Summary 

There are seasons when God feels distant, prayers seem unanswered, and doubt creeps in. Psalm 77 speaks honestly into those moments, showing that lament is not a sign of weak faith but an invitation God Himself extends. Asaph moves through raw despair, asking whether God has forgotten His people, before shifting his gaze from his own suffering to the character and acts of God. He remembers that God is holy, powerful, and caring, pointing to the Exodus as proof that God makes a way even when all hope seems lost. For those on this side of the New Testament, the cross stands as the ultimate answer to every doubt Asaph voiced. Because God did not spare His own Son, He has not forgotten you in your darkest night.

Transcript

Lord, thank you for your holy word. Thank you that you give it to us out of love to guide us in your paths, to teach us of you, to teach us about ourselves. God, I pray that this morning we would know you better, that we would look to you maybe that we would do some good self assessment and that we would see Jesus. God, bless now the words of my mouth. Bless the meditations of our hearts.
May they be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. All right, we are back in the Psalms. Actually, you all were back in the Psalms last week, but we are back in the Psalms together. And actually this is the 12th summer that we've been in the Psalms together.
My first Sunday with you all was the last Sunday of June in 2015. That makes this the 12th summer. And we began with Psalm 1 long ago. I've told you this in the past, but I'll tell you again, there's a few different reasons why we've done this. Some of them are practical reasons.
Let me give you a couple practical reasons why we do the Psalms in the summer. One of the practical reasons is because the Psalms are kind of one offs, meaning that if you look at Psalm 76, you don't necessarily have to jump to 77 to understand 76. Actually, you don't really have to do that, you know, but if we're looking at many of the books in the Bible and you, oh, I don't know, you're on vacation for a week or two or three, or however many times you're gone during the summer, it's going to be hard to follow that. It's going to be hard to follow kind of the argument that's being made in a given book of the Bible. But with the Psalms, they're good.
It's a good series for vacations. You guys, you know, you're going to be gone, I was gone last week, we can kind of jump back in. So that's one practical reason. Some Psalms go together, Psalm 1 and 2, Psalm 9 and 10, some Psalms so that people think those were actually written to go together. Some Psalms just work really well together, Psalm 104, 105, that kind of thing.
But many of the Psalms are one offs. And so it invites the summer kind of life of in and out that so many of us live in. But there's another reason, another practical reason, and that's that most preachers have preached a psalm. And so for me, sometimes I have a hard time finding somebody to preach. For me, not so much now.
That Jed's around and Dale's here. Sometimes it's been really hard to find somebody. Like last week, I asked five different people about serving communion. We believe that the Bible teaches that ordained ministers are ordained to word and sacrament, and the sacraments are to be administered by pastors. And so I can't find anyone.
And sometimes that actually has happened in the past with preaching. Jonathan knows this because it's happened. It's been kind of stressful for the session. What do we do? Peter plans to be away.
We can't find anybody. Well, oftentimes I can call somebody and say, hey, all you have to do is just bring your psalm. And they're like, oh, good, okay, I've got that. So it's kind of practical anyway. As practical as some of the reasons are, there's also just some theological reasons, some spiritual reasons why we come back to the Psalms each summer.
And partly, I just want to say it's for our spiritual good that we sit in the Psalms. Two quick reasons why it's for our spiritual good. One, I think it's a good, healthy diet of the Bible, right? The fall, we do Old Testament, New Testament. From about Christmas to Easter, we're in the Gospels.
We do a series like 10 Commandments, and we come back to the Psalms. And part of that is just like how in our services we have the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Gospels and the Psalms. That's often how the Bible is broken down into these, like, major categories. The Psalms are its own category often. And so to have a healthy diet of scripture is to at least spend some time in the Psalms.
We believe that all scripture, it's given by God, and it's useful for us, for our correction, for our training and righteousness, for all the rest, that we would be equipped for every good work and all scripture. And a big part of all scripture is the Psalms. So one spiritual reason is it's a Bible diet. Another spiritual reason is that the Psalms are the devotional book of the Bible. Devotional book in church history, for sure.
They are songs. Actually. This one, did you notice that it was given. It said that it's a song, that it's according to Juddison, which is probably a tune. Sounds like kind of a funny tune name.
But it's a song, it says. And it's actually written for a specific tune, which is kind of interesting. But there are songs which say that this is a hymn book, but it's also a prayer book. People have always said this is the great prayer book of the Bible. Which say, this is the great sort of devotional book of the Bible.
One thing, we were at a camp this week, a family camp, Christian family camp. And the speaker actually referred to the Psalms as the journals of the Bible. He said they're journals for the journey. They go all the way through the journey of life.
So I hope that that's what psalms are for you, that they actually kind of give voice to the different experiences that you have in life. Because God wants us to bring all of life to him, all of it. He wants us to live all of our lives with him. Which means that, you know, the days that you want to just roll the windows down, driving down Front street, or if I don't think any of you have a convertible, but it's, you know, the days where you just want to have a convertible and you want to turn up the tunes and you want to sing. I'm going to have a wait.
How's it go? Thank you. That's what I was going to think. That's what I was thinking. I'm about to have a good day in every single way, you know, just like.
Yeah, but also the days when you're like, I don't want get out of bed. I don't want to get out of bed today. You know, Psalm 13. I'm sleeping the sleep of death, is what it says, you know, Because God, where are you? How long?
Why have you forgotten me? That's. That's that psalm. Because God wants you to bring all of your life to him, all of it. And that's my desire for you, is to kind of learn this.
Summer in, summer out, God is always saying, bring it all to me. Live your life with me. That you will have this in your bones, this devotional life with God, that you'll find it, your joy to live all of your life, even the stuff you want to hide with God. So journal entries, it's one way to think about the Psalms.
And I like that because I do think there's a temptation to think that you need to go to God as a good Christian.
Do you know this? Like, I'm feeling good about my life, and so I'm going to show up to church. I think I can bring myself to God today. Even though we confess our sins every week, right? We kind of feel like we kind of got to go to God as good Christians, that's what we sometimes think.
It's kind of like how we post on social media, right? We normally post. We don't post the sink full of dishes, pictures.
We don't post the pictures of ourselves after we've had too much pasta and you just feel kind of bloated. That's not going up on social media, right? It's like, I got a nice fresh do. I'll do that. Okay, that sounds better.
And we're tempted to kind of go to think of our life with God like that. I'm not going to show him this stuff. I'm going to show him that stuff. But the psalms invite us to bring all of it, all of it to Him. All of our doubts and our struggles and our questions.
That's part of what's in Psalm 77, our questions, some of our struggles with not having maybe sufficient answers for some of the big questions in life. Just all of it. God wants us to bring all of it to Him. And so we come to Psalm 77. It's kind of a long introduction of back into the Psalms, but also to this psalm.
We come to this psalm, and Psalm 77 is a Psalm of lament. Lament. What's lamenting? Lamenting is expressing sort of sorrow, maybe frustration, questions about the pain and the wrongness of things, the wrongness of the world, the wrongness of our lives. Lament gives voice to the reality that things are not as they should be.
And I don't know, if you're a new Christian, maybe this would surprise you. Maybe if you've been a Christian a long time, maybe you haven't heard this, but lament is the largest category of the psalms. Isn't that interesting? When you come to sing to God, don't you often think you come and you sing songs of praise. Lord, we worship you.
We want to clap our hands. That's in the Psalms too. But the largest category of psalms are what's going on here?
Why is it like this lament? There's actually 65 Psalms of Lament, and there's 150 Psalms. So it's almost half, like 40% or so. A little over 40% of the Psalms are psalms of lament. And this is one of those.
And I think there's just something to learn just in that. Okay, before we actually look at Psalm 77, there's something to learn in this. God wants your laments.
He desires you to share them with Him. God, why did this happen? Why am I so full of questions? Why do you seem so far off? You know, those are all in the Psalms, those questions he gives.
He gives us words to express back to him how we lament that things are not as they're supposed to. Be Yesterday we were driving home from the Adirondacks. It was raining the whole time. And one of my kids asked me quite a bit, how long, O Lord? Or how long, dad, how long?
How much longer? And I was like, there's a psalm for that. There is a psalm for that. It's actually the same one I mentioned earlier about sleepless, you know, sleeping the sleep of death. Psalm 13.
How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long are we going to be on this car ride in this rain? That's. Anyway, Psalm 77 is a lament Psalm, and this psalm is broken down into two main sections. But you probably heard when I read it that it's actually broken into four sections, because there were three times that there was that word salah.
You know, we actually. Why that's salah and not an English word is because we actually don't necessarily know what it means. We think it means something like rest or peace, but we don't know. That's why it's not translated. But it makes sense.
A lot of times the psalmists use it as a break. So it's probably like, hey, pause here for a guitar solo and then we'll get back into it. You know, like it's an instrumental pause. Possibly. We don't totally know, but it's sort of broken down into four sections.
But it's two main sections. And I want to suggest that these two main sections first talk about our cries of remembrance. So our laments of remembrance, and then actually our confession of remembrance. Okay, Our cries of remembrance and our confession of remembrance. So first our cries of remembrance and the first little section here, the first part one to three, you know, leading up to the first salah, there is cries in the night, cries in the dark places, cries when you're kind of alone.
So here's what it says. 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. Without wearying.
My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints. It's actually kind of interesting. Commentators say this is kind of a tricky thing.
Is he crying aloud to God and being heard or not? Well, it seems like as you walk through it, he's crying out to God and he's saying, actually, I'm not getting any response here.
I'm just moaning, where are you, God?
What seems to be the case that Asaph here isn't seeing God responding, isn't hearing him responding isn't seeing him at work in his life. The day of my trouble, I seek the Lord and my hand is stretched out without wearying, meaning it's not stopping. He's reaching out to God. Reaching out your hands in the Bible is oftentimes, at least towards God, is the posture of prayer. That's partly why we often pray, raising our hands.
It's one of the great postures of prayer in the Bible, by the way. Actually, the Bible never mentions people praying seated. Interesting. But most often they're praying, stretching out. And so he's doing this.
He's doing it without weary. But he keeps reaching out. And it seems as though God is not answering his prayer. That's what that image is. My soul refuses to be comforted.
He keeps reaching out and he's saying, God, where? Where are you? When I remember God, I moan, His spirit is fainting in his meditation. Because though he's reaching out, he's going, God, where are you reaching out? Saying, God, bless me.
Like we often do at the end of our services, right during the benediction, you reach out, you say, lord, please bless me. It's like he's doing that, God, please bless me. And he's saying, I'm just crying out here in the night, and it seems as though I'm all alone and you're not showing up. My spirit is fainting.
Now I want to say there's. There is. I hope that you find that there's something deeply refreshing actually about this. It's kind of raw, the idea of moaning before God, but also. So it's kind of wild that this is there, but it's also very refreshing that this is in the Bible, that the Bible actually knows our experiences.
Right. It's not trying to just sugarcoat things and say, ah, everything's going to be fine all the time. Don't worry about it.
God actually knows our experiences and he gives us words to express them back to Him. There's an Old Testament scholar, Herbert Leupold. He said, why does God let things go on as long and as tragically as they do without giving any tokens of his interest and concern? Isn't it just kind of nice to know that there are people who are committed to following the Word, who love the Lord, and who know that that's part of our experience in life? I mean, an Old Testament scholar that's saying, sometimes it seems as though God doesn't have concern for the trials that we're experiencing.
And Asaph is giving us voice words from Holy Scripture themselves to express that to God.
Of course, this Psalm, because of this reality, has resonated with lots of Christians over the years.
Some of you know of the great British London preacher Charles Spurgeon. He was preaching in the latter half of the 19th century. He wrote three volumes on the Psalms. I consult them pretty much every time I'm preaching the Psalms. It's called the treasury of David.
And he worked that for 20 years, from 1865 to 1885. Well, pretty much that whole time he was incredibly ill. He had a lot of illness in his life. He had horrible, horrible health. And it actually led to his death eventually in 1892.
So about seven years after he finished his work on the Psalms, he had neuralgia, gout. He had terrible headaches, probably like migraines. And he had unbelievable, deep, long bouts of depression. And a lot of people think that depression was so related to his health. But Anyway, in Psalm 77, this is part of what he wrote about Psalm 77.
He said, Some of us know what it is both physically and spiritually to be compelled to use these words, this idea of moaning before God. No respite has been afforded us by the silence of the night. Right? You want to get some rest at night, and you can't. Our bed has been a rack to us.
Our body has been a torment, and our spirit is in anguish. It's one of the greatest preachers of the 19th century. He knows the experience of your spirit being in anguish. Alas, my God. The writer of this exposition, meaning himself well knows what thy servant Asaph meant for his soul, meaning his own.
Spurgeon's is familiar with the way of grief, deep glens and lonely caves of souls. Of my soul's depressions. My spirit knows full well your awful glooms. I was one of the greatest preachers alive in the 19th century, knew the experience of this psalm.
So there are cries in the night, their cries of remembrance. God, why? What's going on? I'm trying to remember you, and I just feel like I'm moaning and my spirit is fainting. And then the second part actually moves towards cries of remembrance.
But they're remembering former days. So the next section. You hold my eyelids open. I'm 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 night. Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search. Will the Lord spurn forever and ever 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? So he's saying, let me remember what God has done. But then when he goes to remember it, he's crying in the present because he's saying, that was back then.
And I don't know if that's actually still the reality now.
Of course, as he does this, he then goes into these questions, right? These questions that you heard in seven to nine, but let me read them again for you. 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?
I mean, just this lament of where is he? Has he changed?
Does the Lord reject us? Can he cease to love the ones that he once loved? Has his character changed? And the answer, the right answer is no, right? No.
But he's sitting in this. He's sitting in all these questions. And I think again, there's just something almost refreshingly powerful about this being in Holy Scripture. So honest. It's honesty that's directed Godward.
So actually, don't have this in my notes here, but I want to pause here, please. In your times of deep doubt, please go to God with them. Even if you're like God. I don't even know. I don't.
I'm not even sure that I believe you're around, that you care. You know, the big questions of religion. Is God there? Does he care? I don't know if I believe those.
But please ask him that. Tell him that that's part of the invitation of the Psalms. That's part of this invitation right here.
One writer wrote this. Doubt. Doubt. Doubts are better put into plain speech than lying diffused and darkening. Just let it sit there.
Give voice to it like poisonous mist. It says a thought, be it good or bad, can be death, sorry, dealt with when it's made articulate like. Give words to this experience and give them God word. That's the invitation of this song. Bring your cries to God.
Bring your sleepless nights to God. Bring your remembrances of how man. Back then it felt like communion with the Lord was so sweet, and I'm not feeling it now. Bring it to God.
Bring your questions, bring your doubts. Bring all of it.
But here's something that this psalm is also doing. It's saying, you know, it's giving us these cries of remembrance, what's happened? And it's inviting us to cry Out. But it's also saying, bring your confession of remembrance. Also.
That's what. There's this shift that happens. So verse 10, I'm going to actually read this a couple times, but verse 10 says this. Then I said, there's a shift after that second salah. I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High, right?
So he's saying, wait a second, then let me remember this other reality. Let me remember the confession of who God is. Verse 11. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
And then he starts confessing. He's not just crying out about his estate, but he's confessing who God is. And I want you to know something that is really, really important about this psalm and really important about our personal experiences that I think you'll notice if you sit in the psalm for not very long. But you know, when we just read it quickly and then I start talking about it, maybe you didn't notice, but for the first half of this psalm, large Asaph, do I need more batteries? Is this coming in and out?
Y' all are following me. Fine. For the first half of this psalm, Asaph is largely talking about himself. It's just his experience. He's just looking at his situation.
And there's a whole lot of I's, and there's a whole lot of me's, and there's a whole lot of Mys. In fact, in those first six verses, the first person pronouns are used 18 times. And God is mentioned six times. And you know, I was reading this over and I was thinking about this and listen to this. For example, verse six, I said, let me remember my song in the night.
Let me meditate on my heart. Do you see how just directed it is towards himself? He's in this dark, deep place and he's wondering where God is, but he's so focused on him.
So eight times, first person pronouns. 18, sorry, 18 times in those verses. In those same verses, six references to God. And if you are looking at yourself three times as much as you were looking at God, this is often where you end up. Actually, let me say this.
When I am looking at myself three times as much as I'm looking at God, this is often where I end up. In a dark place, sleepless nights, wondering God, what's going on, why this, why that, what's going on?
That kind of self orientation often leads down this road. Okay? And the turning point in this psalm is when he begins to look more at the Lord who He is his character, what he's done, his redemption.
So he says, I'll remember verse 11 and 12. I'll remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I'll remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. So his character and his redemption.
A few things about God's character that we have mentioned really explicitly here. One, if you look down at verse 13, just read 11 and 12. First, he says God is holy.
And of course, there's lots that can be said about the holiness of God. There's a whole book that's titled the Holiness of God. But for this psalm, and I think the point of this psalm, it's enough to say that the holiness, God's holiness has to do with his being set apart and altogether distinct and different. Which is to say his ways are not our ways. Right.
His paths are not always our paths.
Maybe you've heard pastors say this jokingly. I think God loves you and I have a great plan for your life.
God loves you and I have a great plan for your life. It's called the hospitality team or something like that.
But we actually like to say, God loves me and I have a great plan for my life. But instead it's God loves you and he has a plan for your life. And his plan for your life is so often so different than what you expect, because He's. Of course it is. He's holy.
He's different. He's beyond us. His ways are beyond our understanding.
God is holy. He's sacred. He's set apart.
God's ways can be trusted. We can walk in his paths and we can sometimes wonder what's going on with Him. But his ways are holy, they're sacred, set apart. And often it's actually looking back on where he's brought us that we see that to be the case. So part of the ways that Asaph here remembers God's character is he remembers his holiness.
His otherness, his sacredness is beyond usness. The other thing that he mentions, actually again there in verse 13, is that God is great.
What? God is great like our God. Right? That's a good question to ask, what God's great like our God? And the answer, of course, is there's none other God great like our God.
So verse 14 says, you're the God who works wonders. You've made known your might among the peoples. Which is to say when you say God is great, what say God is able. That's what he's saying. God is holy.
His ways are not my ways. But he's able. He's great. He can do as he pleases. God is able to take us through the deepest, darkest valleys of the shadows of death, the places where we want to lay down to sleep, and it be our last sleep.
He can take us through the deep valleys and glens, as Spurgeon said of depression of darkness. There are things in this life, in our lives, like Asaph's life, that cause us to ask all the first questions that come up in this psalm. But it's the greatness of God that causes us to go, okay, you are able. You are able to take me through. God is great.
The other thing that we see here is that God's caring. He's a caring God. Verse 15. You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and of Joseph. And if you're what you should be thinking about, there is the Exodus story.
You remember, the people of God were down in Egypt for 400 years, and they were crying out to him, right? They were, come and redeem us. Bring us into the land that you promised our forefathers. And in some ways, they were experiencing this dark experience that Asaph has. And God remembers and he redeems and he cares.
He acts in love for the redemption of his people. God is caring. God is holy, and he's great, and he's caring. But after this last salah, it kind of moves into this final section, this final section here. And listen to this again.
Okay. 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 the whirlwind. Your lightning lighted up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters.
Yet your footprint was unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses. And so this last stanza is Asaph remembering. So the last one was the character of God. But actually, this is the Acts of God, the mighty Acts, the redemption.
The story of redemption in the Old Testament is this right here, right? God bring his people out from Egypt. But the interesting thing about this little snippet that we have right here is what he's calling to remembrance is how the people were brought out after the 10 plagues. And Pharaoh finally lets them go. And they're leaving, and they get to the water and they're like.
And they've got chariots behind them, which is. It's the place where they get to and they're like, we have no hope.
We thought we were finally saved. And now you brought us out to the Red Sea and we've got Pharaoh on our back, and things pretty much couldn't be worse, right? The part of the story that he's remembering is the part where they're probably going, oh, my word, we thought that we were finally out of this, and now we're in this situation where there's chariots coming after us and there's water of us and we're not going to make it through. He's remembering that time where it's like all hope is pretty much lost. And what does he say?
That when the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they trembled. Which is to say there's nothing that the Lord couldn't take his people through, right? That's what he's saying. In the darkest places of my life, in the place where I come to and I go, oh, my word, this chariot's behind me. There's water in front of me.
I'm gone. God made a way. The waters themselves, they tremble. You know, this guy is in his. He commands it all.
It's as though Asaph was saying, of course he can care for me. When I'm laying in bed and I'm just thinking about how awful things have been and where God seems so absent. I mean, he's great, he's holy, he's caring, and he can part the Red Sea, I can trust him.
Now, of course, if this is the great redemption story of the Old Testament, which it is. Which is why the Old Testament authors always are going back to the Exodus story. Because it's a great story of salvation. God giving his people freedom and new life when they were once slaves. But now we have.
We get to look back upon the cross of Christ, right? I mean, in our deep places, when we are actually crying out, like Jesus does on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We get to think, we get to remember that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, right? And if God is for us, who can be against us? And why do we. Why can we say that even in those nights? Because he who did not spare his own son, how much more will he not give us?
All things. If God himself takes on flesh for you, if he goes to the cross and conquers Satan, sin and death for you.
Go to him in the dark night of despair, cry out to him. Share with him your deepest, darkest places, your doubts that overwhelm you.
And then remember that his ways aren't your ways, that he is able, that he's caring. And all of that is seen most fully at the cross. All of it. That's where you see the love of God. That's where you see his character most known.
That's where his mighty acts are revealed in their great fullness. And that's where he shows us that he loves us. We are often wondering about that. That's where we see it, the cross. Let me pray.
Lord, thank you for the Psalms, These words that we get to sing to you, to pray to you. God, we're so grateful that the Psalms don't shy away from places where we're just questioning everything. We're questioning what you're doing, your character, all this.
That you invite us to live honestly before you, to live openly before you, God, that. That doesn't offend you at all. God, I pray that we'd hear that. But Lord, I pray this morning also that we would hear that. This turning point for Asaph and the turning point for us is to look to Jesus, to look at the cross and the resurrection, the empty tomb, to look at the love that you have for us.
You won't even spare your own son, but you'd give him for us.
God, please. Lord, I pray that we would be a people who fix our eyes upon Jesus.
God, we are so prone to navel gazing. We are so prone to just looking at ourselves and our state, our place in this world. I pray that you'd lift up our eyes, please, to the cross, that we would fix our eyes upon Jesus, and that you'd meet us in that movement, that you would meet us there, and that you lift us out of these deep, dark places that we so often find ourselves in. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for these words.
Thank you for the Word made flesh. We pray all this in Christ's name, Amen.

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