that you feel

has been promised to you by God far from realization.

Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he, in anger, shut up his compassion?

I wonder if the mention of anger here maybe even suggests a sin struggle.

The Lord is angry with me for my sin, a deep-seated, unyielding sin issue that

needs to be grappled with,

causing what it feels like the Lord to withhold, that's the word, to withhold his grace.

But the bottom line is we don't exactly know, and I'm actually quite thankful for that.

Because sometimes that opening context draws us into the psalm,

but sometimes the psalm draws us in all on its own.

And if you're anything like me, that's exactly what this psalm does.

If you're anything like me, you've been a restless believer,

maybe even a despairing disciple, a one who does not currently feel the presence

of God or his shining face or his smiling presence.

Maybe you've been there. Or if you haven't, maybe you will be.

Of course, this could be your present experience. But the reason this psalm

is so helpful is because we are sort of taken by the hand, if you will.

He even mentions how he leads his people by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

We are taken by the hand and led from restlessness to remembrance.

And that's sort of the two divisions of the psalm. In the first nine verses,

we get the restlessness of the psalmist,

where these questions are asked,

where despair is felt, and the day of trouble is right here and now.

But you'll notice there's a shift in verses 10 to 11, a shift to remembrance.

Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.

I will remember the deeds of the Lord. I will remember your wonders of old.

It seems like the psalmist is

saying that remembering is in many ways the antidote to a restless heart.

Remembering God's character, remembering his actions, as we'll talk about in just a few minutes.

And so on a very practical level, the psalmist shows us a way out of the tunnel.

He shows us a way out of despair.

But on an intellectual level, I think one of the great themes of this psalm,

is that your current troubling circumstance is not necessarily your reality.

The conclusions or your feelings that you might draw from your present circumstance are sometimes askew.

They are sometimes wrong. In this way, remembering can be a great diagnostic test.

One author says of this psalm that Asaph does not permit himself to be captive

to his own present experience. I love that.

He doesn't allow himself to be slave to his present experience or his feelings

about his present experience.

Sometimes there's a disparity from what we know to be true of what God has promised

to us and what we are currently experiencing.

But friends, your feelings and your thoughts are fallible, but the Word of God and His works are not.

And that's what we're going to learn this morning. I'm so happy that this psalm,

exists. It is sort of bookmarked in my Bible for times of difficulty.

And so I have four short points for you this morning. First,

Be sure to direct your despair.

Be sure to direct your despair. On one level, this is very obvious.

And on another level, if you're anything like me, it's very difficult.

Sometimes I fail to direct my despair.

When the so-called day of trouble comes, be sure you are orienting your weary,

tired souls unto the Lord.

Verse 1, I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me.

There is a difference between wallowing in the mud and taking your cares unto the chief caregiver.

In the Pilgrim's Progress, our main hero, dear Christian, he finds himself in the slough of Dyspon.

Perhaps you remember that scene. And I think that that is just the perfect image

for despair. It's a miry bog. It's sticky.

You get caught in it. It causes you to look down and not up at your God.

And most notably, Christian needs help to get out of it.

In fact, in Bunyan's signature style, help is literally the name of the person that gets him out of it.

Christian needs help. You need help.

Thus, verse 2, in the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord.

This is not unique to the Psalter by any means. You can't help but flip through

the Psalter and see these introductions. Oh God, you are my God. I earnestly seek you.

Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint. Hear my cry, O God.

Listen to my prayer. Even in Psalms of apparent no relief whatsoever.

Psalm 88, one of the most difficult Psalms in the entirety of the Psalter.

It opens like this. O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.

This is educational, brothers and sisters. This is to teach us how we ought

to orient our lives, orient our hearts, particularly in times of trouble.

Is crying out to the Lord where you begin or is it where you ultimately end up when all else fails?

If even then.

Charles Spurgeon once said of this psalm that it has so much sadness in it,

but we may be sure that it ends well because it begins with prayer. I quite like that.

Be sure to place your restless hands in the heart of the Lord.

Even Augustine's famous line, our hearts are restless until they rest in you,

That comes in the opening line of his books, which is an opening prayer.

Direct your despair unto the Lord. Cast your care on him.

Reorient your heart to the Lord, even if, maybe especially if,

the Lord is in some sense the cause of your distress. And this brings you to

my second point this morning.

Sometimes, remembering God can be painful.

Sometimes, remembering God can be painful. It's a weird point to think about.

It's even weirder to vocalize from the pulpit, believe me. But I think it's here in this text.

Consider this. The psalm all revolves around this idea of remembering.

That word appears four times, once in verse 3, again in verse 6,

and twice in verse 11. But consider the first two occurrences of the word, remember.

In verse 3, Asaph says, when I remember God, what happens?

We might expect, my soul rejoices, my spirit is uplifted.

But no, that's not what we get. When I remember God, I moan.

When I meditate, my spirit faints. He then goes on to say that you,

that is God, you hold my eyelids open.

God is the reason in his mind that he's not getting any sleep.

In verse 5 and 6, he considers the days of old and the years of long ago.

No, he remembers my song in the night, which only leads him to ask these fairly

devastating questions.

So why is it painful for him to remember God? Why can it be painful for us to remember God?

I think for Asaph, it is painful for him to think on the bygone days and years

of the Almighty because of the Lord's deliverance.

It is painful to remember the songs of the night, maybe even,

as some have suggested, the song of Moses, that song of deliverance,

because when you remember God's deliverance, you might ask yourself,

why is he not delivering me now?

You have done it once. You've done all these wonderful things in the past.

Why are you not acting now?

He has delivered his people from slavery and certain death and despair,

as depicted in the Exodus. Why is he not delivering me from my current circumstance?

Consider what these questions are really about.

Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Has he forgotten to be gracious?

Has he shut up his compassion? Do you recognize these phrases?

These are all drawn from the way God describes himself in Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

These are the most quoted passages of the Bible by the Bible.

In Exodus 34, just after the Lord delivered his people from Pharaoh,

he says, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast

love and faithfulness, keeping his steadfast love.

These are the very same words that populate Asaph's questions.

Isn't that fascinating? It's almost like knowing these things,

knowing how good God is, knowing how powerful he is,

how committed he is to his people makes the current reality of the psalmist that much more painful.

And yet he still seeks the Lord's face. He still pursues the purposes of the

Lord. Friends, there is something beautiful and necessary for us to pursue the

Lord even in your despair.

Even if it is painful, even if your main concern is with him.

I think of Job who had plenty of questions for the Lord.

I think of Jeremiah, who several times had had questions for how the Lord was using him.

Even our Lord Jesus himself, who sweating drops like blood in the garden,

asked the Lord, does it have to be this way?

Does this cup have to come to me?

Indeed, sometimes remembering God can be painful when he is choosing in his

wisdom and power not to act.

But how does a psalmist then move from this painful remembering to a positive,

remembering, to a restful remembering?

The psalm seems to tell me that merely remembering God is not enough.

You know, the psalmist is remembering God in the first half and he's remembering

God in the second, but there seems to be a difference. There seems to be a movement.

And so what's behind that movement?

Well, thirdly, brothers and sisters, we remember the works of God to clarify the character of God.

We remember the works of God to clarify the character of God.

In other words, his deeds, his acts, they point us to something else,

namely who he is, namely who he is in his being.

It's not enough to consider the works of the Exodus. We must draw conclusions

about his character from that work.

Or you could say that we know God by his fruit.

We know God by his fruit or by his words and his deeds and his fruit on behalf

of his people. We know who God is.

Look at what the psalmist does. Look at verses 11 and 12.

I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of

old Ponder all your work And meditate on your mighty deeds To what end?

To know, verse 13, that your way, O God, is holy.

To know that you are great and like no other God. To know, verse 14,

that you are a God who works wonders. Do you see that?

I remember your deeds because your deeds tell me who you are.

Your deeds show me your character, your holiness, your power, your commitment.

I love the way Christopher Ashe puts it. He says, Remembering is not to say,

Well, God did this before.

Maybe he will do it again.

It's not to say that. It's not to say that God delivered us once.

Maybe he will do it again.

Rather, it is to say, What God did before expresses who God is and who he was

and who he continues to be.

And therefore that he is sure to do it again.

By this remembering, we remember, verse 15, that God has a people and that their

people have in their God a redeemer.

And this leads me to my fourth and final point.

We see God's character clearest in the deliverance of his people.

Every time, we see God's character most clearly in the deliverance of his people.

The Exodus, the passage that we just read earlier this morning,

is the bedrock of the Old Testament.

It's the defining moment of the Old Testament. Our Old Testaments can't help

but reference the Exodus narrative with each and every passing breath.

At least it seems that way.

And sometimes we can overlook how saturated our Bibles are with references to that event.

Our own psalm begins, for example, with Asaph crying out to God.

You might remember that's exactly what the Israelites did in our opening scripture

reading. They cried out to God with the sea at their back and the army bearing down on them.

The psalmist even stretches out his arms.

It's an interesting way to express that. That's what Moses does three times

in this passage that we read. It's just woven into our Bibles and perhaps nowhere

more poetically than verses 16 through 20.

This is probably the most beautiful depiction of the Exodus in our Bibles.

And you can say a lot about it. But I just want to note a few things for us here.

In this act of deliverance, we see the created order more or less unmade.

Did you see that? Even personified. The waters are afraid.

The deep trembles. The sky gave thunder. The earth trembles and shakes.

We also see in this act of deliverance that God leads his people through judgment

waters. Verse 19, your way was through the sea.

Your path through the great waters, those same waters that would fall upon the wicked in judgment.

And not only that, we see that he leads them by a mediator.

In this case, a prophet and a priest. Verse 20, you led your people like a flock,

by the hand of Moses and Aaron, yet his footprints were unseen. I love that.

How often is that the case? How can we relate to that?

But you know what we don't see in this passage? The psalmist or his problems.

I say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but all I mean by this is as you scan down

the psalm, You might have noticed that the first half of the psalm has a lot of I statements.

I cry aloud. I seek the Lord. I remember God. I moan. I meditate.

Those are just the first three verses.

And this carries on until there seems to be a shift in verses 12 and 13 from I unto you.

Your way, O God, is holy. You are the God who works wonders.

With your arm you have redeemed your people.

As one person puts it, by the psalm's end, the pervasive eye has disappeared,

and the objective facts of the faith and of our God come into full attention.

They demand our attention. It's almost as if we fade and God's faithfulness

and his promises come to the forefront.

And it's in this deliverance, brothers and sisters, that the people of Israel

saw their unseen Redeemer most clearly, at least for a time.

At least for a time. Until the invisible God became visible.

Until the created order was again unmade at Christ's crucifixion.

As the earth trembles and quates and darkness covers the land.

When God led himself through the judgment on the cross and he led his people

by a mediator, this time a prophet, a priest, and a king, namely Christ himself.

Thus we see God's character clearest in the deliverance of his people and therefore

we see God's character clearest in the face of Christ.

And so when we remember what Christ did, we best not simply remember facts.

We best draw conclusions from the love of Christ for his people.

We best remember the wonders that he has wrought, the holiness and the love

and the compassion with which he loved his people.

And that Christ, who was once dead, now lives and reigns forevermore on your behalf.

That is what he is doing right now.

Your king ruling out of a love for you. And that king is the same today,

yesterday, and forever.

Brothers and sisters, your present circumstance, your day of trouble,

your day of despair, it does not impact in any way the reign of your King nor

His love for you. Indeed, it cannot.

It cannot change the view of Christ for you, His people.

He who said that you are of infinite value in His eyes, that you are worth His own blood,

Your thoughts or feelings of abandonment, of restlessness, of hopelessness,

it does not change the character of your God, who swore by himself to present

you blameless on that last day.

This is a God to whom we can go in our day of trouble.

This is a God to whom we can and should direct our despair, remembering his

works and thus remembering his true character.

You'll notice that as far as we know, the circumstances of the psalmist have

not changed by the psalm's end.

But his outlook certainly has.

His heart certainly has. From restlessness to remembrance, from difficult circumstances

that can cloud our view of heaven,

to viewing the beauty of their Redeemer and our privilege to view our Redeemer in Christ.

That is what is gifted to you and to me in Christ Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, would you pray with me?

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your word.

Lord, we thank you that you have gone through the waters, that your way is through the waters.

And Lord, that you lead us, that you lead us even by the hand.

Father, we ask that the peace of God would permeate our hearts,

that in our times of trouble, we would look unto Christ and see in him an all-sufficient

Savior, one who loves us, one who reigns out of his love for us and who does all things well.

Lord, give us this grace, for we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.