The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): The things that can make us feel distant from the love of God are many. But there's a solution. As we remember the things that God has done for us and accomplished in our lives, it's hard to stay discouraged for very long. In Psalm 77, Asaph asks the Lord some questions, and those very questions help jog his memory concerning the goodness of God.

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Have God's promises failed? Has he forgotten to be merciful? Will he never show his favor again? These are just some of the things the Psalmist asks himself in the midst of his doubt and discouragement. Join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 77 and see how Asaph answered his own questions as he reflected on the deeds of the Lord and the miracles of long ago.

Dr. James Boice: We're in a section of the Psalter that contains the songs of Asaph. We're not exactly sure who this man is in every case. There was an Asaph who was a contemporary of David and presumably he wrote some of the Psalms. Some of them don't quite fit his time frame, so it may be that there were more than one that went by this name. It may be a school of poets who wrote these Psalms and they take the name from the original man.

But whoever he may have been, one thing you've got to say for him, he tells it like it is. Not too many Christians do that. We tell it as we think it should be or we want other people to think it is with us. But in Asaph's case, he really speaks it frankly. If he's discouraged, if he is doubtful about what God is doing in his life or in the life of the nation, he just pours it out. He's respectful. You don't find him criticizing God and saying, "God, you don't know what you're doing," or, "It's unjust for you to have done that." He doesn't say anything like that. But if he sees a problem, he doesn't hesitate to mention it.

This great poet of Israel, whoever he may have been, in the 77th Psalm is remembering the past. That's why I have entitled this "Remembering." He looks back to the past and he remembers days in the past when God was close to him and when the blessing of God in his life was evident. Furthermore, he looks at the nation and he realizes that there were days of great blessing for the nation too. But now there hasn't been any of that for a long time. Anything he can say about God seems to have ceased. That God was good, but he hasn't been good recently. God is merciful, but he hasn't been merciful recently. And so as he thinks about this, his memories of the past drag him down and discourage him and he doesn't find any comfort.

Now, it's worth asking right at the beginning whether we have been through times like that. Have you ever been through times like that? I suppose the answer has to be, at least if you've been a Christian for any length of time, of course there have been. Always times in our lives when as we look back it seems like it used to have been better, but it isn't anymore. Nothing seems to be going right these days. And so you raise the question, where is God when we really need him? It's all right to say God acted in the past, but I'm not living in the past. I'm living right now and I want to know where God is where you really need him. Well, that is the sort of thing that is in this man's mind.

Now, the obvious division of this Psalm is into two parts. Verses 1 through 9 and then 10 through 20. The key verse, the turning point, is verse 10. But it isn't quite as simple as that. Each of those halves can be divided into other parts, as many as three parts apiece. That's sort of what the New International Version does. If you pay a great deal of attention to that word "Selah" which occurs from time to time throughout the Psalms and suppose that it marks a break, well, there are three of them here. You get a Psalm broken into four parts. You get meaningful parts out of that. It doesn't always work that way, but it seems to here. This is the way Charles Haddon Spurgeon handles it, breaks it up into four parts in this great *Treasury of David* that he wrote.

I think it's helpful to follow the stanzas of the New International Version, which is what I'm going to do. There are six of them and they mark sections that stand by themselves. And what is perhaps most significant, they unfold a kind of progression in Asaph's thought, a spiritual progress through the various stanzas of the Psalm. One thing we want to be looking at as we look at this Psalm closely are the pronouns.

Now, if you follow the NIV translation, which is what we have in front of us, you'll notice that in the first six verses of the Psalm, there are 18 occurrences of the first person singular pronoun, that's "I" or "me", 18 of them. And it compares with six references to God, either by name, title, or pronoun. So the emphasis in the first part of this Psalm is on the Psalmist himself over God by a proportion of three to one. Now if you go to the end of the Psalm, to the last eight verses, that is 13 through 20, you find that there are 21 mentions of God and no personal references at all. The only possible exception is one plural possessive, "our," which occurs in verse 13. So if you don't study it at any other level than that, if you're just looking at the pronouns, you understand that what is happening here is that he is moving away from thoughts that are concentrated on himself to thoughts that are concentrated on God. And you'll see that that makes a big difference.

Now, the first stanza is composed of verses 1 and 2, and they're an expression of his plight, as what I was mentioning earlier. God doesn't seem to be working in his life anymore, doesn't seem to be working in the life of the nation. He had done it, the poet remembers it. That's what he's going to be talking about in the second stanza. But what he's talking about here is his problem. If you look at verse 2 and you say, "Well, he seems to be on the right track," what he says in verse 2 is this: "When I was in distress I sought the Lord." You say, "Oh, yeah, that's just the thing you ought to do." He does it right at the beginning. But that's not what he means by that. He means he sought the Lord and the Lord wasn't there. Well, he's really complaining, you see. So even when he brings God into that first stanza, it's a way of saying, "But God was absent." The next verses say, "At night I stretched out untiring hands and my soul refused to be comforted." He stretched out his hands asking for God to give him something and his hands were empty. That's what he's saying.

One of the commentators on the Psalm asks the psalmist's question this way: why does God let things go on as long and as tragically as they do without giving any tokens of his interest and concern? Now if you've never experienced that, you haven't been a Christian very long or you're not a Christian at all. Because all of us go through times like that. You pray and you just don't seem to get an answer. You remember better days and the present just seems to be a contrast.

Now, this portion of the Psalm appealed very strongly to Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I've mentioned him many times because one of the classic studies of the Psalter is called *The Treasury of David* and it was produced by Spurgeon with considerable help. He had people working on it. It appeared originally in seven volumes, it's available today in three. And it's not only a collection of Spurgeon's own comments on the Psalm, verse by verse, but it has within it also a section of gleanings from writers that came before. And finally at the end a little section of suggestions for preachers on the Psalms. So it really is a masterful thing.

Now, Spurgeon produced that between the years 1865 and 1885. So he worked on that for 20 years. Now during those years, he had bad health. His health was declining and it continued to decline until his eventual death in 1892. Now what he had was neuralgia, an inflammation of the nerves, and gout, not a thing that people talk about a great deal today, but a very painful thing people do have it and it was a serious thing in his day. It left him with swollen, red, painful limbs, so that quite frequently he couldn't walk, he could hardly move around, and he certainly couldn't write. He had debilitating headaches, if we would call them migraines, but acute migraine headaches. And the result of this was acute depression. He got so down in his spirits as a result of these physical ailments that he was almost at times at the very edge of despair.

Now, finally, as he got medical attention, they decided that the only thing he could do was leave the climate of London, which contributed to the malady, the gout and so on, and go to Southern France during the winter months, which he did. He used to go down there starting in November, he was there through December and January. And as a matter of fact, he was in France at the village of Menton on the coast when he finally died on January 31st in the year 1892.

Now, that's just background to give you some idea of what he's talking about when he makes a comment on this Psalm. He's reading what Asaph says and he puts himself in Asaph's shoes and he comments this way: "Some of us know what it is, both physically and spiritually, to be compelled to use words like this. No respite has been afforded us by the silence of the night. Our bed has been a rack to us, our body has been in torment and our spirit in anguish." A little later on, instead of speaking to the reader, he speaks directly to God: "Alas, my God, the writer of this exposition," he's referring to himself, "well knows what thy servant Asaph meant. For his soul is familiar with the way of grief. Deep glens and lonely caves of soul depressions, my spirit knows full well your awful glooms."

Well, I have to ask the question again, have you ever felt that way? And most of us will say yes, at times, and some of us will say yes, I'm feeling that way right now. That's exactly what my condition is. Now, we're going to see how he moves from that, what kind of progress you get. But before we move on, notice again the pronouns in this stanza. In this stanza, Asaph is preoccupied with himself. The pronoun "I" occurs five times and the pronouns "me" or "my" occur twice more. Now that's all right. Nothing wrong with saying this is the way I feel, because I really do feel this way. God's not afraid of the truth. And so that's the way you feel, you need to talk about it. The problem is not moving on from there. You see, some of us bog down at that point, we never get to thinking about God, and that's what's wrong. We have to go on. There's no point rehearsing our disappointments endlessly.

Well, Asaph moves on. We're going to see how. Now, the second stanza, verses 3 through 6, are ones in which he tells the reader a little bit more about his depressed state of mind. And he says, as I have already pointed out, that what bothers him is that he remembers days that were better. You see, if there had never been any better days, he wouldn't have known any better. But he remembers how good it used to be. As a matter of fact, that word "remember" is the important word in the stanza. It appears again in stanza four. Here he's remembering his former happiness. Little later on, what he remembers is the mighty deeds of God, and that's a significant shift in his focus. But see, here he's remembering the past.

Now, I think you have to get into the spirit of these verses a little bit. You just have to read them perceptively to see what's really going on. The first verse says, "I remembered you, O God." Now, like I said at the beginning, that's something that sounds good, doesn't it? In the second verse, he said, "When I was in distress I sought the Lord." And here in the third verse, he says, "I remembered you, O God." That sounds fine. But what he's saying is that when he sought the Lord, the Lord wasn't there. And when he remembered God, well, what he remembered is that things had been good and now God had forgotten him. You see, as you read on, what you find is that he's really still thinking about himself. I remembered you, God, but I'm still the way I am. You see, God's pushed off to the periphery.

It makes us think a little bit about the prayer of the Pharisee who prayed exactly that way. There's a big difference, of course. This man Asaph is a believing man. He believes in God intensely. That's part of his problem. The Pharisee wasn't a believer at all. But the Pharisee prayed the same kind of prayer. The Pharisee began by praying, "God," see? But what Jesus said he really was praying about himself. And it's very clear because he went on to say, "I thank you that I'm not like all other men: robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector." So the Pharisee knew how you're supposed to pray. You say Almighty God, but what he's really thinking about is other people compared with himself. And when he compares other people to himself, he thinks he's pretty good. As a matter of fact, he thinks he's exceptional. And it's not really prayer at all. Now you have something like that here. Asaph says, "I remember you, O God," but he's actually remembering the past in a negative way.

The best thing we can say about this second stanza is that his focus is beginning to shift, albeit slightly. You see, instead of merely thinking about how miserable he is, he's at least thinking that there was a time when he wasn't. And what made it not miserable in the past is that God was there. Now he may be saying, "God, you're not here now," but nevertheless, he's beginning to shift, albeit slightly. There's still an awful lot of "I"s in this stanza, six of them. The word "my" occurs four more times. A good bit. But see, it's beginning to change just a little bit.

Now in the next stanza, he's going to develop this a little bit. At least he has begun to think about God, at least he's mentioned God. And so now he begins to go with it just a little bit more. God seems to have been absent, to have abandoned him, and he tells the kind of questions that were going through his mind as he thinks about this. He asks a series of questions, they're rhetorical questions. He doesn't answer them, it's just questions he throws out. But here they are, verses 7 to 9: "Will the Lord reject us forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has he forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?" You see, that's what he thinks has happened.

But you see the very articulation of the questions begins to suggest the answer. You see, a believer can't raise a question like that and answer it negatively. "Will the Lord reject us forever? Will he never show his favor again?" He asks, "Of course not." God's a faithful God. And so although he's raising these questions in a negative way, he's saying this is what I'm feeling, this is the distress I have, at least he's raising the questions, he's articulating them, he's thinking theologically. It's beginning to draw him back into contemplating the very character of God. And when he does that, you see, the answer begins to bubble to the surface. No, of course not. Our God is not like that. He does not change, he does not break his promises. His mercies, why, his mercies are new every morning.

Oh, if the psalmist doesn't believe that God is favorable and loving and kind and merciful and faithful to his promises, it's because he's not seeing things correctly. That is the psalmist. Something's wrong. He has to look at it again. Remember what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans? Paul said, "Let God be true and every man a liar." It might seem that God isn't true, but God is, and so the problem is in us.

Now let's look at the pronouns again in the stanzas. In the last stanza, he began to consider God, though in a negative way. In this stanza, references to God predominate. Now they're still negative questions, but at least he's not in it, and it's God there instead. The Lord in verse 7, God in verse 9, and the pronouns "he" or "his" throughout at least six times.

Alexander Maclaren is another one of the great commentators on the Psalms and he thinks about this a little bit. He says, "Doubts are better put into plain speech than lying diffused and darkening like poisonous mists in the heart." I suppose that's right, isn't it? You see, it's not better to be a doubter than somebody who is strong in faith, but if you're doubting, it's better at least to express it. That's what Maclaren is saying. And that's true, isn't it? Some people take special pride in the negative. You know, they're agnostics that are delighted to be agnostics. They're proud of it. They're not really searching for answers. There are unbelievers who are proud of their unbelief. There are doubters who are proud of their doubt. I've had contact with a lot of them. They kind of think people that believe anything are simpletons because well, if you really saw deeply the way I do, you'd doubt like I do, you see. There's nothing praiseworthy about that. It's far better to be a man or a woman of faith, but if you are doubting, it's better to articulate it. Because you see, you don't get anywhere if it's just muddled around there in the back. What you need to say is, "This is what I'm doubting and this is why, and is that right? Does that measure up against what I know of the character of God?"

Now that's the first nine verses. I told you that's the first half, that's the downward side. You begin to get a change in verse 10, and from this point on, it's all uphill. The problem with verse 10 is that it's difficult to interpret. Now that shouldn't be. Remember we had in Psalm 73 something exactly like that where you had a turning point? Asaph was saying in that Psalm, "My feet had almost slipped but I went into the sanctuary of God." And that's where I got straightened out. There wasn't any question about that, we know exactly what he was saying. Here it's a bit puzzling. And the reason for that is that two of the words in verse 10 can have different meanings, perfectly legitimate meanings. The word that is translated "appeal" in the New International Version, "To this I will appeal," might be the word for supplication, sort of a prayer, which is where you get appeal. "This might be my supplication." Or it could be the word for affliction, hence a wound or grief. "This is my pain, this is my sorrow," you might be able to translate it that way. And in the same way, the word that is rendered "years", "The years of the right hand of the Most High," could be years, or it could also mean change. Because the years go round and change and that's why the same Hebrew word has a double meaning.

Now if you take those various interpretations of those two words, you get four possible meanings for the verse. Let me give them to you. First of all, "This is my appeal, the years of the right hand of the Most High." Number two, "This is my grief or sorrow, the years of the right hand of the Most High." Number three, "This is my grief, the right hand of the Most High has changed." Or number four, "This is my appeal, the right hand of the Most High has changed." Now what do we do with that? The interesting thing about that is that each one of those four meanings makes tolerable sense. Not all of them equally, but you get a valid meaning out of them.

If we choose the first, then the idea is that in his present depressed state, the psalmist will encourage himself by appealing to the merciful acts of God in past years. And that's okay, isn't it? I'm down so I'm going to think about what God has done in the past for me. That's all right. If we choose the second where he's talking about his grief, then he's explaining that his distress comes from remembering what God has done in the past. That's exactly what we've seen in the earlier stanzas. Problem with that, of course, is that if that is all it means, then this really isn't a transition verse, it's just a recapitulation. The third view is like the second. It would say that Asaph's grief comes from the fact that God is acting differently from what he did in the past. He was good to me in the past, but he's changed. He's not acting good anymore. And then the fourth one, fourth meaning's not a good one, but it could mean that since God has changed in one direction, that is from mercy to indifference, maybe he's going to change back again and be favorable. Like I said, it's not a very good meaning, but you know, you could understand that that might be said.

Now, what do we do? Well, there are two factors that tip this in the direction of the NIV translation. First, the Hebrew word that's translated "years" in verse 10 also occurs in verse 5 where it has to mean years, not change, because it's parallel to the words "the former days." Now he's remembering the former days, and it's the former years. So it can't mean change there, and if it doesn't mean change in verse 5, it probably doesn't mean change in verse 10 either. Same word. And then secondly, from verse 10 onward, the psalmist reviews what God has done in the past years. That's where the Psalm is moving, so you ought to really take it that way. At this point, his review of the past was not a cause for grief. He's expressed the grief in the first half of the Psalm, but rather it's a foundation for spiritual growth and comfort.

At this point, this word "remember" comes back. Verse 11: "I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago." Now what he was remembering in the past was the fact that his past was different from his present and it was causing him grief, thinking about himself. But now as he begins to remember, thinking back on what God has done in the past, his attention is shifting to God, and what he begins to remember is God's mighty deeds, his displays of power. Look, it's there in a lot of different places.

Now, what he remembers about God is what he puts into the next stanza, that is, verses 13 to 15. Now this is all about God, this stanza. You see, the first stanza was all about himself, now this is all about God. And what he recalls about God is three things. First of all, that God is holy. "I will meditate on your works," verse 12, "and consider your mighty deeds." Verse 13, this is what I remember and consider: "Your ways, O God, are holy."

Now the holiness of God is a very rich concept. It's one of the hardest attributes of God for us to understand because it's all-embracing and it has more to do with the transcendence of God than what we call moral righteousness or uprightness. But it does include the lesser idea. And here at this point in this Psalm, it probably does have to do with upright conduct. What he's saying here is that God has acted rightly in the past. Now if God has acted rightly in the past, because God doesn't change, it's certain that God is acting rightly in the present. You see, that's beginning to help, isn't it? Because he looks at his present and he says it's not like my past, that's what is discouraging me and it seems to me that something is wrong here. But when he begins to think about the holiness of God, he realizes that it's not wrong. Whatever is going on is something that God is doing rightly. And so he begins to think, maybe what's happening to me here is intended by God. Maybe it's for a good purpose. Maybe I need to learn from it rather than complain about it.

It makes us think of all the many verses in the Bible that talk about tribulation and suffering. That's a tool in God's hands. One verse in the New Testament says tribulation works patience. Are you impatient? Well, don't pray for patience, because God will send tribulation. That's the way you get patient. And it's intended by God for a good purpose. Well, that's what Asaph begins to remember. That's true of all the things that God is doing.

Second thing he remembers about God is that God is great, also in that verse. "What God is as great as our God?" He goes on to talk about it: "You're the one who performs miracles, you display your power among the people," and so on. He asks the question in verse 13, "What God is as great as our God?" And you see, that's a rhetorical question again and the answer is perfectly obvious. No God is like our God. No God does what our God does. Our God is a sovereign God. He's all-powerful, omnipotent is the word. You see, that's an important concept to grasp too. First of all, you talk about the holiness of God. It means that everything God does is right, whether it seems right to us or not. Secondly, God is all-powerful, so you can't get out of it by saying, "Well, yeah, I mean, he wants to do what's right but things are slipping through his fingers." That's what Harold Kushner says in his book *Why Bad Things Happen to Good People*. Well, it's not that at all. Not only the holy God, he's the sovereign God. So what is happening is what God wants. And because God is holy, what is happening is right. You get a handle on that, you see, you begin to think about your life in quite a different way.

And then there's the third thing he remembers, and that is that God is a caring God, a compassionate God, a merciful God. Why? Well, because he acted in the past to redeem his people, meaning that God delivered them from their bondage when they were in Egypt, verse 15. You see how that works. God is caring, has been in the past, he's demonstrated it, he must be caring today. Not only caring, he's upright, not only caring and upright, he's also sovereign. What God is doing in Asaph's life is not because he's indifferent, but because he cares. You see how that begins to throw quite a different perspective on what you go through. You think back to the things I mentioned at the beginning what I said, have you ever felt like that? And you said, I'm sure, yes I have, maybe some of you are feeling that way now. But you see if you begin to see that not in the light of your own experience alone, but see it instead in the light of the character of God, your own experience will change. And so instead of being a reason for your complaining and being unhappy and miserable and downcast and despondent, it becomes a situation in which you say, "Now what is this great, holy, and caring God doing? What's he doing in me and for me and what does he want to do through me to help other people?"

Well, we come to the last stanza except for the final verse, which is somewhat separate, verses 16 through 19. And here you have the psalmist carrying through the stanza the theme he developed in stanza five. What he's talking about here is the Exodus. He's developing it in poetic language. But that's what he's talking about. In other words, he's introduced the idea that God redeemed his people. Now he begins to focus on that a little bit. You see because what really matters to him, where it touches his heart, is that God cares. So he begins to just remind himself of how God showed his care in the past. He talks about the cloud that came between the Israelites and the Egyptians and the strong east wind that drove back the water so they could cross the Red Sea. There are some things in this Psalm that are not mentioned in Exodus in the account of the crossing. Either this is a poetic embellishment or it's something that remained in the traditional memory of the people that's not included in the Exodus account. A lot of things here. But at any rate, whatever it is, it's talking about the caring grace of God.

And having done that, Asaph comes to the very last verse. And what he says is this: "You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." Well, a lot of commentators read that and they say, that's a very strange ending. It kind of breaks off, doesn't it? Here we start with this great, wonderful, emotional beginning, and he's thinking about God and he's talking about the characteristics of God, and he reminds himself of the Exodus and the power of God in leading the people out of Egypt and then suddenly he just says God was our shepherd and he led us through the desert by the hands of Moses and Aaron and he stops. And so a lot of the commentators say, we have a lost ending here. Must have been something else that belonged to the Psalm.

Some have pointed out there's some truth to it that it leads into the next Psalm which picks up at that point and goes further and ends by saying that God also shepherded the people through the hand of David. It carries it on a couple more generations. But I don't think that's the answer. I think the answer is that the Psalm ends exactly where Asaph wanted it to end. It ends with the shepherding grace of God. And that's what he needed. He needed a shepherd. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." That's what he needed. And so that's what he talks about as he closes.

Do you know God as your shepherd? See, that's the point. God is your shepherd. You need to think about it, you need to reflect on it, you need to rest on it. And that's what he's doing. He doesn't have any answers beyond that. But he is resting in the hands of the good shepherd.

I mentioned a number of the commentators. One great old commentator, Franz Delitzsch, a German whose works are available in translation, has a very interesting suggestion at this point. Not anything that was in the mind of Asaph, but he says if you want continuity here, the continuity is found in comparison of this Psalm with the prophecy of Habakkuk. And probably Habakkuk was aware of this. Habakkuk came later in history, the time of the prophets, this is early, probably the time of the kings. And Habakkuk actually uses some of the language of the Psalm in the last chapter of that prophecy, which is a similar kind of Psalm or prayer. And Delitzsch says Habakkuk picks up at this point, and the great ending of Psalm 77 is found in Habakkuk 3.

Now you know what Habakkuk was concerned about. Habakkuk lived in bad days. The country was going to pieces, there was no morality. He was praying for revival. "God, why don't you do something?" God said, "I'm going to do something. I'm going to send the Babylonians to punish my people." And Habakkuk drew back and he said, "That's not what I was asking for. I was asking for a revival, not an invasion." But God said, "No, the invasion's coming." And Habakkuk said, "Yeah, but how can you do that? I mean my people are bad, that's why I'm praying, but they're not as bad as the Chaldeans that are coming." And God began to explain that to him.

And then Habakkuk said, "Well, then what do I do now?" And God's answer was that "The just shall live by faith." And that's what Habakkuk picked up. You know that's quoted three times in the New Testament, a critical verse there in the first chapter of Romans, it meant a lot to Martin Luther. And after God had taught him that lesson, Habakkuk writes his song, and it's what the third chapter is all about. And he explains that if you're going to live that way, then regardless of the times that are coming, knowing that God is your shepherd, you can trust in God. The very last verses of that great Old Testament prophecy say this: "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior."

There's the ending for Psalm 77. You begin with dismay, you think of the past, you contrast it with the present, you begin to reflect on God, his character and his mighty acts. And the bottom line of it all is that God is a caring God and if he has cared for you in the past, he's caring for you now, and in time you're going to be aware of it again. And so hang in there, regardless of what happens, and rejoice, because you have a great, great God.

Let's pray. Our Father, we're thankful for the lesson that we have in this Psalm, a very direct one that touches us where we live. We pray that you'll bless this to many people. That as they reflect on this, as we reflect on it now and in the days, weeks, perhaps years ahead, you'll bless us through your word and cause us to stand by faith and rejoice even as this great man Asaph learned to do. And to do it to the praise of the glory of the grace of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.

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