Summary 

When life falls apart, Psalm 79 gives us a model for how to respond with honesty and faith. Written against the backdrop of Jerusalem's destruction by Babylon in 586 BC, this psalm shows us that bringing our raw grief to God is not a sign of weakness but of trust. Asaph does not walk away or pretend everything is fine. He lays out the full weight of the pain before God, pleads for justice, asks for forgiveness, and anchors every request in the glory of God's name. The cry of 'How long, O Lord?' is not despair. It is faith holding on. God, who sent His own Son into the middle of a broken and rebellious world, hears that cry today and will make good on every promise He has made.

Transcript

Lord, we ask that you would illumine our hearts, you'd open our eyes, that we'd receive this word, a word that is a psalm that's not very well known, a part of your church's history that's not terribly well known or understood. Well, God, I pray that having spent this time, we would understand your kindness to us even in discipline, that we would have a greater hope that you will make the world right, that. That you will make good on your promises, that our faith would grow. God. Now may the words of my mouth and meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight.
The Lord our rock and our redeemer. Amen. All right. I know, because I know many of your stories, that many of you have experienced great calamities in this life.
My guess is that many of you have experienced disasters that have really kind of changed how you understand the world, maybe changed the course of your life. I know I have a good friend who, when he was in college, his house burned down, the house he was living in. And he said, you know, most of the stuff that he lost were, relatively speaking, maybe trivial things, but they were also significant because some of them were like family photos and a guitar and things like that. Things that maybe in the grand scheme of things may be sort of diminished by many of us, but he's learned, even through that experience, to cherish kind of things that we might consider small. Some of you have gone through marital separations and divorce.
You've tasted something that is joyful and lovely and life giving, that became a reason for weeping, for sorrow, for questioning your decisions. Right. And your judgment. Judgment. And maybe also invited you to consider how you contributed to the mess of it all.
Some of us have sat down with doctors to receive the outcomes of biopsy. Cancer is so prevalent, right. And sometimes we've heard it going into remission, partial or complete. And sometimes actually even in the life of our church, it was sort of a spontaneous remission. Miraculous, but not always.
Sometimes it comes back, of course. I shared about our dear sister Donna. If you are not familiar with her story, this time last year she was regularly going to the Y for water aerobics a few times a week right down there on Front street. The last 10 months she has been in and out of hospitals and rehabs and care facilities and back to care facilities and hospitals. And it's been a long journey.
The fact is that life is often tragedy to tragedy just presents itself that way. So two falls ago, if you can remember back then, we looked at the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. And in many ways, we took that instead of kind of going through the whole thing, in part because those chapters are an introduction to the Bible. Where's this beginning and what's going on here? It's a good place to start.
And there we saw what we were made for. We were made to live into the goodness of God, to life within his creation and life with him, to walk with him, to talk with him, to depend on him for our provision and our protection, to delight in his presence with us. But of course, the story, we don't get a lot of that there. Very quickly we learn of our. Our rebellion, deciding that we know how to do life better now, that we have a better sense of what this life should look like.
And we lived into this rebellious way. And if you can think back on those sermons, or maybe you can just think back on those chapters, many of you probably know them. What you'll remember is that this rebellion results in death, in family division, in the destruction of creation itself, in the elevation of the self over against God and his place. But also it has this rippling effect into creation and the devaluation of creation and of human Life. What those 11 chapters that introduce the Bible show us is that the world is badly, badly in need of grace and of redemption.
That's kind of the setting up of the rest of Scripture in a way. You get to the end of those 11 chapters wondering, will this God, who made this world and declared it good and walked with his creation, will he make good on some of the promises that he made his world? Will he continue with it? And we have glimpses that he will. Genesis 3:15.
Sometimes it's called the proto euangelion, if you want to sound like a theologian to use words like that. It just means the first good news, the first gospel, the beginning where we heard that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, right? That one day all of this tragedy and all this rebellion would be put to death. We also get a glimpse of that sort of a little look into this promise of God for His world in the covenant of Noah. Oh, it's echoing creation all over the place in that story.
But the story of rebellion continues. It just seems to keep continuing in that. And so as those first chapters come to an end, we're introduced to Abraham, right? Abraham. And we have blessing of God to Abraham.
That God would bless Abraham and the whole Abrahamic family. And through that blessing of Abraham, the blessing of the world would actually come. So you're supposed to get to that. And you're like, oh, God is utterly committed to this creation. He looks upon it and he knows how rebellious it is, and yet he is committed to its well being.
It's blessing. A particular blessing to Abraham, but a blessing for the whole world. A commitment of God to his creation. So we continue the story and we get to the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, but then that very family that is supposed to be the blessing to the world is in slavery, right? So God saves them and he brings them to Mount Sinai.
We've been looking at the ten Commandments. And those ten commandments were to be given to this kingdom of priests, this holy nation, as Exodus 19 tells us, what were they to do? They were to live with God in such a way that the world would be reflecting God to the world. A kingdom of priests saying, look at the Lord. And if we kept continuing after the commandments, we would learn about how the tabernacle was built and where it was placed.
It was placed right in the midst of the community and it was furnished with things that would evoke Eden. This place, this perfect place for God dwell with his people as things were meant to be, right? The tabernacle right there in the community. And it would follow them along as they journeyed to the promised land. And for those first hundred years we were in the promised land, that while there, God said, I'm going to be with you.
And that initial sort of creation promise, those early covenants, those early promises to his people would come to fruition. And so then we have the temple built under Solomon there in the city of Jerusalem. But all of this, this is what I want you to understand. All of this was because God was committed to his world, that in the context of rebellion, God was saying, I am committed to, to grace, to restoration, to the goodness of what I made, even in its rebellious state.
Here's the thing. There's an ecstasy and an agony all throughout the Old Testament and to be honest, through the New Testament and in our own time, the ecstasy is that the world would be redeemed and God is acting that God would dwell with us, right? I mean, that's part of the thing. God in the midst of his people there in the tabernacle, he establishes his home there in Jerusalem, his temple. And all of it was saying, one day God will make it all right.
What's the agony?
The agony is that the dark, tragic fact of all of it, that the people that were called to be this sort of rescue mission for the blessing of the world are themselves the one that are in sore need of rescuing. And they're the ones that are so often living the life of rebellion and rejection of God. And so often Israel lived the way of the world, rejection of God. So far from being a sign of God to the world kingdom of priests, they were the sign of rebellion, of rejection, of living however they wanted to live. And so the story seemed to continue again and again throughout the Old Testament.
Time and time again, they would rebel, they would reject God, the very people who were to be priests of the world, very people that needed saving.
So the culmination of this. I know this is sort of a long introduction, but the fact is that you can't really understand some. Some texts of Scripture without having all this. The culmination of this rejection and the culmination of God's discipline happens when the Babylonian empire comes and it ransacks Jerusalem. This happened in 586 BC.
It came and it raised not only the city, but the very place where God made his home, the Temple, the place that said to Israel, as a nation, to the people of God, I am utterly committed. I know your rebellion, and yet I am here, and I'm going to make it good. That place, the Temple, was raised to the ground.
They rejected him by persisting in their idolatry and their social injustice and their constant rejection of the prophet's warnings. And so the place where God's promise in some ways was most clearly seen was itself taken apart stone by stone, raped the ground. This is the backstory of Psalm 79. This is why, actually, even to this day, every Friday afternoon, this psalm is said aloud at the Wailing Wall, that wall, which is the second Temple wall, right in Jerusalem there. It's also why this psalm can be found in the Jewish liturgy that commemorates the very day of the destruction of Jerusalem.
This is what's going on in this psalm. It's a psalm of Asaph. I don't always read the little title thing, but I wanted you to hear that. And partly why I wanted you to hear that, because the last few psalms have been psalms of Asaph. And actually, if we went back to Psalm 74, which was last summer, we'd see actually that psalm is very similar to this psalm.
But that psalm kind of walks you through. Actually, it's more Asaph walking God through the city. And listen to some of what Asaph says there in Psalm 74. Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins. The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.
Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place. They Set up their own signs for signs, meaning they put up idols in the midst of the temple. They were like those who swing axes in a forest of trees, just cutting everything down in all its carved wood. They broke down with hatchets and hammers. They set your sanctuary on fire.
They profaned the dwelling place of your name, bringing it down to the ground. They said to themselves, we will utterly subdue them. They burned all the meeting places of God in the land. So Asaph is crying out. He's sort of walking through the streets with God saying, look.
Look at how they wield the axe. Look at how they destroyed it. Look at how they took even your temple, your sanctuary, down to the ground. Look at all. Look at it all.
Look at the destruction of this place, which was to be this picture of your commitment to the world, the blessing of your people for the life of the world.
All right, background. Let's turn to Psalm 79. Maybe still have it open.
I don't. So I'm going to turn there. Psalm 79.
To Psalm 79. We're told. I think the big thing we're told is what we're to do in this kind of perplexity. And what do you do with this kind of scenario when the very hope that we kind of long for, the blessing of God to the world seems to be utterly taken away? What do we do in the confusion of destruction, in the midst of a loss of hope?
And I want to just suggest to you two things today that this passage is pointing us towards what to do with it. And the first one is literally just bring it to the Lord and then hang on to God. Okay, Bring it to the Lord and then hang on to God. So the first four verses, actually, yeah, I'm going to read all four. I'll kind of break it down into two sections.
O God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They've given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth. They've poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them.
We've become a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and derided by those around us. First, here's what I want you to hear. Okay? In the midst of this awful scenario, what is Asaph doing? He's saying, lord, look what's happened.
He is bringing it to God. That's what he's doing. He's not just kind of saying, forget it he's saying, lord, look at what happened. He's bringing it to the Lord. And he does this sort of in two ways.
First, he cries out for the honor of God. These are those first two verses there. And I think, most likely, hopefully, because of how I read it, too. Did you hear the repetition of your.
The first thing he's doing is saying, this is about your honor, Lord. It's your inheritance. He said, it's your temple, it's your saints, it's the flesh of your faithful. Which is to say this is not just tragedy that's happened, it's sacrilege. And that's part of what he's doing.
He's saying, God, this is your thing. In some ways, this is your honor that's being taken away. This is your promise that you made that through this people you'd bless the world. He's bringing it to God, but he's also pleading the very honor of God in this psalm, these first couple verses. Second thing is, he expresses the extent of the pain.
He's not hiding anything back, right? Verses three and four, they're pretty intense. They've poured out their blood like water all around your.
He's showing God the horrible extent of this devastation, and there's no one to bury them. We've become a taunt to our neighbors. Mocked, they lie, unburied, humiliation. And he says, God, you need to see this. He's bringing it to the Lord.
The extent of the tragedy of it all being left unburied was sort of the great humiliation in the Old Testament. To be buried was to be honored, to have your body, even in death, be treated with honor. And this was to be treated as less than human, sort of less than an animal. Even the animals are the ones that are devouring it there. It's to be disposable.
The very people of God are being treated as though they are disposable. And he is crying out to the Lord with this.
And he says that they've actually become a ruin and have been mocked. I'm going to get into this a little bit, but what you have to understand is passages like the Jeremiah 10 passage, because part of what has happened is because the shepherds of Israel have rejected the Lord, that this is actually the people of God who have been unfaithful to the Lord. And this destruction has happened, and they've become a mock to the nations. They have been razed to the ground, but they've also been a laughingstock to the world. So let me tell you a couple Accounts, little anecdotes from church history and how the Church has rejected the ways of God and has become a laughingstock.
Most common folk in the 14th century thought the Church was rather a joke. It was a place of perversion and wickedness. Probably one of the high points of the wickedness of the Church. Gone were there even the semblances of holiness among the leaders, sacramental integrity, a commitment to the Scriptures. It was out the window at various times.
You know, probably there were two popes for a little while, there were at least three. And one account that I heard said that there were as many as seven at one point that had their own kind of college of cardinals, saying, I should be the one in power. Probably many of you have learned about the great Western schism, when there was a papal throne in Avignon in the south of France, and then there was the one in Rome. Maybe you know, that from actually 1409 to 1415, there was a third one in Pisa. I mean, there was just all this vying for power.
And of course, why was one in France and why was one in Italy? Well, it was the politics of the day. We want our own French pope, We want our own Italian pope. There's this vying for the ways of this world. I learned, actually, when I was kind of reading about some of this this week, that even as recently as the mid 20th century, there were significant debates within the Catholic Church about what is actually the.
The proper papal line of the line of Peter, because of the mess of it all. One thing I heard in a lecture was that at one point, the King of England and his regent, which was John of Gaunt, largely because they were sort of harboring John Wycliffe, the great Bible translator and early reformer. They received nine. Nine letters of excommunication in one month. And part of it was because there were just multiple people sending them.
Listen to this. I think this actually illustrates what's going on, just the mess of it all. This is Dante, who is himself a devout Catholic, and he wrote pretty famously against the corruptions of one of the most corrupt popes ever, Pope Boniface VIII. This is his Canto 27th in his Paradiso. And it's the Apostle Peter that's speaking here, which you will know later, likely was, according to Catholics, the first pope.
So this is what he says, he who on earth usurps my place, my place, my place, that in the sight of God's own son is vacant now. He said, it's. It's so corrupt, it's just gone. It's empty, has made my burial ground a sewer of blood, a sewer of stench. So the perverse one who fell from heaven here above can find contentment there below.
He's saying that Rome, the throne of the papacy, was a sewer of blood and a sewer of stench. He's saying that Satan, who fell from heaven, that's damage there, can find contentment in the church.
That's Dante sort of walking through the ruins of the very place where God's blessing was to rest in such a way that it went for the blessing of the world and saying, look at the destruction. Look at what happens when the people of God just want to rebel and live for themselves, live the life of the world about them. More recently, and I'll be honest, I don't have all the details of this, but more recently, in fact, this summer, there's the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America had an overture brought to their General assembly by a Presbyterian in New Mexico. And that overture was recommending something which seems very reasonable. That overture was recommending that ministers live only in monogamous relationships.
It was an overture for ministers against polygamy. That overture was deemed administratively out of order, and they set up a study committee to study whether or not they should recommend such an overture. Now, let me say again, I don't know exactly why it was deemed out of order. I probably could have read up on that a little bit more. But the fact that they decided we ought to study whether ministers should not enter into polygamous relationships is a blight on the church.
And that body as a whole, you may know, was in 1983 at 3.1 million members, and today is barely over a million members. But what is happening is, look, Lord, the very body that is to be your blessing to the world, that is to present you to the world, is in destruction, ruins. Look, bring it to the Lord. In the perplexity in life, in the perplexity of the state of God's people, which we could, of course, go into so many stories of the. Of the church itself not acting for God and actually receiving his just discipline.
We could go into so many stories, but in the perplexity in life and in this kind of a state of God's people, in this reality that we are so often the problem. Part of what this psalm is saying is, bring it to the Lord, plead his honor, speak to him the extent of the destruction. But the second thing, I think, the second big thing I think this text is telling us is speak his word and hang on to God. Hang on to him. And I think this is kind of the rest of this is sort of this appeal.
So verse five says, how long, O Lord? We just sang that, didn't we? How long? And that cry, how long? Is found throughout the Psalms, is found throughout much of Scripture.
But that is a cry, truly, of saying, lord, where are you? But it is a cry directed Godward and as if to say, I am holding on, right? Hang on to God. It's a cry of faith. How long is a cry of faith?
It's a cry of perplexity. It's a cry of wonder. It's a cry of saying, lord, where are you? But it's a cry of faith. So a few things that I think Asaph does is he hangs on to God.
A few things that are kind of mentioned here onto God. One thing that Asaph does. And again, this is reiterated for us a ton in the prophets, particularly Jeremiah, who's experiencing this utter destruction. One thing that Asaph does, he understands that God's discipline is always just. God's discipline is just.
He asks, how long? But he doesn't say that the discipline isn't warranted, right? So how long, oh Lord? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire?
Jealousy in the scripture is what God is. God is jealous for what is rightly his right. It's rightly his. So his discipline, which is coming out of his just anger and his just jealousy, is something that is right.
God has a holy jealousy. And sometimes this text even says that holy jealousy burns like fire. Which is to say that Asaph knew that they had been rebellious, that they had turned from the way, the ways of the Lord. They had not sought him, that they had not been the blessing to the world that they were called to be. He knows that God had been merciful to them even in his judgment.
He knows that they have suffered in a way even less than they deserve. He understands that God's judgment is just. That is part of hanging on.
The other second thing he does ask that God would punish those who hurt them.
Some of this, okay, verse six. Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, on the kingdoms that do not call upon your name. For they've devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation.
I won't pretend that these are easy words. These are not easy words, are they? I mean, they're not. They're words that come up in scripture here and there, but they're not easy for us. They can be hard to hear.
After all, we are told to forgive our Enemies, right to pray for those who persecute us, to bless and do not curse.
But we also need to be careful to not be too easy on those who do evil.
Let me this. This is how I wrote it out because I wanted to be careful here.
We can be lazy in forgiveness, which we often are, right? We're not eager or quick to forgive. We can also be lazy for justice to call out wrongdoing and ask God to act to stop it and to put it to an end. And the Bible doesn't have a hard time saying both of those things. And he says, as you hold on to God, do this.
What ASAP didn't know, though, is that justice would come and it would be God who brought it. God's the one that brings justice. He's the one who properly brings justice here. Third thing he does is that he asks for forgiveness. Verse 8.
Do not remember against us our former iniquities. Let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.
Think about this. The people are experiencing this utter devastation of their whole civilization. Economics are gone, right? Socially, many people have been taken out from Jerusalem. Think of Daniel and his buddies.
They were taken to Babylon, right? Jeremiah will of course write to the exiles in Babylon later on. So socially, it's all messed up. Religiously, the temple itself has been razed to the ground.
But he is saying this is there is an aspect in which we are complicit in the sin that brought this about. He's not just wanting to throw it off on someone else, but he's actually willing to say, lord, how have I contributed and can you have mercy on me? Which is to say, Asaph does not excuse sin away, which is something that we are so tempted to do. He doesn't brush it off. Rather, he acknowledges their own complicity in the rejection of God and need for his forgiveness.
Fourth thing is that he asks for the glory of God. Verse 9. Listen to this. Help us, O God, of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us and atone for our sins for your name's sake.
Verse 10. Why should the nations say, where's their God? That the avenger of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations before our eyes what he's ultimately doing. He's asking God to work in their midst and in the midst of their perplexity for the sake of his name in the world. He's saying, lord, if this has happened to your place and to your people, won't you become a laughingstock why is it the case that the church seems to run so often to the world?
Lord, make the church holy. Help us to be repentant people. Help us to be a people that seek justice and love mercy for your name's sake. That's what he keeps going back to. God's discipline is just.
He brings justice to those who do wrong. He forgives sin. And all of it, all of this is for the sake of the holy name of God.
So in some ways, what I've done is share with you the story of the Bible.
I began with the beginning. We kind of slow. We walked rather quickly, actually, for the first. Through the first couple books. And then we got to this crazy story of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian empire.
But what I kind of wanted to show you through that sort of small snippet, like that quote from Dante and even this small snippet of this overture that came before this other denomination this summer was that in some ways, this is the story that we're living in this kind of perplexed place of saying, God, what's happening in the world? Why is your church seem to ebb and flow and faithless? Why is it sometimes good in a way for you to say, I need to bring my discipline to the church? They need to learn repentance. And why do we need to cry out, lord, bring honor to your name?
People are looking at the church, Lord, and saying, what a joke. Sometimes.
God, listen, God, hear. So I began with the beginning of the Bible, and just as a way of ending, I want to point us to the end of the Bible.
So the first book in the Bible is Genesis, which means the book of beginning. And the last book of the Bible is the Book of Revelation. You probably know that Revelation is notoriously difficult to understand. At points there In Revelation, chapter 6, there are the Four Horsemen, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which is sort of become like it's just part of our cultural language now. The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Some of you may know that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are a reference to four football players from Notre Dame who beat the army in 1924.
I doubt it may know that it's the name of a restaurant in Brooklyn.
Some of you may know that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are also four things that will predict, likely predict a marital divorce. According to Gottman, in Revelation, the four horsemen refers to conquest, war, famine and death. Conquest, war, famine and death. And that was the experience of the people of this psalm. And often it has been the experience of Christians throughout time.
Living in this world where it seems as though conquest of the church, destruction of the church, the death of the church, war within the church is what is so prevalent, the experience of God's people. Experience of the world over some, probably of the experience of this psalm may be your experience, maybe in a communal life or maybe in a personal life. I hope not much. But no doubt you've had these sorrows upon sorrows, these tragedies upon tragedies that have caused you to question God, what's happening, what's going on?
No doubt you've had times that you brought to the Lord in anguish, recounting all the destruction. I hope you've had times of hanging on to God in the midst of a world that feels so much in upheaval, crying out for justice, maybe crying out for forgiveness, maybe crying out for the glory of his name. My guess is that if you've been a Christian for a while, you've looked at the state of the church and you've said, God, bring honor to your name. Bring honor to your name. Why do the nations mock and laugh?
Well, there in Revelation, we don't only just find the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The main character in Revelation is the Lamb who was slain.
The main character is the one who experiences to agree this conquest and this war and this famine and even death. The main character is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And there in that book we find in some ways the culmination of the promises made there in chapter three of Genesis, the culmination of what is promised there in Genesis chapter nine, the culmination of what is found there at the Covenant in Exodus 20 and all throughout, that God always makes good on his promises. That in the midst of a world that feels like the Psalm 79, God, what is happening is the blessing of the world that you have promised. Will it come about?
And the message there is that it will. That there will be a day when our cries for justice, when our cries for forgiveness, when our cries for a new life will be heard fully and completely. They will be answered. There will be a day when death is no more. There will be a day when crying and tears and pain are no more.
There will be a day when the anguish of crying out, how long? Will be met with now.
And all of it will be because Jesus himself came into this very world, that Jesus himself received the pain of this world into himself. That Jesus himself went to the cross, through death, to the empty tomb for the sake of this world that is so constantly Been in rebellion and rejection of him. In a way, you could say it is all because Jesus himself went through conquest and war and famine and death for us. So what do we do? What do we do?
When we're in this kind of scenario, we are not, truth be told, we are not in the exact kind of scenario. Similar things that cause us to question, to wonder, what do we do with the perplexities of our experiences? What the psalmist saying is, bring it to the Lord.
Cry out for his honor. Lord, I am your child who. Whom you love, whom Jesus died for. Meet me in this pain. Why do you seem to stand far off?
Cry out the Lord's honor. What else should you do? Bring it all before the Lord. Bring the stuff that you want to hide in the way. Think of the how gruesome this was.
Blood strewn throughout the city of Jerusalem. Bring it all to God and bring it to him. And remember.
Remember the blessing of God to the world. Remember his promises of God to the world. And remember most of all that Jesus. Jesus is the great picture of God's love for us. It is his utter commitment for us.
That the fact that God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not, at least at some point, give us all things? Let me pray for us. Lord, we have a psalm that is foreign to us and a history that few know well. And actually, a history that is so unsettling in a way, the texts are unsettling. The extent of destruction is unsettling.
And yet we live in a world. We live in a world that is so utterly unsettling, so perplexing, we go through trials, tragedies that are so great, they test our faith, they make us wonder what you are up to.
And yet, Lord, here again we're called to cry to you, to bring it to you, to hang on to you, to cling to Jesus, the authority and the perfecter of our faith. God, I pray that we would be those who, in the midst of trial, in the midst of tragedy, who might give these kinds of psalms to our lips, to cry out to you, to plead for you to act, to plead for you to forgive us when we need that, to plead to you to bring your justice, to plead with you to defend your honor, the glory of your name. God. When we look at the church, and we have so many reasons to wonder why it's the church, not the beacon of light, that it is called to be the source of your blessing to the world, these kinds of times, Lord, would we look to these psalms. And more than any would we look to Jesus.
Pray this all in his name, Amen.

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