The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): We feel a sense of loss as we watch our country turn from the godly principles on which it was founded. But can you imagine how it would feel to have our nation overrun and our places of worship destroyed? As the psalmist grieves for Israel, he makes a plea for God to restore his people, but God has been silent. So what do we do when all seems lost and it appears God cannot be found?

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Psalm 74 is a psalm of faith as well as a psalm of tragedy as the psalmist Asaph reminds God of his promises and his covenant with his people. Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 74 and explains how we can boldly approach the throne of God when we find ourselves in a hopeless situation.

Dr. James Boice: From time to time in our study of the Psalms, I've had opportunity to point out how important psalm singing was to the Huguenots. The Huguenots were those persecuted Protestants that were driven out of France in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and the psalms were a great source of encouragement and stability to them.

This was recognized even by their enemies because under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, there were scores of edicts passed that forbade the Huguenots to use their psalters. Imagine that. It didn't bother them much, of course, because they knew the psalms by heart. They just hid their hymnbooks and then they went out in the forest and caves where they could sing with impunity, and they sang the psalms.

In the year 1686, one year after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which took away their civil rights, a number of these Huguenots in the province of Vosges were dispossessed of their homes and their possessions were confiscated. They did the only thing they could do; they made their way overland on foot through the mountains to Geneva, which even then was the city of refuge.

But many of them died on the way. It was a very difficult journey for them. When they arrived, they arrived exhausted, emaciated, but as they came into the city, they began to sing Psalm 74. In Geneva, there were lots of other persecuted people who had got there before them. They were French-speaking, and so as these Huguenots came in singing Psalm 74, the others joined in, and together this great psalm went up to heaven.

"Why have you rejected us forever, O God? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? Remember the people you purchased of old, the tribe you redeemed as your inheritance, Mount Zion where you dwelt." God did remember them in different ways from time to time because three years later, in 1689, this same psalm was sung in triumph by 700 of these survivors who returned to their homes led by their pastor, Henri Arnaud.

When they at last met in their own cities, in their own churches, this was the psalm they sang again. Now, one of the problems we have when we turn to these psalms, and we faced it before, is trying to find an historical setting for them or being sure what the historical setting is. That's sometimes difficult even when there's a notation in the title line to tell you what the historical setting is.

This psalm doesn't have any title line to tell us where it happened. It gives us the author, but it doesn't tell us the historical setting. And yet, there can be very little doubt what this psalm is really about. It concerns the fall of Jerusalem to King Nebuchadnezzar and his armies in 586 BC. The important point is the destruction of Jerusalem, and it's described again and again.

That's why I say we can date it from that period, maybe 10 or 15 years after the fall of the city. I should point out that there are scholars who have suggested another setting for it. They placed it later. There's a whole body of scholarship that wants to move the Old Testament material as late in time as possible for a variety of reasons, and some of them place this psalm, as well as others, in the time of the Maccabees, that is, when Antiochus Epiphanes defiled the temple.

One of the arguments they give in behalf of that is that verse 9 of the psalm says that no prophets are left and none of us knows how long this will be. These scholars point out that there were prophets who were left—Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example. Jeremiah, in one of his passages, too, actually—in the 25th chapter and also the 29th chapter—said that the captivity would last for 70 years.

So they say it cannot concern the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar; it must be later. Now, I don't find those arguments persuasive. Ezekiel was prophesying in Babylon; Jeremiah was carried away to Babylon. And you might ask the question, if Jeremiah is there in Babylon and he's writing down his prophecy, how many of the people really knew what Jeremiah had written?

They didn't have any newspapers to say, "Jeremiah prophesies it's going to last for 70 years." They didn't have any of that. I imagine this is the kind of thing that could easily have been said in that period: no prophets are left. The last were Jeremiah and Ezekiel and they're gone. And how do we know how long this is going to last?

I think that's the way it's given. The really decisive thing, in my judgment, is that Antiochus Epiphanes didn't destroy the temple, but he only profaned it. And what this psalm is describing is the destruction. It does it in very poignant, powerful, gripping, moving language. There is one thing puzzling about the title, however, and that is that it's called a psalm of Asaph.

The Asaph we know was a contemporary of David because David appointed him as one of the temple musicians. This man might have lived a long time, but he didn't live this long—that is, through all of the periods of the kings down to the final destruction of the city. So how do you explain that? Well, it might be another man by the same name.

Nothing surprising in that. If Asaph was known as a musician and here are people that are musicians, they might very well name their children Asaph in the hope that they might be as good as the Asaph that was the founder of the order. That would be one possible explanation. It might also be that the psalmist in that day, rather than calling attention to themselves, affixed the name of the well-known old Asaph to their own compositions.

At any rate, whoever this man was, he grieved for this fallen city, and he cries out passionately to God to hear him and move to reestablish his relationship with his fallen but covenanted people. Now, it's a very passionate psalm. We read it earlier, and you must be aware of how passionate it is. It's direct and honest, as all these psalms of Asaph tend to be. But at the same time, it's also respectful of God and wise.

It's really a model for how we ought to pray when things aren't going well, when tragedies come into our lives, and when it seems like the results of the tragedy are going on and on. How do you pray in a situation like that? Well, here's a psalm that gives us an answer. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who wrote *The Treasury of David*, a great masterful study of the psalms, says, "We have here before us a model of pleading, a very rapture of prayer. It is humble but very bold, eager, fervent, effectual. The heart of God is always moved by such entreaties."

Now, how do we outline it? I think the best way is simply to treat it as the stanzas appear in the New International Version. They follow the flow of the thought. That's what I'd like to do. Verses 1 and 2 form the first stanza, and at once they strike the psalm's tone. It's a sad, wailing tone. It's a lament. Jerusalem has been destroyed, its temple is in ruins, and the psalmist doesn't see any end to this.

He says it seems to him that it's going to last forever. That's a recurring word. If you look for "everlasting" and "forever," you find it occurring again and again throughout the psalm. There's only one other psalm that's quite like this, and that's Psalm 79, which is also identified as a psalm of Asaph. I don't know, as I said, exactly who this is, but these two Asaphs must be the same person because the two psalms are very much alike.

They use the same imagery, and they both ask in very forceful language, "God, is this really going to last forever?" There are other psalms that deal with the fall of Jerusalem. Psalm 137 is one, and then there are parts of Lamentations that do the same. Now, this first stanza is grim because it's a grim situation. This man's being honest. He's not pretending that things are nice when things aren't nice.

But at the same time, it's also a psalm of faith. It's indicated from the beginning, just as Psalm 73 indicated the faith of Asaph from the beginning. You recall that he's raising this question of why the wicked prosper and the godly don't do so well, and he says that his faith and feet had well-nigh slipped as he contemplated the prosperity of the wicked.

But at the very beginning of the psalm, he tells you where he comes out, so you don't doubt. And he says, "God is good to Israel." Now, you have the same sort of thing here in Psalm 74. God is asked to remember his purchased and redeemed people—that is, those who he has set apart to himself. So although the psalmist is describing bad times, he still understands that he belongs to the elect people of God, those that he's purchased for himself.

And so whatever the problems are, he's operating from within that framework. You see, that's the way we ought to approach God. God doesn't mind us asking what questions we may have, but he wants us to come believing, knowing that he's our God, that he's purchased us in Jesus Christ, and in that context say, "Look, this is the problem that I have."

Now, the second stanza is verses 3 to 8, and it's presenting a description of this ruined city. It's asking God to take a long, hard look at what's happened. What is chiefly concerning the psalmist here is that the enemies of God have destroyed the temple—that is, the place where God is worshipped. I mentioned that in Psalm 79 there's also a description of the destruction of the city and the land, but in Psalm 79 Asaph seems to be worrying more about the people—that is, the people that were scattered everywhere and were being harassed and were poor.

And here in this psalm, it's not so much the people that concerns him as the fact that the house of God has been destroyed. This is a very vivid poetry. You have to kind of get into it. It's using very lively language. What Asaph is doing, if we can think of it this way, is taking God by the hand and leading him through the ruins of the city and asking him to look at it, to see what's actually happened.

He's saying something like this: "Look, God, there's where they broke in, that hole in the wall over there. And over there is where they set up their military standards. That's a desecration of the holy place, but they did it. And there's where they attacked the carved paneling. You know how they did it? They were like men wielding an axe, cutting their way through a forest of trees.

They just came in here and all that beautiful stuff, they just hacked to pieces, and then they burned it down. There are the ashes. Look, those are the ashes of the temple. And furthermore, when they were done with that, they said, 'We're going to crush them completely,' so they went out and they made sure that they destroyed all the worshipping places of you, our God, throughout the land. Do you see that, God? Do you care?"

That's what he's doing in those verses. Well, that's pretty bold. It's bordering almost on impropriety in the way he talks to God, but at least he's talking to God. You see, you and I do a lot of complaining, but when we complain, it very seldom is to God. We usually complain to ourselves or we complain to one another, if anybody will listen to us. But here is Asaph—at least he brings his complaints to God.

There is an interesting question here that's a little bit of a problem for people, and that is that in verse 8, this man uses the plural to refer to all the assemblies or assembling places. The New International Version translates that "every place where God was worshipped." Now, that has been used as an argument for dating the psalm in the time of the Maccabees rather than after the fall of the city to Nebuchadnezzar because the synagogues that became so characteristic of the Jewish dispersion didn't develop until the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, so that was later.

There's probably a variety of explanations. Some have said, "Well, when it says places of assembly, it's referring to the various parts of the temple because you could assemble in different places, like here. You can assemble in the main sanctuary, you can assemble in the basement, in another building, and so forth." Well, the temple had courts and storehouses and chambers and so forth. I don't think either of those arguments are really necessary.

Although there weren't formal synagogues in the period that I think the psalm refers to, they certainly had places they meant to worship. You know, the Jews went up to Jerusalem regularly every year several times for the feasts—the prescribed feasts—when they were supposed to do that. But everybody couldn't do it. They couldn't do it all the time. They couldn't bring all their families. Certainly they had places where they worshipped.

And what the psalmist is saying here is, "These men, these enemies, these soldiers, weren't content merely with tearing down your temple. They actually went throughout the land and they destroyed every place that it was customary for us to get together and worship you. So what are you going to do about it? There is no place left for us to worship God throughout the land."

Well, it leads us to the next stanza, verses 9 through 11, where this lament reaches its lowest point. It's an expression of utter abandonment. McLaren, one of the commentators, says, "This is the kernel of the psalm around which all the rest of it is folded systematically." What seems to happen here is that the psalm descends to this point, and then from this point begins to move upward again. It's exactly what we saw in the preceding psalm.

The psalmist begins telling you where his faith came out, but then he describes his downhill path, and he says, "I got turned around when I went into the church, when I went into the synagogue," and then it starts back up again and it ends where it began. Well, you have something like that here. This is the lowest point. You say, "Well, what is this low point? What is it that Asaph is really complaining about?"

After all, the city has been overrun, the temple is destroyed, all of the worshipping places for God throughout the land are nonexistent, the people are poor, impoverished. What is it that really bothers him the most? Here's what he says: "We are given no miraculous signs; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be." You see, that's what really bothers him. There's no word of God in the land.

Now, it's hard to read that without remembering the book of Amos because Amos prophesied that that's what would happen. Remember in the eighth chapter of that minor prophet, Amos says, "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign Lord, "when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord." You see, that's the bad thing.

That's what makes it desperate. It's a terrible thing to no longer have a word from God. Now, I don't think we can say that in America. I do think preaching in America is at an abysmal ebb. What passes for preaching is hardly the word of God at all. It's filled with attempts to entertain and stories, and it's dramatic and kind of things that appeal to people in a kind of mindless age in which we live.

That's not good. But you can't say that there's no word of God available in the land. There may be a lot of trashy books out there, but there are a lot of good books, too. There might be a lot of disgraceful television and radio programs, but there are a lot of good programs, too. There may be churches that have virtually abandoned the evangelical gospel, but there are others, many of them, in which the gospel is really preached.

Our problem is not that we don't have the word of God; our problem is that we don't care about the word of God. And, of course, that's why we begin to lose it. We don't care about it enough to study it. How many Christians—those who call themselves evangelical, born-again people—regularly study the Bible? We're supposed to. I suppose if you get a group of Christians together, they'll say, "Oh yes, we're supposed to have a quiet time."

But we don't do it. I don't think the church in America is composed of people who are doing that. And not only studying the Bible—how many memorize the Bible? We're told in the Bible itself to lay up these words in your heart. David says that in the Psalms, in order that we might not sin against God. But we don't do that. We treat the Bible lightly and we allow countless other things of far lesser value—things like television—to just come in and take the Bible's place.

The average family has television on seven and a half hours a day. The average person watches it several hours a day. A percentage of that spent in Bible study would revolutionize our age, but we don't do it. We really don't value it. Now, as I said, here's a place to apply it. This is the low point of the psalm, it's what's bothering Asaph. We have the word of God; do you really spend time in it? Your attitude should be that of John Wesley, the great Methodist evangelist, who said in his journal, "Give me that book. At any price, give me the word of God."

Well, at the end of the previous stanza, the low point, the psalmist addressed himself to God, protesting that the offenses he saw were not directed against him so much or against the people so much, but they were directed against God. That was the point. In their wanton destruction of the temple, the enemies of God were actually dishonoring God. And so that led him to think of how great this true God, his God, really is. Now, at this point, he asks not only his enemies to remember God, but he begins to remember God himself.

And this is where the psalm starts up. In the commentaries, there are several ways of looking at these verses. I'm referring to verses 12 through 17. The older commentators see that imagery as referring to the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt in poetic language. This matter of dividing the water sounds like the parting of the Red Sea and so forth. This Leviathan is understood by some of them to be a crocodile and as a symbol for Egypt and so forth. They handle it that way.

The modern commentators, influenced by a lot of comparative religious studies, especially the kind of things that were believed by the Canaanites, say that Leviathan is actually a mythical monster, one that was overcome by Baal in the Canaanite worship. And so what the psalmist is saying here is that it's Jehovah, not Baal, who has actually conquered Leviathan. Well, I don't have much sympathy with that point of view, but I'm not sure you really have to take the other view in that kind of interpreting the verses either.

I think what you have here is something very similar to what you have in those great chapters of Job, where God is confronting Job with his power to do everything and his ability to do everything in heaven and on earth. This is shorter, it doesn't go on for chapter after chapter, but it's that sort of thing. If you just take these references here—not trying to find some mystical meaning for them, but just at face value for what they say—they seem to indicate that God works in history and in his saving acts.

He delivers through miraculous interventions. He provides life-giving water. He governs the night and the day and the seasons. And the bottom line of all of this is that God is all-powerful, and it's simply for us to do what Job did when, at the end of that interrogation, he said in the 42nd chapter, verse 2, "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted." See, I think that's where it comes out. I think that's what the psalmist is saying.

He's saying God can do all things. And not only can God do all things, he does. He's in charge. He ordains, as the confession says, whatsoever comes to pass. And you see, Christians really know that. They know that God is in charge of all of life, and therefore, even when they go through the most discouraging things in life and suffer sometimes the greatest tragedies, they take confidence in the sovereignty of a benevolent God.

And they say, "God, I don't understand what you're doing, but I know that you're the God who makes day and night. I know you're the God who makes the seasons. I know you're the God who has delivered your people in the past. I know you're the God who sent Jesus Christ to be the Savior. So even though I don't know what's going on, I know you're in charge and I know this isn't accidental. And so I rest in you. I have to rest in you. What else can I rest in?"

You see, that's what believers know. That's what gets them through hard times. Christians suffer things like everybody else, but they do it in the light of the knowledge of the power and goodness of almighty God. Now, the last section, having now reviewed all that God is able to do and does, is actually a plea for God to intervene. It's where you'd expect the psalm to end up—verses 18 through 23. He does it in a variety of ways, but the new and very powerful idea here is the covenant.

A covenant is an agreement. If we sign a covenant with somebody, they agree to do something, we agree to do something—a sort of formal agreement, and you ratify it in a formal way. Now, in the Bible, the covenants are sometimes like that, but mostly they're an agreement that is established and entered into by God. That is, it doesn't depend on our reciprocal response to it. In other words, God says, "I'm going to make a covenant with you. I'm going to choose you to be my people. This is what I'm going to do for you, and you have to live for me."

That is the way it is usually used. A great example, of course, is Abraham. God established this covenant with Abraham to be his God and to make of him a great people through whom the Messiah would come. You read about the words of the covenant in Genesis 12, and you don't find God negotiating with Abraham—"Abraham, I'll do this for you if you do this for me." That's not the way it's said at all.

God simply says to Abraham, "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to a land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Now, that's a biblical covenant. And here in this last stanza, the psalmist has appealed to God on the basis of his covenant.

Why is that such a good appeal? Well, because it's unilateral. It's something that God has done. It's a promise that he himself has made. If it was a conditional covenant depending upon something that we're going to do, it wouldn't be a basis for an appeal at all. The people disobeyed God, God destroyed their city—that's the end of it. What possible appeal could you have? But the psalmist says, "We've failed all right, no doubt about that. And you've judged us, no doubt about that. You look around, there's all the rubble.

But nevertheless, you're the God of the covenant. You made a covenant with us to be our people. Remember how I began, 'the people whom you have redeemed and purchased for your own possession'? You've done that. We belong to you. And so my question is, how long is this going to go on before you actually intervene and begin to work with us again and reestablish us as we pray we might be reestablished?" Now, that brings me to what I want to say in conclusion.

I mentioned Spurgeon earlier. One of the interesting things that Spurgeon writes about, if you're familiar with his writings, is prayer, and in particular, praying to God with arguments. Spurgeon was very big on that. We sometimes get edgy there. We say, "Ah, you know, you don't argue with God." Well no, that's right, you don't argue with God. But when you pray, you ought to pray with arguments because really, that's only a way of saying you're praying rationally. And if it doesn't do any good to God, it certainly is going to do good for you.

But at any rate, Spurgeon said that's the way you ought to pray: "Bring forth your mighty reasons." And with that in mind, I want you to go back and just look at this. Here's a man in the midst of a ruined nation with a ruined city and a ruined temple. Things seem to be going on and on. There's no intervention by God. He's asking God to intervene. And why does he ask him to do it? Well, here are the reasons. Number one, God should act because the people who are suffering from his harsh but righteous judgment are only sheep.

Remember how he begins? They are poor, silly, defenseless things. Just sheep, the sheep of his pasture. God ought to have pity on them because they're just sheep. Oh, they're sinful and they're wayward, but still they're sheep. Have pity on us, is what he's saying. Number two, God should act because he's already purchased these poor, silly, defenseless people for himself. That is, he's already spent a great deal of effort on them, and they're no better now than when he first redeemed them.

So if he redeemed them when they were just poor, silly, defenseless things, act now because that's what they are. Number three, God should act not merely because the people have suffered, but because his temple has been destroyed and so the prescribed formal worship of God by his people is ceased. It's good for God to be praised, but they can't do it—there's no temple. And so the psalmist wants God to act so they can get the worship of God going again.

Number four, God should act because the people's case is hopeless otherwise. You see, he's disturbed that there are no miraculous signs, there are no prophets. Where are they going to come from? They can't come from human beings; they have to come from God. "We can't help ourselves," is what he's saying. "So if we're going to get any help at all, it has to come from you." Number five, God should act because the mocking by Israel's enemies is really a mocking of God.

It's not that our name is being discredited—we don't have any name at all—it's God's name that's being discredited. So he says, "Act for your own sake, that your name might be honored." Number six, God should act because he has acted powerfully and wonderfully in the past. It's his nature to make his greatness known. He's done it in the past; why shouldn't he do it again? "That's what you're like; now's the time to act," is what he's saying.

Number seven, God should act because he has entered into an everlasting covenant with his people, and the terms of that covenant call for God to be with them forever. It's true they've been unfaithful, but let me quote Paul, Romans 3:3: "What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness? No. Let God be true and every man a liar." Spurgeon calls that verse the master key to Asaph's pleading because whatever happens, God does not break his covenants.

And so when we appeal to his covenants, we have a forceful argument indeed. Number eight, God should act because it is fitting that his enemies be rebuked and the poor and the needy praise his name. That'll happen if he acts. It's fitting that it be done. Finally, number nine, God should act because it is his cause and not a mere man's cause that is in jeopardy. It's God's purposes that are being opposed by Israel's enemies.

That would be worth taking down. It would be worth using as a pattern, a model, a checkboard for your own prayers. Do you ever pray like that? Let me suggest that if you're struggling with something important in your life, if you have a difficulty, if God doesn't seem to be answering, why don't you just do what Asaph does? Make a list of the reasons why God should answer your prayer.

If you can make a list like this, well, you might be getting somewhere. You'll certainly be learning something about God, and God will answer. If God doesn't answer—well, you'll probably find that your prayer wasn't such a good prayer anyway, your arguments really don't hold up, and maybe God will use it to lead you to pray for something even better. Let's pray.

Our Father, we're thankful for this psalm and for the way it bares the soul of this honest man Asaph. We're not usually that honest. We put on with other people because we have an idea of how Christians ought to behave and how they ought to speak and how they ought to pray, and we don't quite want to let out what's really in our hearts.

But here's a man who did it, and yet who did it recognizing that you are his God and what he really needs to do is come to terms with you. And so he pleads not his righteousness himself—he doesn't have any—but he pleads your character, your power, your covenants, and your nature. Our Father, teach us to do that. We are so self-centered. Teach us what it really is to be God-centered and so actually have a Christian world and life view, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

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