Sermon: How Long, O God

If you take a copy of God's word this evening, and we're continuing through the Book of Psalms, and this evening, last week, Elder Pat Quinn did Psalm 73. This evening we'll do Psalm 74, so if you want to turn there, you can turn right there, 486 in the pew Bible. 486 in the pew Bible. And this evening, Psalm 74.

And let's pray for God's blessing upon His word this evening.

Father, we do pray that You would feed us with the truth of Your word this evening. We are hungry for righteousness, but we don't quite know how hungry we should be, so we pray that You would meet our every need spiritually this evening, that You would feed hungry souls as You fed Elijah by the brook, and that there would be good gifts dispensed from Your hand to Your people tonight. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Psalm 74.

"O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where You have dwelt. 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.

They were like those who swing axes in a forest of trees, and 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. We do not see our signs. There is no longer any prophet, and there's none among

us who knows how long. How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them. Yet, God, my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might. You broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan. You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

You split open springs and brooks. You dried up ever-flowing streams. Yours is the day. Yours also the night. You have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth. You have made summer and winter. Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs, and the foolish people reviles Your name. Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beasts. Do not forget the life of your poor forever.

Have regard for the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence. Let not the downtrodden turn back in shame. Let the poor and needy praise Your name. Arise, O God. Defend Your cause. Remember how the foolish scoff at You all the day. Do not forget the clamor of Your foes, the uproar of those who rise against You, which goes up continually. Well, the grass withers, and the flower fades.

The Word of God is forever." Thanks be to God. Amen.

Well, this evening, we are looking at the psalm. It cries out with a refrain that you often hear in the scriptures, you have often heard in church history, and many of us have heard in our own hearts and in our own lives. How long, O Lord? What do you do when life seems dark and God seems to be silent? What do you do? We're going to look at the psalm this evening, which I think gives a answer to that question under four points, verses one through eight, lament in

life. And it breaks down verses 9 through 11, the sound of silence, and verses 12 through 17, salvation at hand, and then verses 18 through 23, supplication until dawn. So first, lament in life there in verses one through eight. Psalm 74 is a community lament. Asaph, the psalmist here, comes right out of the box at the beginning of this psalm with grief. "O God, why do you cast us off forever?" It feels as though God has abandoned His people.

And they are His people. Asaph calls Israel in verse one, "The sheep of your pasture." In verse two, they are, "Your congregation, which You have purchased of old, which You have redeemed." They are the people, he says, "of Mount Zion, where you have dwelt. We belong to you, O God." However, though they're God's people, though they've been purchased by Him, though they have been redeemed by Him, of greatest concern is that

in their midst, he has watched, Asaph, as the temple has been destroyed. Verse three, "The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary." He's referring to the destruction of Jerusalem that happened in 586 or 587 BC, depending on who you trust, when King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians came down upon Israel and will take it over and will burn the temple to the ground, and they will carry off Israelites into exile and destroy

Israel as it's known as a nation. Verse four, "Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place." The meeting place of the sovereign God of heaven and earth, where He had chosen to meet with His people, where He would gather with them and they with Him, a holy sanctuary set apart to be undefiled, where praise was to be lifted up to the heavens, destroyed. Verses five through eight, we read that they took their axes, they took their

hatchets, they took their hammers to the temple. They set it on fire. They brought it down to the ground. Asaph erupts in verse seven with, "They profaned the dwelling place of your name." It is a great cry. But it's more than a cry. It's got grief all over it, sorrow all over it. It's lament.

Biblical lament is unique. It's not simply emoting, just in a pool of sorrow, "I'm so sad." Lament is informed by the fact that God is a covenant-making God and a covenant-keeping God. There's an expectation that this God, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, is a God who not only hears our cries but acts

Lament has a long history among God's people, the patriarchs. When you read through the opening books of the Bible, they will lament. The Psalms, of course, are the greatest example of lament in the scriptures. Fully one-third of the Psalms are lamentations. Noticeable ones, Psalm 13, Psalm 42, Psalm 49, Psalm 79, Psalm 88, are examples. The entire Book of Lamentations is one long lament. Jesus will lament and have lament upon his lips when he hangs upon the cross.

Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" God's people lament.

We simply think about the Psalms, the songs of God's people. It's striking, seems to me, that fully a third of them are lament. It's in lament that voice is given to the anguish of the soul by believing people. It's only something believing people can do. And it's fascinating, isn't it? A third of the entire Psalter is lament.

We don't know how to lament today. Most of our songs have not a touch of lament in them. John and I often talk about this and try and insert some songs of lament here and there in our worship services because it is so foreign. It gives voice, crying out with honest, heartfelt pain to our God. But lament doesn't stop with mere crying out. It's not a wallowing in grief. It's not, as I said, an emotive pool of sorrow. It gives expression to grief by pleading to God, but pleading to God with an

expectation that God will hear and that He will work, and therefore it almost always ends with praise to this covenant-keeping God.

And notice Asaph's language. He's recalling God's covenantal relationship with His people. "They are a sheep of your pasture, your congregation you have purchased of old. You have redeemed." He goes so far as to say in verse two that God's people are the tribe of your heritage. That is, they're your inheritance. Isn't that striking? We're His inheritance. Not just He is our inheritance, we're His. We're what He longs for.

What He desires to have.

What He delights in. Zephaniah speaks about this in chapter three, God being in our midst and, quote, "He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will sing over you with joy." Jesus will pray in that longest recorded prayer in John 17, "Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am." We're His inheritance. Paul says in Ephesians 1:23 that the Church is, quote, "the fullness of him who fills all in all."

Yes, the Church is filled with Christ, but the Church is also Christ's fullness.

Christ, as the Son of God, is full and complete, and He needed nothing. He's the very essence, He's the very fullness of God, but as our mediator, in His role as our covenant head, who came to redeem a people for Himself, for the glory of His Father, His full glory is displayed when His people are gathered together before Him, united in Him to His praise.

So Calvin will go so far as to say, Calvin, "This is the highest honor of the Church, that until He is united to us, the Son of God reckons Himself in some measure imperfect." And that should set off alarm bells in your head.

Not imperfect because He's lacking, but because He chose to ordain it as such by entering into covenant with us in His mediatorial office without compromising His aseity, His completeness, His deity, His fullness. God in the person of His Son longs for His inheritance and is actually filled up by us, you and I, His inheritance.

Spurgeon commenting upon this said, "A fact full of comfort." A fact full of comfort. His valuing of us, His dominion over us, His connection with us are so many lights to cheer our darkness. No man will willingly lose his inheritance, and no prince will relinquish his dominions. Therefore, we believe that the King of Kings will hold His own. And so Asaph, taking all of this into account, he pleads, knowing that God looks upon him and looks upon the nation as His very inheritance.

These are a people whom He loves with an everlasting love.

Love like nothing you can calculate. Love, when Paul is trying to calculate it there in Ephesians, he will say it's a love that knows no height and no depth and no breadth and no length, that you can't get your arms around this love. And so Asaph knows he's on good ground to plead with God for help.

And so are you, if you're in Christ. You're on good ground to plead in your lament to God.

You're always on good ground to plead His love to be your help. But our second point, the sound of silence in verses nine through 11. Asaph asks, "How long, O God?" There's no prophet left, he says in verse nine. That is, no one knows how long this is going to last. How long will this darkness fill the land? How long will there be this suffering and this oppression? But there's no reply from this God that he is lamenting to and that he's

pleading with. Silence simply fills the void.

And this is one of the most difficult portions of this life. One thinks about 400 years of silence from Malachi, the last prophet, until you have John the Baptist come upon the scene. How many people cried out? How many of God's people cried out for 400 years and only got silence?

But it's not for nothing. We wait upon the Lord, and often that's the call, to wait. I referenced it this morning, who I've been thinking about lately, but I've often thought about Job's friends in this way. How much better it would've been if they had just simply sat there waiting upon the Lord with him.

Like his friends, we often want to fix something, we want to explain something, we want to remedy something, we want to calculate our way out of something or to help somebody with, when waiting upon the Lord is the real discipline.

It's interesting that when things are especially dark, often it's just sitting with friends in silence in Christ, waiting upon Christ, praying with them and waiting that is the need of the moment. It takes the Lord for light to come in this severity of darkness. In the early years of pastoring, when I would walk into severe kind of crisis situations, I talked a lot more than I do now.

It's a lot more now of coming in and sitting in ministry presence and praying silently and waiting. We wait upon the Lord. This is a refrain throughout the scripture, like a watchman upon the wall, we wait upon the Lord. When will that darkness break? You say it's just a matter of time, but the silence is not indifference, so we wait and we wait with hope. How? How do we have such hope? Well, we look back and we shore up our confidence that deliverance has been

secured, and that's our third point, salvation at hand in verses 12 through 17. Salvation at hand. Asaph pivots. He's pled with God. He's only gotten silence. The people of God have only gotten silence in response. He's in the dark, silence engulfs him, and then he pivots, verse 12. "Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth." He knows it. How does he know it? Because he recalls who God is

based upon the evidence of what God has done. Seven times he addresses God with the emphatic personal pronoun at the very beginning, you. It's all built upon verse 12, that our King from of old is working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might. You broke the heads of the sea monsters. You crushed the head of Leviathan. You gave him as food. You split open the springs and the brooks. You dried up ever-flowing streams. You established the heavenly lights.

You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth. There may not be visible signs in the moment,

but we have a testimony. Asaph has the testimony of God's covenant faithfulness throughout the ages.

And that's where the weary pilgrim engulfed in darkness turns. We look back

at his past faithfulness,

and that gives us comfort in the present, and it gives us true hope. Not this pollyannaish hope, but true hope for tomorrow.

As much as Asaph is reminding God of his covenant faithfulness, he's surely reassuring his own heart, you. But in essence, what his heart is hearing, my God. That's who he is. That's what he's done.

There's so much comfort and real hope that fixes itself upon our hearts when we remember what God has done and how it shows us who he is. This one who does not change, who's the same yesterday, today, and forever, a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God.

But you'll notice Asaph doesn't simply rest on his hands with this knowledge and comfort. He falls to his knees and he prays. Our final point, supplication until dawn.

In verses 18 and following, in these closing verses, you have this pleading prayer in light of who God is and what he's done. That's the right response. We too seldom plead. Maybe we don't know how to plead. I don't think many of us do this very often. I haven't heard a lot of pleading prayers. But I want you to notice, notice how Asaph pleads. Verse 18, "Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs and a foolish people reviles

your name." He pleads with God that the great offense is the reviling of God's name. God's glory is being attacked by God's people being attacked. That's good ground for pleading.

When we see the persecution of the church, or we see the destruction of the places of worship of the church, or we see the suffering of Christians in the land, that suffering is only secondary. The name is being reviled. And there is that suffering and there is that destruction and there is that persecution because the name is being reviled. The name above all names, the name that every knee shall bow before and every

tongue confess, that name is being dragged through the mud, and so therefore, the people of God are being dragged through the mud with it. If they hated me, they shall also hate you.

This name that is the saving name of the world, the covenant name, Yahweh, the Lord, Jesus.

As Christopher Ash said, he said, "What ought to grieve us most deeply is not our natural sadness that our churches are weak, but the dishonor that is brought to God's name," that name that is above all others. And from that ground, Asaph reminds God of the fragility of his people. Your name, he says it multiple times, your name, O God, is being abused. Verse 19, "They are your people, doves among the wild beasts, people marked with your name."

He recalls the covenant again in verse 20, "These are your people." And so he again calls on God, "Arise, O God, defend your cause. Do not forget the clamor of your foes. These people, O God, rise against you." How can he say that? Because the cause of his people, the foes of his people, those who rise against his people, do so against him. The covenant-making, covenant-keeping God has bound himself to his people.

United. Christ will say, "You are in me, and I am in you."

And so we plead with him as we lament, your name. It's your cause. It's your covenant, my God. Come to our rescue.

Because that would speak well of you.

We have a God who upholds his covenant and therefore rescues his covenant people.

How long, O God?

My God, why have you forsaken me?

He cried that out upon the cross.

Silence has never been neglect or indifference, and it's surely never been hatred. He hears the cries of his people to the point of sacrificing his Son. The Son hears the cries of his people to the point of giving himself up. The Father and Son so hear the cry of the people that they send not just help, but the Helper into the world to take up residence in you.

Let me give you a few closing applications. One, crying out to God is right, it's holy, and it should be part of our living as Christians in this fallen world. Lament has a right place in yours and my life.

We should grieve, and we should take that grief to him and expect that he works, because he does.

Second, we plead with God as part of that lament. And that should be our practice as well. We plead who God is and the promises he has made. That means, as even Benjamin encouraged you this evening, you have to memorize some of the word

so that it informs your prayer, so that you can plead these promises to God. It's right to come before him and not just say, "Oh, Lord, would you help me?" But to remind him as the scriptures constantly do, putting those covenant promises before him, not as if he forgot, but because as we plead the promises of God, we're pleading the very will of God. And so you can say to God, "Oh God, you said a bruised reed you will not break, a

smoldering flame you will not extinguish. Oh God, do you not understand I am a bruised reed? And remember, oh Lord, do not break me right now. Would you remember your promise? Lord Jesus, you said 'Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.' Lord Jesus, I am coming. I am so weary. The darkness doesn't seem to stop. I am so tired. You promised that you would give rest for the sake and the glory of your name and

your truthfulness according to your promise. Would you give me rest?" You plead. You plead the promises of God.

Third, you look back to gain confidence in the present and hope for tomorrow.

That temple being destroyed in 586 BC was the meeting place of God with men, but it was just a shadow of the temple that was to come,

the true meeting place of God with men, where God became flesh,

and the one who said, "This temple shall be destroyed and in three days it will be raised again."

We live on this side of the death and the resurrection of the second person of the triune Godhead who became flesh, the one who promised to come, the one who came, and he promises to come again, and he promises that he will not lose one of us. And so we look back with great confidence,

and that informs us in the present, and it gives us real hope for tomorrow.

His cry upon the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The greatest lament ever uttered. It received true silence so that you never do. He was truly forsaken so that you never will be.

That is the great silence of history upon the cross.

We're not forsaken. You have that by covenant promise, and it's sealed with the blood of the Son of God. Finally, treasure this name. What a name, Jesus.

A name that will receive all glory, that angels and glorified men will have upon their lips for all of eternity. The name that is worthy weeping over when it is fouled and rejoicing over when it is proclaimed. When the church is suffering persecution today for the sake of this name, where houses of worship are burned for this name, where brothers and sisters are lined up against a wall, a firing squad for this name.

That's what should bring tears to our eyes.

We weep, we lament, we plead with God, and where the church is growing and this name is being celebrated, we rejoice and we praise God. This is the name that is above all names.

Not like we often live, where my name, or your name, or Michigan State University, or Republican, or Democrat, or America, or the Lansing Lugnuts is the most important name. And you chuckle at Lansing Lugnuts, but all those names are infinitely common compared to that name. You live for that name.

It's the name you want to be marked with now and for all of eternity. How long, oh Lord, until this one with this name, Jesus, returns upon the clouds with the angels and the archangels and the trumpets blow? This name. And the silence and cries of how long will end, and they'll be cast into the pit of darkness with all of darkness itself and all the enemies that are attached to it, and he will be the light, we are told, of

the new heavens and the new earth, and he will make his home among us forever. And there will never be that question any longer, how long, oh Lord?

We just get to dwell with him forever in light.

No longer in need of mediation, but simply home with our covenant-making, covenant-keeping God of love, dwelling in his midst, and he dwelling in our midst forever. That's the promise. That's the hope. And it's absolutely guaranteed for those that are in Christ. Let's pray.

Our Father, we do come before you tonight with

different miseries, different afflictions to think about this morning's text, different losses thinking about this evening's text, that are upon our hearts and our minds, and we say how long, oh Lord?

How long until the return of your Son and all things are set right? We look with the eyes of faith and we say that we with confidence sit and stand here this evening, knowing that you are a covenant-making, covenant-keeping, covenant-loving God.

And so we will not despair though we are in this world, for we know one who sits enthroned over it. And we look forward to when every knee shall bow before that name and every tongue confess that name, and we shall hear angelic choirs singing to that name. And would you just keep us steadfast until that day, and would you remember us, oh Lord, in the midst of this broken, fallen world, in the midst of this misery, would

you remember us, your covenant people? And would you sustain us and help us until that day as you have promised. You said you would never leave us nor forsake us. And so do not leave us, oh Lord, do not forsake us. And we pray all this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.