Psalm 74
This is Psalm 74. This is a mask
of Asaph. And this is probably not the
Asaph we talked about last week, who was one of David’s musicians.
This would be an Asaph a couple centuries later. We’ll explain
more of that. But this is a mask of Asaph.
And he says, oh 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. 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. We do not see our signs. There
is no longer any prophet, and there is 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 a foolish people reviles your name. Do not deliver
the soul of your dove to the wild beast. 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, oh God, and defend your cause. Remember how
the foolish scoff at you all the day. Do not forget the clamor
of your foes and the uproar of those who rise up against you,
which goes up continually. Amen. This is God’s word. I have
a news app on my phone for one of the local news agencies, and
periodically I’ll get these pop-ups that there was a fire or a wreck
or some sort of event in the Piedmont Triad area. And on occasion,
there will be an ad or a newsflash that pops up that says, church
vandalized, church on fire, sanctuary destroyed. And so you take interest,
you’re a Christian, you’re a member of the church, you know how you
would feel if something happened to your church building. And
so you read and you look at the news and you see that arson set
a fire on a local congregation’s meeting place. And in the days
and weeks to come, you read of the story, they’ve caught someone,
there’s motives and a fire was set, the place caught and it
burned and there was much damage. Well, these are accidents. These are fires that are sometimes
set on purpose. These are maybe small scale destructive
events. But when we read about the vandalism
of the city of Jerusalem, when we read about the destruction
of the city of God and the temple of Yahweh, we realize, because
we are good students of the Bible, we realize and recognize that
the reason Jerusalem was destroyed, the reason that the city of God
and the temple were taken down to its foundations, were twofold. One was God prophesied that it
would happen. Remember, he told Israel over
and over and over, I will be your God. and you will be my
people. My dwelling place will be in
your midst. And so we see from the time God
rescued his people out of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness,
he set up a place of meeting with them. It was the tabernacle
or the tent in the wilderness. And God in his glory came and
dwelled in the midst of his people. They kept his laws. They burnt
their sacrifices. They kept their year round feast.
And God was pleased to dwell with his people as long as they
kept their end of the covenant. And then Israel moved into the
promised land. They took over the city of Jerusalem
from the Jebusites. They built the city of David,
the great Mount Zion. David built his palace. His son
Solomon built the great temple. And over time, during this father-son
reign over this hundred year or so period, the city of Jerusalem
was a wonderful, wonderful and beautiful place. It was one of
the most majestic cities on earth. The other night we were riding
in the car, we were coming back from the kids violin recital, and
we were talking as the radio played Pachelbel’s Canon in D. And we told the girls, we said,
when y’all get married someday, you cannot walk down the aisle
to Pachelbel’s Canon in D. It’s so cliche, everybody does
it. If you’ve done it, fine, don’t worry. We were saying,
Mandy said, well, what else could you come into? And I said, well,
if you really wanted to show your stuff, you could walk into
Handel’s The Queen of Sheba Visits Jerusalem. Go look it up later. Listen to it on the internet.
It is a wonderful piece. And if you’ve got the nerve and
you’re a gal, walk into that someday when you get married.
But Jerusalem, the temple, the palace was a wonderful place. It would be one of the wonders
of the ancient world. And here we have in Psalm 74,
Asaph lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem. the vandalizing,
the utter ruin of the city of God and the temple of God. It was prophesied by God, though,
if you don’t obey me, if you don’t walk with me, if you don’t
keep my statutes, if you don’t follow my ways and you go after
other gods and you go after other ways of life, I will leave Jerusalem. My glory will depart the temple. and a nation will come in and
they will not only carry you away, but they will destroy,
they will lay to waste and lay bare the city of God. Now we
know that God had his chosen instruments. He had his chosen
instruments and the Assyrians and maybe the late or early 8th
century, late 8th century, the Assyrians came and they carried
off all the northern tribes of Israel. They carried off the
11 northern tribes, they took them away to Assyria, and then
we had what we call the Samaritans, the people of Samaria move in
and live in the houses of the people of the northern tribes.
And then about a hundred or so years later, after the Assyrians,
the Babylonians came, they carried off the Israelites, you know
the story of Daniel and All his buddies, they go off into Babylonian
land, but the Babylonians completely laid bare. They completely laid
waste the city of Jerusalem and the temple. And so we have in
Psalm 74 a lament about that. You’ve probably read some of
it in other Psalms. Psalm 137 is a lament of what it was like
to live in Babylon. They sang something like, by
the waters of Babylon we wept, we hung our bows up on the trees,
and our captors, the Babylonians, taunted them saying, sing us
some of your songs of Zion. But how can we sing the songs
of Zion in a strange land? We know of this story, this exile,
this destruction by the Babylonians. We read of it in Lamentations. We know of the story of the return
from exile with Ezra, Nehemiah, the people of God under Cyrus,
the king of Persia and others, they came back to the promised
land in a wave of over maybe a century. And they rebuilt the
city as it was laid in ruins. You remember Nehemiah’s midnight
ride around the city. He was coming to assess the damage
and he saw the city in its ruins. And they were able some 70, 80,
100 years later to rebuild it. But this was by the plan and
purpose of God through the Babylonians, his chosen instrument to judge
the people. and to take away his glory and
the cultic places of their practice of life. Jerusalem was vandalized. If you had had your phone on,
you would have certainly received a news blurb. The temple is on
fire. There is an army surrounding
it. They have their hatchets and their axes and their instruments
of destruction, and they are laying waste to the city of God. And not only was the city utterly
destroyed, it was abandoned by God. And it sends our psalmist
into lament. Look at what he says in Psalm
75 verses three through, or 74, here I go mixed up again, 74
verses three through eight. He says to God, direct your steps
to the perpetual ruins. The enemy has destroyed everything. in the sanctuary. This is the
temple. This is the Grand Temple of Solomon, a couple hundred,
maybe 400 years old now. Your foes have roared in the
midst of your meeting place. They set up their own signs.
You know, as Americans, we go to a foreign soil. What’s the
first thing we do? We put our flag in the ground. That’s what these enemies, these
Babylonians have done. They have planted their flags. They have hung their banners
or made their signs. Verse five says, they were like
those who swing axes in a forest of trees. All of it’s carved
wood. Remember all of those wonderful
artisans who were empowered by the Holy Spirit to build and
put up this wonderful temple. They’ve taken axes to it. They’ve
lit a fire to it with their hatchets and their hammers. Verse seven
says, they’ve set your sanctuary on fire. They have profaned the
dwelling place of your name. I mean, they’ve entered the holy
of holies. They brought it down to the ground. And they have said to themselves,
we will utterly subdue them. And they burned all the meeting
places of God in the land. You know, Israel worshiped in
one place, but you know, they had little places all over the
settlement of Israel where they may have gathered in tabernacle
like places. Every one of those systematically
destroyed. It was God saying to his people,
you don’t want me. I’ll clear evidence, every evidence
of myself out of the land. And I’ll even clear you out of
the land. Jerusalem was vandalized. It
was utterly destroyed. And not only that, we see in
verses nine through 11, that God himself abandoned the people. Verse nine, I don’t know if you
see it initially when you read it, but he says, we do not see
our signs. There is no longer any prophet. And there is none among us who
knows how long God has gone silent. You know how it is maybe sometimes
in your house where you’re not speaking with someone else. You
get in a spousal spat, as we call it, or a sibling rivalry,
and we just stop speaking. Well, this is far worse than
that. God himself has ceased revelation to his people. I’m
not gonna tell you anything. I’m not gonna tell you my will.
There will not be a prophet. There will not be a word. There
will be a famine in the land for the hearing of God’s word.
And so we see in these couple of verses, not only is Jerusalem
utterly destroyed, but it has been abandoned by their covenant
God. Now, sometimes as parents, maybe
you say to your children, well, you’ve made the bed, so you can
just lay in it. And God has told them for centuries
through his prophets, if you obey me, and if you worship me,
and if you leave alone the foreign gods of the lands all around
you, I will bless you, I will keep you, I will cause my face
to shine upon you, I will be gracious to you, and all will
go well. But if you abandon my worship,
if you go after other gods, if you don’t obey my commands, and
you do whatever is pleasing in your sight, I will take my glory. And I will take my temple and
I’ll go back to heaven and I’ll just leave you in your misery. And that’s exactly what God has
done. And so we have Asaph, not David’s
contemporary as we studied last week, but another Asaph. And
notice what he says at the very beginning of the Psalm, verse
one and two. He says, Oh 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 from of old, which you have redeemed to be
the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you
have dwelt. See Asaph. Asaph is in a place
of great darkness. The glory of God has departed
Israel. The word of God has departed
the land. And not only that, every building,
every structure, every altar, every utensil, every bowl, every
basin, every tool for sacrifice, every bit of the cultic practice
of Israel, gone. Nothing. Laid bare and destroyed. And so what’s a fella like Asaph
to do? What are we to do when because
of our wickedness, God has distanced himself from us? Because we live
in sin or we… We aren’t maybe faithful in the
Christian life. God distances himself. Remember
in Psalm 51, King David prays, create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me. What else does he
say? Take not thy Holy Spirit from
me. I think sometimes we forget. And maybe something we haven’t
discussed, but it will come up in our Sunday school class on
assurance of salvation. When we distance ourselves from
God, we get away from the word, we get away from the worship,
we get away from prayer, we get away from fellowship, and we
kind of go and do our own thing. Guess what God then does to us?
He distances himself from us. It’s like not coming to the table.
It’s like not coming downstairs when suppertime is called. It’s
like not taking our vitamins. And so how can we expect God
to be close when we are distant? And so Psalm 75 shows us in the
latter verses, where we are to think, what we are to do. Look, if you will, at verse 12,
beginning there, it says, yet, that’s a good transition word,
isn’t it? Yet God, my King, is from of
old. He works 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 his food for the
creatures of the wilderness. You split open springs and brooks.
You’ve dried up ever-flowing streams. Yours is the day. Yours
also is 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. These are all echoes of Old Testament,
Old Covenant views of God. There are words from the creation
account in Genesis. You’re the one who’s made the
land and the sea, the light and the darkness, the sun to rule
the day, the stars and the lesser lights to rule the night. There’s
also language from the book of Job. Remember, Job bumped into
God and guess who won that battle? Well, it was God. But there’s
mention of Leviathan, and sea monsters and all there. Well,
what are we to take? What are we to take from these
few verses? Well, as we look to God, we remember that our
covenant-making, covenant-keeping God is the God of the universe.
He’s the God who created. He’s the God who sustains. He
was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Job, and he’s the
God of David and Solomon. He’s the God of all the prophets.
He’s the God of the Northern tribes carried off into exile. He’s the God of the Southern
tribe of Judah carried off into exile. And he is gonna be the
God of the exiles who will one day return and will rebuild the
temple. And he is the God of we who follow
Christ by faith. Friends, we need to remember
God will not be mocked. God will not be mocked. He owes
us nothing. But he gives us his grace. He
gives us his mercy. And where can the psalmist go
other than to appeal to the character of almighty God? Lord, you see
your church. It is laid waste. It is our own
doing. It is our own undoing. Yet you’re
our God. You’re our King from of old.
Well, he picks up. He picks up his request to God
in verse 18. Remember this, O Lord. how the
enemy scoffs, and how a foolish people reviles your name. Do
not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beast. 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, and do not
forget the clamor of the foes, the uproar of those who rise
against you, which goes up continually. Here’s an example of how to pray. We’ve talked over the I don’t
know, the last two or so years as we’ve made our way through
the Psalms about how do we pray as Christians? There’s some pretty
hard prayers in the Bible. God, take my enemies, take my
enemies and just kill them. Just do what you do. Here’s a prayer that says, remember
not our wickedness, not our undoing of this city of Jerusalem, not
our own undoing of the temple, but remember what the enemies
who’ve entered the promised land, who’ve laid their axes to the
carvings of the temple, who’ve set fire to the timbers, those
cedars that were harvested and given by the kings of Lebanon.
Remember what they have done and that they have done far worse
than your people, Israel. They have reviled your wicked
name. This is a, good reminder of how
to pray. We pray, we pray the character
of God, who he is, what he’s done, what he’s promised to do,
what he’s yet to do. But what do we do when the church
is vandalized? What do we do when the foundations
seem to be destroyed? We go to God. We go to God and
we see he is always at work in his world and he may take away
from us the things, the religious things that make us feel comfortable.
And he may say to us, just look simply at me, look simply at
me. Well, how do we think of this
in light of the cross? How do we think of this in light
of what the Lord Jesus has done for us? Every calamity, every
calamity on earth, whether it’s our health, our wellbeing, our
family, our religion, our faith, everything needs to be taken
to the cross. And we remember that God let
something far more precious to him be destroyed. And it wasn’t
a church building in Jerusalem. It wasn’t a mountain where he
dwelt among his prized people, a possession for himself. It
was his own son. It was his own son who went to
the cross. It was his own son who took on our sin. It was his
own son who drank the cup of God’s wrath. It was his own son
whose body was torn to pieces by the abuse and by the cross
and by the beatings. It was his own son who laid in
a grave. And sometimes in the undoing
of things that we hold dear, we begin to see what is good
and right and true. And you know that temple’s never
really been rebuilt. There was a lesser temple rebuilt
by Nehemiah and his crew, there was a couple of additions made. It was again, destroyed and desecrated
throughout the period of history up to the coming of Christ, ultimately
destroyed. You go to the Temple Mount today, it’s not there.
There’s a Western wall. There’s a wailing wall. There’s
a mosque, a place of Muslim worship there on that mountain. But where
will God be worshiped? He’ll be worshiped, not in temples
made by hands, but in human temples, hearts where God dwells. And
so let it be those of us who love the Lord Jesus and His appearing.
Let it be those of us who worship Him and trust Him and look forward
to that day when we will be with Him forever in that temple in
the heavenly places, a temple that will last and that will
never be destroyed. Let’s pray together. Our Lord
and God, we thank you for this, your word. We thank you for the
psalmist and the deep and true words of lament, of anguish,
and even of begging you to act on behalf of your people. We
pray, Lord, that we would treasure our worship, that we would treasure
your word, that we would treasure the fact that you dwell in human
hearts through Christ Jesus. We pray, Lord, that we would
not forsake you. We pray that we would not forsake you and
be like those who lost it all because they did not listen to
your word. Help us to be faithful through your spirit, by your
grace, and for the glory of God, we pray in Christ’s name, amen.