Psalm 79
Let’s hear from God’s word together,
Psalm 79. This is a Psalm of Asaph, and
this is one of those songs where… He sort of lets it all out. It’s
very honest. Remember also in Psalm 74 that
Asaph made complaint in prayer to the Lord about the destruction
of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. So in Psalm 74, when he made
complaint, he said, my complaint is for the destruction of the
building, the temple, the city, but here he seems to have regard
for the people. And you’ll see that particularly
in the first couple of verses. So Psalm 79 verse one, it says,
Oh God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have
defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They have given the bodies of
your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the flesh
of your faithful to the beast of the earth. They have poured
out their blood like water all around Jerusalem. there was no
one to bury them. We have become a taunt to our
neighbors, mocked and derided by those around us. How long,
O Lord? Will you be angry forever? Will
your jealousy burn like fire? Pour out your anger on the nations
that do not know you and on the kingdoms that do not call upon
your name, for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation. Do not remember against us our
former iniquities. Let your compassion come speedily
to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our
salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us and atone for
our sins for your name’s sake. Why should the nations say, where
is their God? Let the avenging of the outpoured
blood of your servants be known among the nations before our
eyes. Let the groans of the prisoners
come before you according to your great power. Preserve those
doomed to die. Return sevenfold into the lap
of our neighbors, the taunts with which they have taunted
you, O Lord. But we, your people, the sheep
of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever. From generation
to generation, we will recount your praise. Amen. You know, sometimes as Christians,
we get a little judgmental. And there’s a right time and
place for being judgmental. And I don’t mean judgmental in
the negative sense, but making a judgment about other people.
And we look around us sometimes and we say, look at all the godless
people. Look at their immorality, look
at their beliefs, look at their lifestyles. I mean, we go on
and on and we make the list. And we look at other people and
we say, look at them, how wicked they are. Aren’t we glad that
we’re not like them? Well, the story behind Psalm
79, as well as behind Psalm 74, is that the people of God for
a very long time had been warned by the prophets of God. It’s
not the other people I’m concerned about, God says, it’s you. And so in the prophecy of Jeremiah,
in the early chapters, pre-exile, pre-Babylonian destruction and
captivity and pre-exile, destruction that we read about in this passage.
In the early chapters of Jeremiah, you have the prophet coming to
the people of God and saying, amend your ways, quit your sinning,
quit your injustice, quit oppressing the poor, quit overlooking the
widow and the sojourner, quit being immoral in every single
way, and goes on and on and on with the list. And Jeremiah gets
to a point where he says, God sends him to the gate of Jerusalem.
It’d be as if we stationed people out at the doors of the church,
and we said to everybody that came in, looking them square
in the eye, this is what Jeremiah did, more or less. Don’t you
come in here if you’re wicked. Don’t you come in here if you’re
sinners. Don’t you come in here if you’re shaking your fist at
God and saying, I don’t care what your word and your law says.
Don’t you come in here if you think you can live any way you
want to and God will not see. That was the ministry of Jeremiah. How would you put it? Popular,
he must have been. He stood at the gates of the
temple of God and said, amend your ways, quit your sinning. There was great godlessness.
not just typical everyday sinning and thoughtward indeed, but great
godlessness. And God made a promise through
Jeremiah, if you do not amend your ways, your evil, detestable,
defiling ways, not only will you die a terrible death, but
your bodies will lie on the ground for the birds and the beast to
feed on. So not only will the people of
God who are wicked and not listening to God’s prophets, not only will
they die, their bodies will be laid out in dishonor. What was
considered to be a valley of peace in Israel would be a valley
of dead bodies. And then to make it worse, And
only God can do this. God says, I will empty the tombs
of the royalty of Israel, and I will drag their dead bones
out into the sunshine, and they too will be given dishonor. And so when you come to Psalm
74, to Psalm 79, and the events of 587 BC, where Nebuchadnezzar
and his armies came and surrounded Israel, they tore down the walls,
they destroyed the temple by burning it, they desecrated the
holy places, they carried the people off into captivity, the
ones that weren’t carried off, they murdered and left their
bodies in the streets, as it were. Israel has gotten what
God had promised. Israel is suffering under the
justice of God. And so you have Asaph here. He’s
observing all this. What do you say to God? What
do you say to God who says, if you don’t stop it, maybe some
of your parents said this, if you don’t stop it, you’re going
to get it. And now when Israel has got it, what do you say back
to almighty God? Well, Psalm 79 is Something to say back to God.
And notice how in verses one through four, notice how the
psalmist Asaph speaks to God about your people, your inheritance. He says, oh God, the nations
have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple.
They have laid Jerusalem in ruins and they have given the bodies
of your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the
flesh of your faithful to the beast of the earth. They have
poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there
was no one to bury them. We have become a taunt to our
neighbors and mocked and derided by all of those around us. The psalmist is kind of clever
here, isn’t he? God, you’ve done this to your people. Now the
psalmist isn’t trying to get Israel off the hook. The psalmist
knows that Israel has disobeyed God and been wicked. The psalmist
knows that God was just in what he did. He warned them, he promised
it, they didn’t amend their ways, and so he has given his punishment. But notice how he speaks. Your
people, your temple, your holy places, your servants. And then
he gets at the heart of God. We have become, in verse four,
a taunt to our neighbors. Remember Israel, Israel was a
people called out of the world. Remember Abraham, Abraham was
called out of Ur of the Chaldeans, out of paganism and brought to
the promised land to build a nation so that all the other nations
of the world would look in and say, look at those holy people
and their God Yahweh. And so what does the Psalmist
say? You’ve destroyed all that. In a sense, he said, what we
might equate in our day, you’ve taken the church out of the world.
You’ve cut off our lampstand. There is no witness to God on
this earth. You’ve closed down all the outposts
of heaven. That’s what the psalmist is saying.
Verses one through four, you might say he’s stating the problem. What’s the issue here? I was thinking about these first
four verses this afternoon and thinking, this is a lot like
one of the Egyptian plagues. God really destroyed his own
people. He was thorough in his judgment. James Montgomery Boyce, in his
commentary on this psalm, said that God was so thorough, this
hit social spheres. It hit family spheres. It hit
economic hit economically, it hit politically, and it hit religiously. God has basically put an end
to Israel as they knew it. You could not live in the city
because it had no walls. You could not worship because
there was no temple. You could not have atonement
for sins because there was no altar and no priest. Everything
they knew from family to religion to civic and civil society was
wiped away by the judgment of God. Nothing is left, and so
where else can you go when nothing is left but to God. And that’s what our psalmist
does. Notice the first words in Psalm 79, oh God, you have
no other place to go when all is lost. And then notice how
the Psalm shifts beginning at verse five. It’s one of the first
of many questions. How long, oh Lord? Will you be
angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like
fire? That’s a wonderful question for the psalmist at this point
in the life of Israel, in his own personal life. Maybe you
ask, maybe you’re thinking, what do you ask? What kind of question
do you ask of God when all hell has broken loose? What do you
ask of God when everything in life has given way, every structure
and support and thing that you hold precious and dear? What
do you ask God? Well, there’s a good one. Verse
five, how long, oh Lord? How long will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like
fire? Verse 10 is another big question. Again, it’s an appeal to God.
Why should the nation say, where is their God? If you were another,
if you were a person of another nation and another religion,
and you were looking in on the Israelites, what would you say
at about this point? If you had a bird’s eye view
of the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people
of God, what would you say? Stinks to be. an Israelite. That’s what we would say. Glad
it’s not me. Glad I’m not them. My pagan religion
is looking pretty good right now. And so you see, you see
there’s so much irony. There’s so much meaning in these
passages. Shouldn’t in one sense, God say,
my witness on earth could be destroyed. Shouldn’t in one sense,
God say, if, if I don’t save these people as wicked as they
are, where will my witness be? But isn’t it interesting, God
doesn’t care. He cares more about the righteousness of his people.
And he will wipe his church off the face of the earth in a sense,
if that’s what it takes to get his people’s attention. We have
to remember that God does not need us. His glory is not derived
from us. We think it is. And so we build
and we build and we build. And God says, look, If you don’t
walk with me, if your heart is not with me, I have a way of
taking care of business. Now, we have to remember in these
questions, it is not the innocent asking. I mean, even Asaph, who
may have not been an adulterer, who may not have been an idolater,
who may not have been a severe lawbreaker during this time,
even those who were striving to live a righteous life at the
time of the destruction of Israel, you know they had to No, deep
down in their hearts, they broke God’s law and thought word and
deed. You know that. We understand that. But it gets
our attention. It gets our attention. It gets
us thinking. And so what does he begin to
pray for? Well, he has some interesting prayers that begin in verse six.
Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on
the kingdoms that do not call on your name, for they have devoured
Jacob and laid waste his habitation.” Now, I hope it’s not lost on
you the theme of that prayer. God uses other nations in the
Bible, like Babylon. He uses them to punish his people. And so now you have the prayer,
after Israel has had its punishment, the prayer says, now, O God,
the ones you used to punish us, Babylon here, you now punish
them for what they did to us. Well, whose fault was it? Well,
it was Israel’s fault. They got what was coming to them,
we might say. But now Babylon, for doing what they did, which
it was a wicked and treacherous thing, according to the prayer
of Asaph will get their just judgment. Then he says in verse
eight, do not remember against us our former iniquities. Let your compassion come speedily
to meet us, for we are brought very low. This is sort of a national
prayer. This is a corporate prayer, a
prayer for Israel, a prayer for the people of God, a prayer for
the church. Help us, O God, verse nine says. Help us, O God of
our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us and
atone for our sins for your name’s sake. You see, there’s a turning
point here. He recognizes they have done
wrong. They have done great wrong in the eyes of God. And though
God’s justice has been deserved, it’s time for God in his eyes
to be merciful. And notice how he appeals, verse
10. Verse 10 is about like verse
four. Why should the nation say, where is their God? That’s a
great appeal, isn’t it? God, you don’t want to be shamed.
We represent you on earth, and so, so that you’re not shamed,
go ahead and raise us back up, forgive us and cleanse us, but
destroy the nations who’ve done this to us, so that they won’t
say, where is their God? And so he says, let the avenging
of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations
before our eyes. Let the groans of the prisoners
come before you according to your great power. Preserve those
doomed to die. Return sevenfold into the lap
of our neighbors, the taunts with which they have taunted
you, O Lord.” What a great set of prayers. What an interesting
set of requests. And it all appeals to the compassion,
the mercy, and the great name of Almighty God. This is a sad
spot for the people of God to be in. You know, Israel never
really recovers. It never recovers as a nation.
In fact, there’s the last king of Judah before the Babylonian
captivity. But who’s the next king when
Ezra and Nehemiah and all those come back from Babylon? Who’s
the next king? There’s not one. What’s the next temple like?
It’s a little bitty, tiny one. What’s the city like when they
do, through the leadership of Nehemiah, rebuild the walls?
Oh, it’s a little bitty city. It’s nothing as it was under
David and Solomon. What’s God doing for Israel in
the grand scheme of things? He’s taking away their trust
in themselves. He’s taking away their trust
in their city. He’s taking away their trust in the temple. He’s
taking away their trust in the things that they had known for
centuries, and he’s getting them ready that they might put their
hope and their faith and their trust in Jesus. You hear in this
Psalm a prayer for atonement, but where is the altar? Where
is the priest? There is none. And so friends,
we can only look to Jesus when all hell breaks loose. And that’s what God has done
for his people. And notice how the Psalm ends. He says, like
he does in verses one and two, but we are your people. We are
the sheep of your pasture and we will give thanks to you forever. Sort of a Job statement, isn’t
it? The Lord has given, and in this case, the Lord has taken
away. What does Job then say? Blessed be the name of the Lord. He goes on to say, from generation
to generation, we will recount your praise. How do you get to
that point when everything around you that is precious, even the
religious things, is taken away from you? That’s a pretty amazing
statement to make, isn’t it? Your people, your people, even
the ones you have destroyed and you’ve left our bodies lying
for the birds to peck on with their beaks and the beast to
devour with their teeth. We’ll give you thanks forever
from generation to generation. Let’s pray. Our Lord, we thank
you for this glimpse of the history of your people and how You were
just in your judgments, you were righteous in your anger, and
you gave not one ounce of compassion because your people deserved
the just judgments that were due them. Oh Lord, we thank you
that we live in a different generation, that we have not experienced
such hard things, but we pray that as we look in on this window
of what you did in real space, time, and history, that we would
see that we’re not for your grace, we would be right there with
them. We would be entering your house
week after week with great sin on our lips and in our bodies. Lord, help us to hear the words
of the scripture that warn us, that keep us from going astray
and help us to ever live to praise you and be devoted to living
for you, the great King of Kings. We thank you for Christ and the
forgiveness of sins and that we have hope in him And pray
that this week, as we go in your grace, that we would remember
these things. And we ask it in Christ’s name, amen.