WEEK 85, DAY 1 PSALMS 74, 77, 79, and 80 Good morning. This is Pastor Soper and welcome to Week 85 of Know the Word. May I encourage you by saying that we are now less than six weeks away from finishing Know the Word? Then you will be able to say that you have carefully and prayerfully read the entire Bible, from cover to cover! That will, I believe, turn out to be one of the greatest and most beneficial accomplishments of your entire Christian life! I can honestly tell you that producing these recordings has been one of the greatest and most blessed accomplishments of my life as a Christian! Well, today we read Psalms 74, 77, 79 and 80. These Psalms are all found in Book 3 of the Psalter. (You will remember that Book 2 ended with the expression at the end of Psalm 72: “This concludes the prayers of David, son of Jesse,” even though several more Psalms bearing his name will be found mostly in Books 4 and 5). We also learned that there are five Books of Psalms, which appear to roughly correspond to the five Books of Moses. I have to confess to you, however, that the division between the five books have always seemed a bit arbitrary to me and I found myself wondering about that again this week. It is true, as some scholars have noted, the Psalms in Book 1 frequently use the name “Jehovah” or “Lord,” while the second Book seems to highlight the name “Elohim” or “God.” It is also apparent, as you may have quickly noticed this morning, that most of the Psalms in Book 3 show some evidence of being “exilic,” that is, they were written after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. The key to understanding the rather “loose” organizational structure of the Psalms, however, is probably to be found in remembering that this is nothing more nor less than a five volume collection of hymns and choruses that evolved along with the worshiping community of Israel. Years ago, I bought a red chorus book that I really liked - it had some great new choruses in it like “Majesty” and “Our God Reigns”, as well as some older ones. Apparently a lot of other people liked it too because a year or two later, Volume 2 appeared with a whole bunch of new songs of praise. That was followed in turn by Volumes 3, 4, and 5, each one containing all kinds of songs: “helps”, “thanks”, and “wows” in all five of the song books. As long as worshipers keep writing new songs, I suppose, the potential exists for Volumes 6 through 10 as well. I am very sure that the process I have just described is a fair explanation of how the Book of Psalms was written as well! Psalm 74 is a song that was written after the army of Babylon had burned the Temple and broken down the walls of the beautiful city of Jerusalem. It asks a one-word question: “Why?” But really, it is two separate questions: “Why are you still angry with us?” and “Why don’t you punish the wickedness of our conquerors?” Verse 1 says, “Why have you rejected us forever, O God” (I don’t know how many years into exile this Psalm was written, but it seemed like forever!) and verse 11, “Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them!” I know that I have said this a dozen times before, but indulge me once again: A Sovereign God is under no obligation to answer all our questions, but it is still okay to ask them. The words of Psalm 74 are evocative. Jerusalem is full of “everlasting ruins.” The Temple has been destroyed by “men wielding axes,” who then burned it to the ground. In verse 9, the Psalmist says that the invaders burned “every place where God was worshiped in the land.” That was a petty revealing statement because the Temple was the only place authorized by God for worship but the syncretistic spirit of the age had created a number of other unauthorized worship sites. “No prophets are left to us.” That expression may indicate that the Psalm originated in Jerusalem after Jeremiah had been dragged down to Egypt. Ezekiel and Daniel, you will remember, were with the exiles in Babylon. Psalm 77, the second one we read, is a little less obvious in terms of its date of origin, but probably it comes from the same period of time: “I thought about the former days, the years of long ago. I remembered my songs in the night; my heart mused and my spirit inquired; ‘Will the Lord reject forever? Will He never show His favor again? Has His unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time?’” Psalm 79 is quite explicit. It begins with these words: “O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance; they have defiled your holy Temple, they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble.” A bit of the horrible aftermath of Jerusalem’s destruction is noted in verses 2 and 3: “They have given the dead bodies of your servants as food to the birds of the air, the flesh of your saints to the beats of the earth. They have poured out blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead.” Psalm 80, though some scholars place it after the Assyrian destruction of the Northern Kingdom, sounds and feels like the other three: “Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved…why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes… your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.” All of our Psalms this morning then, are songs of the exile - plaintive, wailing cries for help based on four things: #1: The mercy of God - the Psalmists hope for deliverance because they assume that God’s anger with His faithless people will not last forever (though to the author of Psalm 74 the length of time since the destruction of Judah seemed to be approaching forever!) Because God is merciful, there is hope in these Psalms that He will turn His wrath aside and restore His people. Now I need to remind you that there was plenty of ground for hope. Isaiah and Ezekiel, in particular, but some of the other pre-exilic Old Testament prophets as well, had promised it. The Psalmists here are only claiming the promises of Scripture. # 2: The second thing upon which these pleas for help are grounded is the belief in God’s justice. Since the nations He used to bring judgment down upon Judah and Israel were themselves godless and even more evil than the victims, the Psalmists are waiting for God to “visit” these evildoers with justice. His holiness demands it and the “sheep” in exile are watching for it. #3: The third base upon which the hope for deliverance rests is an even stronger one. It is the assumption that since the defeat of Israel has left the impression that Israel’s God is not as strong as the gods of Babylon and Assyria, Jehovah’s honor has been questioned by the arena of nations. He Himself has been mocked by the destruction of His Temple. The Psalmists believe that the glory of God has been compromised in the destruction of the Temple and of His city Jerusalem and in the exile of His people (His vine) Israel. Therefore, they are sure that He will move to vindicate His honor. It is clearest in Psalm 74: “How long will the enemy mock you, O God...rise up, O God and defend yourself; remember how fools mock you all day long!” It is there again in 79: “Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name…why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’” #4: The fourth and final ground upon which the appeal is made is the history of God’s deliverances and actions in the past. Since God has acted mightily on behalf of His people in the past to deliver them, there is faith that He will do it again in their present distress. God “split open the sea, crushed the heads of Leviathan, and opened springs and dried up rivers” - that is a poetic reference to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt - found in Psalm 74. In 77, the thought that God may have abandoned Israel gives way to this: “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works…with your mighty arm you redeemed your people.” Then follows another poetic description of the amazing trip through the Red Sea. By the way, poetry or not, the last part of Psalm 77 sounds like the vivid eyewitness account of that amazing day passed down by oral tradition to the time of the Psalmist. Read it again and visualize what it must have been like for the children of Israel to cross through the passage between the walls of water! In Psalm 80, there is another recitation of history: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations…you cleared the ground for it…” Given all that you have done for us in the past, we are bound to believe that you will once again act in our present emergency.