Desperation Amid the Ruins

Desperation Amid the Ruins

Psalm 74

Main Idea: God hears our desperate cries and acts for the sake of his name.

The backdrop of this psalm seems to be Jerusalem after the Babylonian invasion in 586 BC. It looked like a perpetual ruin (v. 3). The Babylonians destroyed the sanctuary—smashing, burning, and looting Solomon’s temple (vv. 3-8). God’s chosen people were carried off into exile in Babylon, a dark place indeed (v. 20)—doves among savages (v. 19).

The fuller story of the Old Testament reveals God pleading with his people to turn back to him in faithfulness. He sent prophets to warn them, but the prophets were disregarded. So the warnings became reality and judgment fell. King Nebuchadnezzar marched up to Jerusalem. The city was conquered. The treasures of the temple were stolen or desecrated. The people were deported except for the poorest (2 Kgs 24:14). Then comes an interpretation of the events from God’s own perspective: “Because of the Lord’s anger, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that he finally banished them from his presence” (2 Kgs 24:20).

What do you do when it seems everything is caving in around you? Does God hear his desperate children even if they’ve been wayward? In this psalm we learn a vital truth: God hears his people’s desperate cries and acts for the sake of his name. The passage opens up in four sections.

The Approach

Psalm 74:1-2

Of our three children, one is more resistant to what we often call “small talk.” He would call me from his college dorm. I would answer the phone, and he would greet me with a “Hi, Dad,” then immediately jump into the reason for the call. No, “How are you and Mom doing?”

Here the psalmist dispenses with formalities. Why? Because the heat is on, and it won’t let up. He is giving voice to the desperation of God’s chosen people. The conversation begins with pain. In verse 1 the pain is expressed in the form of a question about God’s rejection and anger.

It is, as the late pastor James Montgomery Boice described it, “a fierce complaint, bordering just possibly on impropriety as an address to God. But we should not miss the fact that it is at least addressed to God” (Psalms 42–106, 619). We cannot command God to give us answers and reasons for why he is permitting difficult circumstances in our lives, but as this and many other psalms demonstrate, the question is not prohibited. God does not cut off the voices of his desperate people.

In one sense we might push back on the psalmist. Doesn’t the psalmist know that Babylon and what happened on that dark day in Jerusalem were God’s judgment against the tenacious waywardness of the people? But read the question again. He asks why God has rejected them “forever.” We see the same emphasis down in verse 10, with “how long” and “forever.” And in verse 3 the psalmist invites God to look at the “perpetual ruins.” The emphasis seems to be on the duration of God’s judgment on his people. When will God’s anger against their sin be satisfied?

The psalmist, in verse 2, trades questions for pleading. His request employs a key word: remember. He is calling on the Lord as a God who has made promises. They were promises to people who were unimpressive when God first found them. The people of Israel were not chosen by God because they were morally upright. Abraham the patriarch hailed from a family of idol worshipers, and God, if you will, interrupted their idolatrous worship and introduced himself and began making promises. God would be their God. They would be his people. God would make Abraham a nation. He would bless all the nations through him. Right from the start, the psalmist is hitching his hopes to the promises God had made to this people. Yes, they’ve been wayward, but they are his sheep (v. 1), his congregation that he purchased long ago and redeemed for his own possession (v. 2).

Have you ever sensed a distance from God—like he’s a million miles away? Like the weight you are under will never lift? This psalm not only helps you express your experience, but, more importantly, it helps you seek the Lord from that place.

The News

Psalm 74:3-11

The psalmist, as it were, takes God by the hand and leads the Lord (and the reader) on a tour through the ruined city where God’s name had dwelt. In a sense the sights and sounds are all wrong. Instead of fortified walls around the city of God protecting the people of God, we see broken-down walls. Instead of the sounds of the worship of God’s people, the only thing we hear from the temple courts are the roaring taunts of God’s enemies. We expect the smell of incense and sacrifice when approaching the temple, but instead the sanctuary itself is burning (v. 7). Everything is out of sorts. The sound of prayers has been replaced by a cacophony of vandalism, destruction, and mockery. Axes wreaking havoc. Sacred things reduced to smoldering embers. This tour ends with the tour guide, the psalmist, saying in verses 10-11, God, surely, you won’t let this be the last word. You won’t tolerate insults hurled at your name from the burning ruins of your house!

The Psalms make abundantly clear that argument is a form of prayer. The psalmist is formulating a powerful argument. If the devastation of Jerusalem was an act of God’s judgment against his people’s idolatry—the way they kicked him to the curb and treated him as an insignificant thing—was he listening to the voices of these mockers? Was God going to let this slide?

This is where the tone of the prayer begins to change. He moves to the truth about who God is and who God has been for the people of Israel.

The Truth

Psalm 74:12-17

As impressive and foreboding as “the news” was in the last section, the psalmist calls to mind his God—“my King” (v. 12)—a God who performs saving acts. He speaks of God’s power in the salvation of Israel, opening up the sea (v. 13a) so they passed through on dry land. The psalmist’s faith is expressed here. His eyes are up. God has power over forces of evil too strong for us (vv. 13b-14). God opens springs and streams (v. 15) and rules over the day and the night (v. 16), the changing of seasons and the establishment of all earthly boundaries (v. 17).

Our God is the sovereign King. He rules over creation. Not only does he have untold, infinite power, but he also presses his power into the service of his people’s salvation. In the Old Testament God saved his people through a mighty act of rescue—the great exodus. His people passed through the waters of death and emerged on the other side. However, that great redemptive act pointed forward to the mightiest of God’s mighty deeds. God sent a deliverer, his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus performed God’s “saving acts on the earth” (v. 12) through his perfect life of obedience, his sin-bearing death on the cross, and his glorious resurrection from the dead. As a result, Jesus leads God’s chosen people out of slavery to sin, and he promises to be our God forever—never to leave us or forsake us. This is the message of the gospel. This is the believer’s hope.

Christian friend, take this truth to heart. God has shown us his saving acts. Jesus is our King, and he has power over all earthly powers. He has power to deliver us from powers too strong for us. He has power to sustain us in this present darkness.

This Old Testament saint doesn’t know the fullness of the messianic hope we now see on this side of the cross, but he’s onto something back there. He knows God as a covenant God who keeps his promises. He knows God as a saving, redeeming Lord who shepherds his people. He knows God as the King who rules and reigns and cannot be defeated. He knows that God contends for the glory of his own name and will not sit by and watch Israel’s enemies gloat over his peoples’ enfeebled condition. The psalmist is preaching truth to his soul.

Do you do the same? Have we learned the art of preaching the gospel to ourselves? Or do we only sit and listen to our fears mount their case? This psalm is instructive for us. He is bringing the grave “news” of his circumstances into contact with the truth of God’s character and promises. This sets the psalmist up to make specific requests.

The Ask

Psalm 74:18-23

The superscription attributes this psalm to Asaph. If the background of this psalm is the Babylonian invasion in the sixth century BC, this could not be the Asaph who was a contemporary of King David. It could be either a later Asaph or, as many scholars believe, the name Asaph was “affixed to many psalms produced by this body of musicians” (Boice, Psalms 42–106, 617).

This writer deeply understands the character and nature of God. His prayers here at the close have a covenantal cadence about them. He uses this word remember again (v. 18) as he begins a series of earnest petitions.

Remember, Lord: this enemy has mocked you (v. 18). At this point, the psalmist is not focused on the way Israel’s enemies oppress Israel (v. 8). His focus is the glory of God. When Babylon mocks Israel, Babylon is mocking Israel’s God.

You may remember that when the risen Jesus confronts Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, he says, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). Jesus so identified with his disciples that to persecute them was to persecute him. Asaph says that these foolish people insult God’s name (v. 18).

The psalmist then represents Israel as easy prey for the great military might of Babylon (vv. 19,21). Asaph knows God hates oppressors—those who crush the powerless and gloat over them. “The one who mocks the poor insults his Maker, and one who rejoices over calamity will not go unpunished” (Prov 17:5). “The Lord executes acts of righteousness and justice for all the oppressed” (Ps 103:6).

Asaph asks God to remember the covenant promises he has made to his people (v. 20): You have never abandoned your promise. You didn’t choose us because we were impressive. You weren’t magnetically drawn to our moral beauty. We’ve tested you throughout our history and yet you’ve borne with us. You’ve given us your law. You’ve sent prophets. You’ve pleaded with us. You’ve wooed us, provided for us. You’ve disciplined us. But you’ve never abandoned your purpose.

On this basis the psalmist says, “Rise up, God, champion your cause!” (v. 22). Don’t let the history books proclaim the great power of Babylon! Don’t let the headline say, “Israel: Protected by God, Until Broken by Babylon!”

Conclusion

Here are six implications for the Christian life.

First, God is not put off by our desperation. We can come to him and bring our pain and our questions to him. Far better to bring them to him than to let our questions drive us away.

Second, our hope in prayer is not anchored in our worthiness or merit but in God’s saving grace. This means all Christian praying is gospel-driven praying. We come confidently to a throne of grace (Heb 4:16) because of the work of our mediator, Jesus Christ. In Christ we have full access to God. We are invited to draw near and find the grace and help we so deeply need.

Third, prayer involves theology and even argument. We come to God as the one who is all powerful. We pray in a way that manifests our desire for God’s glory to be revealed in the world and through his people.

Fourth, we size up our circumstances against our all-powerful, loving, and faithful God. The tour through fallen Jerusalem was a terrifying display of Babylon’s strength; but God is King over the sea, Leviathan, day, night, seasons, and boundaries. This God is our God. He is a refuge for us. The best posture for us is to lift our eyes upward and outward.

Fifth, even when our desperate condition is owing to our own sin and failure, God delights to run to the rescue of a humble people. God’s patience is great. The arm of God’s mercy is long. There is no depth of sin we can find ourselves in where God cannot reach and restore us.

Sixth, the church of Jesus Christ is meant to reflect the character of God. Since God champions the cause of the poor and the afflicted, we, his people, are called to the same. God protects the vulnerable. God takes their side against their oppressors. The kingdom of God is not for the strong and mighty but for the poor in spirit. Therefore, the church is called to display God’s heart to the vulnerable, the outcast, the poor, and the oppressed.

So we see yet again that God’s Word exalts his character. He hears our desperate cries. He acts, he saves, for the sake of his name. We find all the grace and help. He gets all the glory.

Reflect and Discuss

1. Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by hardship that you didn’t want to run to him—didn’t want to pray or read his Word? What does this psalm teach us to do in such situations?
2. If we’re confident that God is gracious toward us in Christ, how will that shape our prayer life?
3. What does it mean to look “up and out” in the midst of trials?
4. What would Psalm 74 sound like if Asaph didn’t look up and out? How does this help you think about the way you pray?
5. How do our beliefs about God (theology) inform the way we pray? Think of examples of how wrong ideas about God might negatively impact our faith or hamper our effectiveness in prayer.
6. What are some good ways to cultivate right thinking about God so that we are able to preach truth to ourselves in times of hardship?
7. How is it good news that God saves “for the sake of his name”?
8. The psalmist presents prayers like arguments, giving reasons God should act in a certain way. Have you considered that before? How would you help someone else grasp this truth?
9. As Christians, how can we display God’s heart for the poor and the afflicted?