So I want to begin tonight by
reading back through Psalm 77 so that you have it fresh in
your mind as we go through this. It begins in verse one, and as
I tried to point out last week, this psalm can be divided into
five sections, and the first section of this psalm begins
at verse one, it goes through verse four, and I've described
that section as trouble with no relief, because the psalmist
is crying to the Lord, he's praying, He knows that God hears him,
and yet he can't find comfort to his soul. This is a significant
and very important psalm for that reason. It shows us that
God's people do suffer, that their suffering can be internal,
and that this is the most difficult kind of suffering to bear. And
it's most difficult, of course, when the Lord seems like He doesn't
hear us, even though we know He does. And we may know this
intellectually, and we may believe it, but still, we might not find
ourselves comforted. And so, because of that, these
first four verses summarize that condition, and it's very important,
the Psalm is very important, because it describes to us this
intimate disclosure of this man of God who said that he was troubled
in his soul, He was in grief, and he found no relief, no comfort
from God. The second section of this psalm
begins at verse five and goes through verse six. And that section
is where he recalls the works of God to find relief. Let's
read through these first six verses. He says in verse one,
I cried to God with my voice, even unto God with my voice,
and he gave ear unto me. In other words, he heard, he
listened. And the word, the phrase there, and he gave ear unto me
can be understood to mean when he heard me, when he heard me. So he's recalling in that first
verse that in his trouble, he did cry and the Lord did hear
him. But then verse two he says, in
the day of my trouble I sought the Lord, my soul ran in the
night and cease not my soul refused to be comforted. That's why I've
called this section trouble with no relief because he couldn't
find comfort even though he cried and he knew the Lord heard him.
In verse three it says, I remembered God and was troubled. I complained
and my spirit was overwhelmed, Selah. So it wasn't a light thing. He was completely overwhelmed
by this trouble and we'll find that word overwhelmed ties in
well with some of the last verses in this psalm. And then in verse
four, he says, thou holdest mine eyes waking. I am so troubled
that I cannot speak. So that's, in the first part,
he's crying to the Lord, and he says the Lord heard his voice,
but in this last part here in verse four, he says he didn't
know what to say. He got so grieved by his trouble
that he was without words. And so that's why it seems like
this section can be described as trouble with no relief for
a man of God to say this. All right, the second section,
verse five and six, it says, in verse five, I have considered
the days of old, the years of ancient times. I call to remembrance
my song in the night. I commune with mine own heart
and my spirit may diligent search. So here, he's trying to find
relief, and how does he do that? Well, he recalls God's works
of old. And God's works have always been
of old, haven't they? Whatever God did, it's forever.
If God has done something in time, He determined to do it
before time. That's the principle revealed
to us in scripture. That makes sense to us. If God
knows all things, if He's eternal, then how could he have done something
at any point without knowing what he was going to do before
he did it? And since he is unchanging and eternal, then he would have
known everything that he's going to do before time began. And this is what the scripture
explicitly reveals. Known unto God are all his works
from eternity. That's what Acts 15, 18 says. From eternity God has known all
his works. But here he says he considered
the days of old, the years of ancient times, and I call to
remember it's my song in the night. I commune with my own
heart and my spirit made diligent search." So here he's trying
to find relief from all of his trouble. And the first thing
he does is he recalls God's works, God's ways, God's words, God's
promises, God's own nature. And this diligent search leads
him to the next section, which I've called God's nature reaffirmed
by impossible contradiction. That may seem like a complicated
way of saying it, but what he's gonna say here is what he means
when he said, I made diligent search. So if we read it in verse
seven through nine, we see it's a sequence of questions. He says,
will the Lord cast off forever? And will he be favorable no more? Is his mercy clean gone forever?
Does his promise fail forevermore? Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah. You see what
he's doing here? He's asking these very difficult
questions. And so you can see how low this
man's frame of mind has become, that he's asking questions that
would become doubts in the mind of our deepest, when we experience
our deepest trouble. So these doubts come from our
deepest trouble, and so he expresses them. And as I pointed out last
week, this psalm is the psalm of a man who is being very vulnerable. By that I mean he is exposing
himself by telling the truth about his feelings, about his
communications to the Lord, about what he knows. and yet he doesn't
hold back, and yet what he does by being so vulnerable is he
exposes himself to mockery, to accusation, to persecution, because
when you make known what you're really like, what you're really
feeling, then you're vulnerable. People could take advantage of
that. Now that they know you, they'll picket that and they'll
persecute you in a way that's most it hurts the most, doesn't it?
It would be like if, well, I won't give an example, but you know
what I mean. They'll hit you in your weakest
time, and that's exactly what happened to the Lord Jesus, remember?
It was when God was afflicting him that men afflicted him, and
Job experienced the same thing. When he was afflicted by God,
his friends afflicted him. And he was afflicted in so many
ways. So you can see that all these things teach us never,
never persecute the one whom God is afflicting. But the way
that he does this, the way he asks these questions here in
his vulnerability, is he's showing here, he's actually teaching
us something very important. Every question is a rhetorical
question. It doesn't have an answer to
it. At least he doesn't give the answer, but the answer is
implied. And so the answer that is implied is affirming the truth
that he questions. You see that? And so we can go
through those in a minute here. So that's the third section.
God's own nature is reaffirmed here by these impossible contradictions. Because if they were true, it
would contradict God's own nature, and that's impossible. So it
actually serves to support the truth. And it turns out men do
that in science. When they want to prove something,
they often prove it by showing that the negative of it is impossible,
so it has to be true. The fourth section here that
I see starts at verse 10 and goes through verse 15. Let's
read that too. He says, verse 10, I said, this
is my infirmity, but I will remember the years of the right hand of
the Most High. I will remember the works of
the Lord. Surely I will remember thy wonders of old. I will meditate
also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings. Thy way, O God,
is in the sanctuary. Who is so great a God as our
God? Thou art the God that doest wonders. Thou hast declared thy
strength among the people. Thou hast with thine arm redeemed
thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph, Selah." So this section
here, having admitted his weakness, that he is unable to get comfort
into his own soul here, he returns to more carefully consider God's
wonders for his people. And that's what he does in this
section here. He considers the revelation God has given of himself.
and he considers that God has made himself known in the sanctuary,
and also that God has declared his redemption of his own in
this section here. Thou hast redeemed thy people,
the sons of Jacob and Joseph, in the last verse, verse 15.
But then the last section here starts at verse 16, and this
is the section that I have, it seems to me that God has opened
these waters, these different waters, and beginning at verse
16 it says, the waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee, they
were afraid, the depths also were troubled. That's strange
language, isn't it? It goes on in verse 17, the clouds
poured out water, the skies sent out a sound, thine arrows also
went abroad, the voice of thy thunder was in the heaven, the
lightnings lightened the world, the earth trembled and shook.
All right, so you can see here, oh, one more, thy way is in the
sea, and thy path in the great waters, thy footsteps are not
known. So you can see in this section
here, verses 16 through 19, he's talking about these different
waters. There's the water of the sea, the depths, the clouds,
the water of the storm, the thunder, the lightnings, the earth trembling,
and then God's way is in the sea, he says in the last part,
his path is in the great waters. So there's all these waters here.
And we want to understand something about that. And then finally,
the conclusion of this psalm is in the last verse where it
says, thou leadest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses
and Aaron. At least that's the way I see
this psalm unfolding to us. Now I wanna go through this as
quickly as I can, verse by verse, so that we try to get the sense
here from the exposition of this, verse by verse. So let's go to
verse one. It says, I cried to God with
my voice, even unto God with my voice, and he gave ear to
me. So here he's referring to something
in the past, but he's describing it as if it's present also. He cried to God, with his voice,
God heard him, and so he knows that God is listening to him.
God heard him. This was his present confidence.
You see that? This was his present confidence
in his trouble. And this was also his future
expectation that God would still hear him, even though he hadn't
received the comfort yet of this. And this is the way that God
hears his people when they cry. It says in Psalm 27, verse 7,
Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, have mercy also upon
me and answer me. You see, God expects his people
to call upon him. And in fact, if you read lots
of places, but one place is more memorable to me than others is
Psalm 107, where in Psalm 107, God brings trouble and men then
cry. and then God delivers them when
they cry and then he concludes each of those sections of Psalm
107 by saying, oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,
for his marvelous works to the children of men. So this is God's
way with his people. He brings trouble because they
don't realize their great need. They call, he answers them, he
delivers them and then he tells them that they ought to thank
Him for that and praise Him for that. That's His way. So He says
in Psalm 27, hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, have mercy
also upon me and answer me. That's the desire when we pray.
We want God to hear us, don't we? We want to be heard by God.
It doesn't do any good in trouble, when we're in real trouble, if
only men, only people hear us. We need God to hear us. In fact,
it says in Romans chapter eight, if God be for us, who can be
against us? You see, the same thing holds
true. If God comforts us, then who can bring us into a lack
of comfort? If we have God's comfort, then
we're comforted. But if God withholds his comfort, then how can we
be comforted? You see, it really all depends
upon God. And this is something that is true in every aspect,
not only comfort, but our salvation. If God saves us, no one can take
us away. No one can destroy us. If God
doesn't save us, then we cannot be saved. And so you can apply
this in so many ways. If God teaches us, then we'll
learn. But if he doesn't teach us, it
doesn't matter what we do to try to learn. We cannot learn.
So God has to teach us. So we're utterly dependent upon
the Lord. That's why we cry to Him. We
recognize, by God's grace, we become convinced that the Lord
has to teach us. He has to save us. He has to
comfort us. He has to do everything for us.
He has to make us His children. We can't do any of those things,
can we? We can't know the Lord unless He reveals Himself to
us. All right, so then he also says in Psalm 106, he says, he
regarded their affliction when he heard their cry. So this is
teaching us also that God hears the cry of his people under their
affliction. He regards their affliction when
they cry to him. A lot of people are afflicted
and a lot of them complain about whatever they're going through.
But do they cry to the Lord? He says in Romans chapter 10,
whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And
so that's a promise, isn't it? And the Lord, of course, is the
Lord Jesus Christ. So he tells us this here in this
psalm. It's a lesson. a lesson right
in verse one that the Lord hears his people when they cry out
of their affliction and he's the one who brings that cry from
them, doesn't it? So we're encouraged by this first
verse to cry and to keep crying, to keep crying to the Lord and
that's a great comfort to us. Now in verse two, Let me get
to verse 2 here. He says in verse 2, So this man
obviously sought the Lord in the time of his trouble, didn't he? And
for the child of God, trouble is that chastisement from God
that brings us back to our senses, our spiritual senses. We are like sheep. We go astray
and we get out of the way and we can't get ourselves back.
Sheep don't know how to get themselves back to the shepherd. The shepherd
has to go after the sheep and that's what the Lord does. We
are only in our right mind when we are seeking the Lord. This
man was brought to his right mind because he says in the day
of his trouble he sought the Lord. We know the Lord is in
our trouble when, because of our trouble, we seek the Lord.
And if we're not seeking the Lord, it's because He hasn't
brought us by this chastisement to seek Him. It's a good thing
to be brought to this point. When you read this psalm, you
realize there's a blessing There's a blessing in the way that God
deals with his peoples. Of course, there's a blessing
in the way whatever God does, but there's a blessing in it,
even though it causes this man great discomfort of soul. And
when we talk about this man, we're not just talking about
a single person in history. We're talking about a man who
represents all of God's people. These things that he talks about
in the psalm are common. They're common to the Lord's
people. All of God's people at one time or another are going
to lack consolation and they're going to need this comfort and
they're not going to be able to produce it. They can't make
it happen. So the Lord is teaching us in the psalm that that's a
good thing. It's a good thing when God strips
us and brings us to the end of ourselves, even though it's unpleasant. No chastening for the moment
seems to be joyous but grievous. But afterward, it yields the
peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby."
That's from Hebrews chapter 12. So here, trouble was from God,
it was inside of him, and he sought the Lord, and this is
God's way, and he brought him to seek the Lord, and that put
him in his right mind. But in order for this trouble
to be beneficial to anyone, what has to be mixed with that trouble?
Faith, remember the children of Israel, they wandered in the
wilderness for 40 years, why? Because they didn't believe God.
And in Hebrews chapter four, he says, they fell in the wilderness
because they, let me read that to you. It's in Hebrews chapter
four, let me get to that so I don't misquote it. He says in Hebrews
4, let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering
into his rest, meaning that inheritance God has promised to us in Christ,
salvation, any of you should seem to come short of it. For
unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the
word preached meaning to them, did not profit them, not being
mixed with faith in them that heard. So what do we need then
in order for our troubles to be sanctified to us by God? Well, we need faith, faith in
Christ, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So trouble being mixed
with faith causes us to look to Christ and we look to Christ
even in the trouble. And that's what this psalm is
doing. This man is looking to the Lord, he's remembering, he's
calling to remembrance, and he realizes that the Lord has redeemed
him and redeemed his people. So that's what it does. Now, one of the things we learn
from this, too, is in the day of his trouble, he sought the
Lord. His sore ran in the night and ceased not. His soul refused
to be comforted. One of the things you see from
that is we can't make, we can't produce faith in ourselves. God
has to give it to us. We can't produce this thing.
If we could, this man wouldn't have had this agony of soul. He would have just said, oh,
what's wrong with you? Just believe. Believe God's word. But we can't,
can we? Faith has to be given to us,
and I think one of the most powerful texts of Scripture that proves
that faith is given to us by God, that we can't produce it,
is Ephesians chapter 2, where it says, when we were dead in
sins, we were quickened together, we were made alive. And we were,
because of his great mercy and his love for us, he loved us
when we were dead in sins. And then he goes on in Ephesians
two, in verse five, to say, by grace you're saved. So that's
proof, right? That we could not believe until
the Lord gave us that faith, he had to give us life. And how
could we produce what comes from the life of God in our souls?
We can't. We can't produce the life, we
can't produce the fruit. we're so pitifully helpless that
we're dependent upon the Lord for everything. Jesus said to
his disciples, without me you can do nothing. And the Apostle
Paul said, it's God who is at work in you to will and to do
of his good pleasure. So these things have to be given
to us by God's grace. Faith is God's produce. That's
why when the the father of the child who was oppressed by the
devil called on Jesus. He says, Lord, I believe. Help
my unbelief. You see, that's the prayer of
faith, isn't it? Ironically, the prayer of faith
says, I cannot do what I need to do in order to bring help
from God. I can't do it. The psalmist in
Psalm 119 says, I'm afflicted very much, quicken me, make me
alive, O Lord, according to thy word. That's another way of saying
faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And then
he says in Psalm 119 in verse 50, this is my comfort in my
affliction, for thy word hath quickened me, has given me life. You see, God's word has to enter.
The entrance of thy words giveth life and light. So it all has
to be from God. What we learn from this, man
is that the truth of God must be applied by God to us. He has to give us life. He has
to produce fruit. He has to apply his word to us. Now, what do we do then if we
know that the Lord has to do this? Do we go, oh, well, I guess
I can't do anything. I'm going to go about my life
and and just act presumptuously, and the Lord's gonna save me,
he's just gonna save me, I won't worry about it. No, that's the
opposite, isn't it? No, it causes us to trust him.
If he can give life even to dead sinners, then he can give life
to me. Like the blind man by the roadside, crying out to Jesus,
son of David, have mercy on me. They didn't say, oh, well, if
he's gonna heal us, he's just gonna heal us. No, they cried. And this is God's way. This is God's way. If we want
to know His ways, this is God's way. He causes us to cry out
of our affliction and He hears us. What a blessing that is.
God's people are afflicted and yet He hears them. All right,
so even though he was in trouble, though he sought the Lord in
that trouble, and though he found no relief, he continued, he was
compelled by this God-given faith to continue to seek the Lord.
And he sought Him in prayer, and he prayed to the Lord. And
no one else may hear us, but the Lord will. And so let's open
our hearts and tell him everything. And ask him to search us and
to look for our need, to understand our need. He knows it. And to
meet our needs because we often can't express them. All right,
in verse three he says, I remembered God and was troubled, I complained
and my spirit was overwhelmed. You see, although he remembered
and thought on God, his trouble and his grief remained with him.
And that's something, that's a little sobering, isn't it?
He knew, he believed, he prayed, and yet he was not comforted.
And so what did he do? Did he say, well, I've had enough
of this, I'm gonna go serve some other God? No, he just kept praying. He was importunate. That means
you, persistence to the point of annoying, that's what importunate
means. And God is never annoyed, but
we are, and so we understand what it means. And that's what
we looked at last week with that widow woman who pleaded to the
judge in Luke 18. All right, so although he thought
on the Lord, his distress of mind was not removed. Perhaps
he thought that God was angry with him, maybe. That's often
the case with believers. We think wrong things in our
doubts. Or perhaps he thought the great
contrast between his present trouble compared to his past
song, he thought of that and it caused him greater grief.
He thought, well, things used to be well, what happened? Where
did I go astray? I missed the boat. I've gone
the wrong way, and I'm out here in the weeds. My soul is troubled. What do I do? So I think that what caused him
trouble, what caused him to be troubled as he remembered the
Lord, was not that his memory of God troubled him, because
his memory of the Lord had good memories, but that in his trouble,
comfort didn't come to him. And that's, I think, what troubled
him. What troubled him the most is, as I said before, if God
is for us, who can be against us? But if God doesn't comfort
us, who can? God is the God of all comfort.
He's the Father of mercy. He's the God of all comfort.
And it's a trial that's very heavy to bear, isn't it? Now,
I want to draw attention to a couple of scriptures. Remember in 2
Corinthians chapter 12, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, the apostle Paul
had some kind of an infirmity in his flesh. I have no idea
what it was. But whatever it was, he asked
the Lord three times that the Lord would take it away from
him. And God told him, my grace is sufficient for you. He said,
for my strength, notice, is made perfect in weakness. That, I
didn't want to be weak. I want to be strong. I don't
like being weak. It doesn't feel good to be weak,
either emotionally or physically, especially spiritually. You just
you can't do something when you're weak. You just don't have the
ability to do stuff. And so what do you do? Well,
I'm just a completely dependent blob. You feel that way? That's perfect weakness. So he
says, my strength is made perfect in weakness. And Paul said, most
gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that
the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure
in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake. Distress means when you don't
know what to do. For when I am weak, then am I
strong, because Christ is all my strength, and if Christ is
all my strength, the Lord is my strength. So there's another
place in scripture where this man's experience is laid out,
and that's in 1 Peter 1. And let me read that to you also. In 1 Peter 1, it's a huge encouragement. And Peter, the apostle, recalls
to the minds of the saints in 1 Peter 1, he recalls to their
memory that God elected them, that Christ redeemed them by
his blood, that that God the Holy Spirit sprinkled the blood
of Christ on their conscience, He applied Christ's blood to
them, and that they have an eternal and an incorruptible inheritance
that's reserved for them in heaven, and in all these things in their
present life they're kept by the power of God to salvation
that is ready to be revealed for the last time, and yet Peter
says, now, for a season, you are in heaviness through manifold
temptations. So that sounds like this psalm.
So that's why I'll read this to you. In 1 Peter 1, verse 2,
he says, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father
through sanctification of the Spirit. That means the Spirit
of God sanctified you unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ, the way he set them apart and made them holy
is the applied Christ-redeeming blood to their conscience. Grace
to you and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy
has begotten us again, he birthed us, unto a lively hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our hope is Christ,
and his resurrection from the dead is our confidence, our assurance
that God has justified us by his blood. Verse four, to an
inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that fadeth not away,
reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God,
not by your own strength, but by the power of God, through
faith, because God works through this means he's appointed, which
is faith in Christ, it's not from us, he gives it to us, and
it's not faith in ourselves, it's not faith in our faith,
it's faith in Christ. unto salvation, ready to be revealed
in the last time, wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for
a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold
temptations. And here's why, that the trial,
this is God's purpose, that the trial of your faith, being much
more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried
with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at
the appearing of Jesus Christ. So you can, and I can keep going
there, but the point is, is that it parallels what the psalmist
in Psalm 77 is talking about. He wanted comfort. He knew that
this was God's way of dealing with people, and his people,
but he couldn't bring that comfort. And Peter says the reason for
this is so that the trial of our faith, which is more precious
than gold, will be unto the praise and glory of Christ at his appearing.
All right, now back in Psalm 77, verse four, it says, Thou
holdest my eyes waking, I am so troubled, I cannot speak. So he obviously spent the entire
night sleepless. God kept him awake. He was too
troubled to speak. And so our trouble also brings
us too much grief, and we don't know what to say. But by God's
grace, his own spirit makes intercession for us, as he said in Romans
8, 26 through 27. All right, going on in Psalm
77. Since I want to get a little bit further, I'm going to skip
verse 5. I think I might have talked about
that last time. Let's go on. You can read the
notes on verse 5 and verse 6. I want to get first to verse
7 through 9, because that seems like a difficult section. He
says in verse 7, Will the Lord cast off forever? Will he be
favorable no more? And all these other questions
he raises. As I said before, these are questions
that come to the mind, at least concerning ourselves, because
we always take it personally, don't we? I do. I always take
it personally. I know that God can save, but
I don't know if he saved me. Or I know that the Lord can do
anything, but I don't know if he would do anything for me. I mean, it's a reasonable question,
isn't it? But these doubts cause us to
ask questions that are not reasonable. And so this is meant not to shake
our faith, but to encourage us and to solidify, to give us assurance. So he asks the questions this
way in order to contradict these impossibilities. And what it
teaches us here is that God's own nature, God's nature, His
name, His character, who He is as God, is staked. All of our
salvation depends on God Himself, because these things are questions
about God. And if these things are true, if it's true that God
would cast off His people, or He wouldn't be favorable to them,
if that's the way God is, then we have no hope. We can't save
ourselves, and God's not going to save us. But if they're false,
then our salvation does depend on the Lord, on His character,
His nature. And it is His name that is at
stake, His reputation, His person, His Godhead, so that He has made
Himself so, pledged Himself so much to His people's salvation
and to them, that if their salvation fails, then He fails to be God.
And that blows our minds, doesn't it? And I wouldn't know this
if Hebrews chapter six hadn't revealed it to us, but this is
the fact. So let me go through these questions. Will the Lord
cast off forever? No. In Psalm 94 verse 14, it
says, for the Lord will not cast off his people, neither will
he forsake his inheritance. So he's not gonna do that, will
he? And in Romans chapter 11, the apostle Paul says, has God
cast away his people? And the answer comes back, no,
no. God has not cast away his people,
which he foreknew. Those he knew and loved before,
he knows and he loves to the very end. So that's the first
question. The second question is, is his
mercy clean gone forever? Does his promise fail forevermore? Of course, the answer again is
no. Psalm 136 has 26 verses, and in every verse, the last
part of the verse says, his mercy endureth forever. 26 times. It's affirmed that God's mercy
endures forever. So no, God's mercy is not clean
gone forever. No, his promises don't fail because
if God's promises fail, God said he himself fails to be God. He
can't fail to be God. He can't lie. And the next one
is in verse 9, has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger
shut up His tender mercies? Again, no. No, God hasn't shut
up His tender mercies in anger. It was the blood of Christ that
removed His anger. He says in Psalm 85 that He Himself
has removed His wrath from us. That's amazing. If God removed
his wrath and then is angry again, what does that say? It means
that God changes, that he becomes what he, he takes back on what
he removed, and that doesn't make any sense. It's impossible.
So this is the way, by the way, that Moses prayed to the Lord
when he prayed to him, remember? He prayed, he pleaded God's cause. He pleaded God's cause, his name.
And so then in verse 10 of Psalm 77, he says this, and I said,
this is my infirmity. This is my infirmity. It's my
weakness that causes me to ask these questions. In his affliction,
he questioned whether God could cease from who he was, from what
he was in his very nature. And of course, the answer came
back, it's impossible. Therefore, no, the answer is
always no. So I'm amazed, when you think
about it, how honest this man was, wasn't he? Very, very honest. And it teaches us to be honest
before God in our heart. When we pray to the Lord, don't
hold back. That's what this is teaching
us. Because the Lord knows, doesn't He? And we need to know that
He knows. And so we need to confess what
we are and who we are and what we've done and not hold back.
And then we find such comfort in knowing that the blood of
Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. All right, in
verse 11, now I want to go on to verse 11. It says, I will
remember the works of the Lord. Surely I will remember thy wonders
of old. Now, of old means from everlasting,
doesn't it? It means God's wonders from the
beginning. And since we're talking about
the beginning, then going back to the beginning, you might ask,
why did God create the world? And the answer to all these questions
ultimately comes down to this, for the sake of his son. He wanted
to glorify his son. And the way he determined to
do that was that his son would glorify his father, by saving
his people, and in their salvation, would make known all of God's
perfections, all of his wisdom, especially his grace, that he
would stoop, he who was so high would stoop so low. I was thinking
about that this week. I was talking to Brother Art
after the sermon on Sunday, and we were talking about how the
Lord Jesus Christ stooped to wash the disciples' feet. And
this is the Lord of glory, right? The Lord of glory, the master,
stooped to wash the feet of his disciples. But as we thought
about that, we saw, you know, I was thinking about this, when
I realized my sin against God, you know what, it makes me feel
ashamed and humbled. And how ironic it is that we,
as people, would feel humbled before the Lord of Glory because
of our sin against Him." That's not very much humility, is it?
I mean, you got to admit, it's the truth, but is it real humility?
Real humility is, you know, ours is that we sinned against God
and it made us feel humble and shame before Him, the Lord of
Glory. the one against whom we've sinned.
But the Lord of glory, who had no sin, humbled himself before
sinners in order to save them from their sins. Now that's humility,
and that's meekness that you can't comprehend, isn't it? And
so that's what this man is doing here. I remember thy works of
old, surely I will remember thy wonders of old. God knows all
his works and they're all designed to magnify his son, to magnify
him in our salvation, to magnify all of his characteristics, his
perfections, and he does that in magnifying his grace to sinners.
What a stoop, what glory this brings to God. In verse 12, he
says, I will meditate also of all thy work, talk of all thy
doings. That's where God's comfort comes
from. It's from meditating on what the Lord has done. And when
we meditate on what the Lord has done, we're gonna talk about
it, aren't we? This is something that it says in Malachi chapter
three, those who knew the Lord, who thought on him, they spoke
one to another often of him. And a book of remembrance, you
can see him as the king. He said, you there, go call over
the scribe, write down this in a book. Write this down, that
these spoke often of me. when they thought on me. And
so a book of remembrance was written. And so this is a very
precious text of scripture in Malachi chapter three. And that's
what this man is doing here. May God give us grace also to
see his glory in Christ and talk about it. to one another. In
verse 13, he says, Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary. Who is so
great a God as our God? Now, there's a text of scripture
in Jeremiah 17 and verse 12. Jeremiah 17, 12, it says... I was going to quote it to you,
but I forgot the words. 17, verse 12, he says this, A glorious high throne from the
beginning is the place of our sanctuary. You see that? Where's
our sanctuary? Well, it's a glorious high throne.
How long has it been there? From the beginning. Who sits
on it? The Lord Jesus. Why? Because he purged our sins.
Who helped him? No one. He did it by himself.
That's why he's sitting there. And all of his majesty on the
throne, and this is our sanctuary. Here he says, thy way, O God,
is in the sanctuary. Who is so great a God as our
God? The Lord Jesus Christ, who purged
our sins, sits on heaven's throne, and he is our sanctuary. The throne of God, our sanctuary.
The Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whom we dwell, and who dwells
in his people, is our very sanctuary. I wanna go on. in Psalm 77. We talked about redemption, I
think, last time. We certainly have talked about it in at church a couple of Sundays
ago. But I want to go to verse 16
now, so we can get to this part. He says in verse 16, the waters
saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee. They were afraid. The depths
also were troubled. And other verses like this are
spoken of here. Hold on. I'm trying to bring up my notes
is what I'm doing here. So, There's several ways to understand
the words waters here. Notice he says, the waters saw
thee, O God, the waters saw thee. Now in scripture, waters are
used in many different ways. If you remember in the beginning,
what was it? The spirit of God, before there
was any form, to creation. God created it, but it had no
form. When he made it, it was still
void, darkness, empty, nothing, just water, he said. He called
it water, but that's what it was called, this unformed mass. And it says, the Spirit of God
brooded or moved upon the face of the waters. And so that's
one way that waters is used in creation. And God, remember,
he separated the waters which were above from the waters which
were under the firmament. And then there was waters in
the flood of Noah, remember? Flood of Noah. And then there
were the waters of the Red Sea where God brought Israel through
the Red Sea and drowned the Egyptians. There were the waters of Jordan.
God brought Israel across the river of Jordan. The water of
Jordan piled up on one side and they walked through and it was
dry. And there's other things where water is used in scripture.
There's the water of life. We drink water and it's called
living water spiritually when we believe on Christ. So there's
the water of life. There's the fountain of water
that's open for cleansing. So there's water for cleansing.
There's all kinds of water in scripture. But in this particular
case, it says, the water saw thee, O God, the water saw thee,
and they were afraid. The depths also were troubled.
So there's something about water that you all are very familiar
with. One thing about water is you can cut it with a knife.
It doesn't cut, does it? You can throw something heavy
into it and it just absorbs it. It doesn't divide, does it? But
when God opened the Red Sea for Israel to pass through, what
happened? The waters divided. Now that's a miracle. It was
an undeniable miracle, wasn't it? The Egyptians knew this is
a miracle. The Israelites knew this is a
miracle. The Canaanites heard about it. They said, that's a
miracle. The people of Jericho and the Philistines, they said,
that's a miracle. And you can read about that in
several places in the Old Testament. In Exodus 15, for example, it
says, those people of Edom and Philistia, they're going to tremble
when they hear what God has done for us. It was a miracle. God
divided the water. And it's like it was in the days
of Noah in the flood. Remember, God destroyed every
living thing under heaven that had the breath of life. Everything
died except those in the ark. that would be Noah and his family.
So a miracle happened. The flood that destroyed everything
actually was proved to be salvation to Noah and his family because
they were in the ark. The Red Sea, which was a barrier
to Israel, was opened up and divided, and they walked through
on dry ground, and they looked at the water on either side.
It was like these walls of water. Amazing. But when the Egyptians
tried to pass through, they all died. They were drowned. And
the same thing with Jordan. They walked right through. And
the people of Jericho, they heard about that. They saw that. They
said, we are in trouble. There's no way we can escape.
That's why Rachel, not Rachel, Rahab, in Hebrews 11, Rahab was
a woman of faith. And she asked the spies to spare
her and her family. And she was spared because she
believed God. So the waters in those cases
were waters of judgment. The water of judgment from God
destroyed the world in the days of Noah. The water of judgment
on the Red Sea destroyed the Egyptians and yet it was the
salvation of Israel. In both cases there was a judgment
against the ungodly and there was a salvation of God's people.
And what you see that even in the waters of judgment God uses
the water in a way that it doesn't serve its natural purpose, but
it serves God's saving purpose in a supernatural way. And to
me, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. That's why
he talks in the psalm about his wonders of old. because God is
taking things that don't naturally serve. You wouldn't think that
they would serve his saving purpose, and yet he makes them do just
that. So that the purpose of God in those judgments is actually
to serve his purpose in the salvation of his people, and of course,
to bring that same judgment for the destruction of his enemies.
And that's amazing, isn't it? And if you think about that,
I think that these verses make sense then. He says, the waters
saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee, they were afraid, the depths
also were troubled. Because everything serves God. Whether it be the waters of people,
the waters of the ungodly, as it says in Psalm 18, he says,
the floods of ungodly men, or be the waters that Satan tried
to pour out to oppose Christ and his people in Revelation
12, all these waters, they saw the Lord, and it says, and they
were afraid, and the depths, the deepest part, where no man
can see, God troubled those waters in order to deliver his people.
And so the psalmist here in this psalm who has no comfort, he
can't bring it to his own soul, he remembers these things. He
calls on us to consider God's saving works of old, how he repurposed,
if you will, the natural physics of things in order to serve his
saving purpose by his almighty command to deliver his people
from their enemies, and with that same thing that would not
normally be used to save them, to bring destruction on the others.
So Noah in the ark, he's saved. Israel in the Red Sea, walk through
on dry ground. Jordan backs up, and they walk
right through it. Jesus in the boat with his 12
disciples, he tells the raging of the sea, shh, be still. And
it was calm as glass. I love to think about that, because
this is teaching us how Christ calms the storm, and because
Christ stood in the place of poor sinners, there's a rainbow
now, above the throne of God because God is at peace in all,
peace and blessings and grace are given to his people because
of Christ. That's what this is talking about
here. Let's read it. He says, the water saw thee, O God, the
water saw thee. They were afraid. The depths
were troubled. The clouds poured out water.
The skies sent out a sound. Think of that as the proclamation
of the glad tidings of the gospel from heaven. Thine arrows, like
lightning, Also, when abroad, lightning is swift, lightning
is powerful, and so this is like the arrows. The voice of thy
thunder was in the heaven, the lightnings lighted the earth,
the earth trembled and shook. Thy way is in the sea, and thy
path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.
You see, in all these things, God's ways of saving his people
are revealed to us through the gospel in Christ, and that's
the only way we know them. And the last verse tells us that
the Lord is our shepherd. He says, Thou leadest thy people
like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron, and both these men
typify the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses, the meekest man on earth,
Christ, meek and lowly of heart. Moses, interceding for a sinful
people, Christ, interceding for his people. Moses revealing as
a prophet that God's prophet would be the Lord Jesus Christ
and Christ fulfilling that in his own ministry. Aaron the high
priest God chose, Christ the high priest God chose from the
beginning. And Aaron who made atonement
on the day of atonement, Christ who made atonement when he offered
himself to God. All these things is what the
Lord our shepherd has done for us. He said, I lay down my life
for the sheep. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for this psalm. It's a much needed psalm for
weary sinners who find no comfort in their hour of trouble. But
we find all comfort in your person and in your work. You are faithful. You will not cast away your people.
You will be merciful to them forevermore. And nothing can
be brought against them. And even though they may not
experience the comfort that they seek so desperately, they know
that because you are our comfort, you are our comfort in Christ,
that you've comforted us in him, that nothing can separate us
from your love, and we thank you for this psalm. We pray,
Lord, you'd help us to understand it. For the glory of your name,
in Jesus' name we pray, amen.