Speaker 1: 0:04

So glad that you're able to worship the Lord with us this morning. My name is Dwight. I'm an interim pastor here at Westtown Church. If we've not had a chance to meet yet, I would greatly appreciate if you could introduce yourself after the service. I would love to get to know you as a church.

Speaker 1: 0:18

This summer we are going through the book of Psalms, looking at the different types of Psalms contained in that book. We've talked about Psalms of praise, we've talked about the kingship or royalty Psalms, we've talked about Psalms of wisdom, and this morning we're going to be looking at another type of Psalm, known as a remembrance Psalm. And we've mentioned before how seldom it is that a Psalm is simply one type of or one type of Psalm, and we'll see that this morning. The beginning of the Psalm is going to start off with heavy lament and complaint and then there's going to be a turn in the Psalm talking about remembrance. And when we think of troubles and difficulties in life, they at times can really shake our faith. And there is a teaching that is popular in many parts of the Christian community, known as the health and wealth or the prosperity gospel, that says and I am exaggerating here that says essentially that, if your faith is strong in the Lord and His promises that your life is going to be great, you're going to have personal affluence and prosperity, your spouse is always going to look as good as they did on the day that you married them, your kids are going to be successful, your bank accounts are going to be flush, you're going to have a wonderful retirement set aside and really heaven is now is essentially what the prosperity gospel teaches, and that kind of teaching just does not stack up with Scripture, nor does it stack up with the experience of God's people.

Speaker 1: 2:10

I spent one summer three months, in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. At the time that I was there, the average annual income was under $150 a year. These people were exceptionally poor. I loved worshiping with my Haitian brothers and sisters in Christ. They had a vibrance and depth of faith that I seldom experienced in my own walk with Christ and didn't witness so much around me either at that time. Or if you think about the underground church in Iran or in China, where the church of God is growing and people's faith is deep and rich, even though they are enduring great suffering, you can see that the prosperity, health and wealth gospel just does not stack up with Scripture or reality. But it does bring us to the first point of our sermon this morning, which reminds us that oftentimes when we see these examples in Scripture that God's people can face great faith-challenging trouble.

Speaker 1: 3:30

I'm going to read the first part of Psalm 77. Start off with the first three verses. Here I cry aloud to God. Aloud to God, and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord. In the night, my hand is stretched out without wearing. My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Now the title of the Psalm tells us that Asif wrote the Psalm. He was one of the chief musicians that David had appointed for the worship in the temple. We don't know specifically what his trouble is, as in many Psalms, and that's really a benefit, because then it's easier, more easy to transfer the setting of that Psalm to perhaps some difficulties that we are experiencing. But notice the intensity and the duration of his trouble. He talks about crying out to God and crying aloud. So great is his hardship or his difficulty that he has to give outward voice to it to God, and so intense is his trouble that he is able to hold up his hands all night long and his arms don't get tired. So greatly is he dependent upon God, so greatly is he looking for an answer that he is crying out in great distress to the Lord. But the man gets no relief. He mentions in verse two how he seeks the Lord and yet how his soul refuses to be comforted. And he goes on.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Verse four you hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, many years long ago I said let me remember my song in the night, let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search. It's interesting when you look at verse four, that he says God is holding his eyelids open. He can trace back his suffering to the throne of God, as he sees God as the cause behind whatever his struggle or his difficulty is. So terrible is his suffering that he's unable to speak. He thinks, and you see the contrast here, right? He goes from crying aloud on one hand to another hand being so overwhelmed that he can't even speak. And he thinks about past times of blessing when he was up all night singing God's praises. And he reflects diligently to understand the contrast between those times of rich fellowship and blessing and his current need and trouble, and he is deeply distressed. In fact, so great is his distress that it gives rise to six faith-shaking questions, questions beginning in verse seven. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he, in anger, shut up his compassion? Do you see the contrast that's presented here? The writer is talking about how he is remembering seasons of past blessing, but it seems as though God has forgotten to be compassionate to him now.

Speaker 1: 7:30

We have talked in other sermons about the objection that suffering in the world can often present to people who are wrestling with the topic of faith and the ethics of if there is a good God, how can there be suffering in the world? And that's an important question and we've tried to answer it on other occasions. That's not our focus today. Our focus today is when we are wrestling in our own faith with the goodness of God as a result of our personal distress. How can we have those challenges to our faith resolved Now? It is interesting that, even though we may reject the teaching of the prosperity gospel that we can behave like it's true. And by that what I mean is could you imagine if somebody came into your Bible study and prayed these verses? It would be shocking, wouldn't it? Somebody calling out to God and accusing God of failing to be gracious, of God anger burning against them forever.

Speaker 1: 8:37

And so what do we do? We put on our Christian game face, we suppress our problems and our difficulties that we are suffering and we put on the joyful Christian look, because that's what we're supposed to be right, christians are always happy and joyful is what the culture tells us. And yet meanwhile we're struggling deeply inside and we are not finding relief. Nor are we availing ourselves to the help of the body of Christ to resolve those difficulties and doubts. We should not be surprised by suffering. We should not, as Christians, be surprised that at times our faith is challenged even to its very core. But we have to be careful. We should never make doubt an issue of virtue where we sort of glory and boast in our doubts. But nor should we shame people for having doubts. As Jude says in his letter, be merciful to those who doubt. So if we look at our own history, the community of faith and scripture, we can see that God's people often time endure great hardship that challenges their faith. Let's accept that reality but then see how scripture calls us that we can begin to resolve some of those difficulties. Which leads us to our second point. In our trouble, god calls us to remember.

Speaker 1: 10:12

Now you might be wondering, well, what good is remembering when Asif, in verse six, remembered his times of past blessing and yet all that brought to him was accentuating his current need and how he was deprived of the blessing of God. So remembering didn't really work there. So how can remembering be helpful to us? Now, I don't by any stretch intend to paint this topic in simplistic terms, nor do I want to minimize the real and intense struggles that people can be enduring, but I do wish to point out that there can be different types of remembering that bring different types of results. There is an ineffective kind of remembering that leaves us in our distress, and there is a fruitful kind of remembering that can bring us onto the path of resolving those difficulties of faith, even if our difficult circumstances persist. So what is this type of remembering that Asif speaks of? Well, let's look at verses 10 through 20.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Asif says and notice the turning point here with the word then. Then I said I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the most high. I will remember the deeds of the Lord, yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, oh God, is holy. What God is great like our God. You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples. You, with your arm, redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. When the water saw you, oh God, when the water saw you, they were afraid. Indeed, that deep trembled. It was right at this point, at the nine o'clock service, there was a great peel of thunder outside Couldn't have orchestrated it in any way, but the Lord, I'm sorry it's with the next verse I meant to say where do the clouds pour out? Wonder, the skies gave forth thunder and your arrows slashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the world wind, your lightnings lighted up in the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea, your path through all the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Speaker 1: 13:13

Okay, so if there is an ineffective way of remembering and there's a more fruitful path to remembering, what does scripture mean by remembering that helps us in our distress and encourages our faith? Well, if you look at verses 11 and 12, there are three words that are used for the idea of remembering. Verse 11 says I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. So word remembers one. Verse 12, I will ponder all your work. That's another the word ponder. And then the last is I will meditate on your mighty deeds, the word meditate. Now, those three words and these two verses translate three different Hebrew words that help us to understand what remembering involves and in fact, even the verb tenses bring out the richness of what is here.

Speaker 1: 14:10

Now, a lot of times when we hear people talk about meditation, if you will like, verse 12 mentions we can think of Eastern religions that practice meditation, and the objective of many of those forms of meditation is to empty our minds and to become one with the nothingness of the universe. Now, in some settings that may bring tranquility, but it's not what the Bible describes as remembering. It's not an emptying of our minds, rather it's a filling of our minds of the word of God and what he has done in our lives in the community of faith. That will call us to remember who God is and what he's done. The words for ponder and meditate have at their root the idea of grumbling and chewing, and you might be wondering what on earth does that have to do with meditation? Well, think about when you murmur, you mumble sort of under your breath. In that sense you're complaining, but it's sort of like a constant reminding of yourself. It's a talking to yourself in the biblical sense. It is an ongoing reminding yourself of the truth contained in the word of God and you sort of chew on it, you break it apart, you pull it all back together, you apply it to your current distress and your difficulty to see how your circumstances relate to the character and the working of God, and you try to bring an increase of your understanding of who God is for the growing of your faith.

Speaker 1: 15:53

Ji Packer defines it like this it is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a communion with God. Its purpose is to clear one's mental and spiritual vision of God and to let his truth make its full and proper impact on one's mind and one's heart. So that is the idea that's contained behind remembering and the idea of meditation. But what are we to remember? What is it that we're supposed to ponder upon and apply to our situation and our distress? That will hopefully help us and increase our faith. Now, this is where the big difference between the different types of remembering come into play, and the first nine verses that I've described as being an ineffectual type of remembering. We can compare that to the remainder of the Psalm, and in the first six verses the writer refers to himself I, my and me 20 times and he refers to God six times. In the last eight verses verses 13 through 20, there are 21 mentions of God and zero personal references.

Speaker 1: 17:23

Now, I am not implying here. Please do not understand, misunderstand what I'm trying to say. I am not trying to say that when we go to prayer, that we do not express our problems, our troubles and our struggles with the faith. We absolutely must do that. But we have to get beyond that and look at the bigger picture. If you were to take a penny, it's a pretty small thing in comparison to the size of this room, right, but if you hold it up to your eye, it becomes your whole world. And that can be the way problems strike.

Speaker 1: 18:00

And if that is true with a small issue or a small problem, that we become so focused on it that it clouds out the vision of the rest of the things that we should be aware of. Think about a life consuming trauma, that it can affect people, and how easy it is for that then to become our sole focus. That blocks out any other information that may actually be of help to us. And so there's this struggle, there's this pull between giving voice to our distress and God, but then taking a step back and letting God speak, if you will, and seeing how he is revealed in his fullness in scripture, how we've been able to see him work in our own personal histories of you know, god helped me back then. Surely I should think that God's gonna help me now, where we can take benefit from the community of faith and their similar journeys, as well as all of Christian history and the history of scripture. We must avail ourselves to that benefit in order for it to shed light on our current trouble and distress. So then, what do we remember? Well, we remember God's character, as we see in verse 10 and verses 13 through 15,.

Speaker 1: 19:19

The writer here brings to mind three aspects of God's character. He refers to God being holy in verse 13. He refers to God's might, how God is holy and mighty throughout those verses. And then he concludes by referring to how caring God is in verses 15 and 20, even referring to God as a shepherd of his people. Now, when we're in distress, when we confront suffering, aren't those exactly the very areas that we begin to question the character of God? We may feel like God is doing us wrong, that God is in acting right towards us, that we have done what is expected of us, but God is not acting that way in regards to us. That's what holiness is. Holiness is God's, not only his transcendence, his bigness over everything, but it is his own moral purity, and that he interacts with his moral creatures in righteousness and goodness. God always does what is right. I understand troubles and circumstances may challenge that notion, but then that's where we are called to evaluate our lives, not on the basis of our circumstances, but we know to be true about God in his word and in his past dealings in our lives, even though the present circumstances are at odds with it.

Speaker 1: 20:52

Think about the next area God being mighty. There are times that people say, trying to be helpful, that God is good, it's just that he can't help us, or we may be led to think that God can help other people, but he can't or he won't help us. And there are even books written why bad things happen to good people, and the conclusion of the book was that God's a pretty nice guy, it's just that he's not powerful enough to take care of all the problems that are in the world. That's terrible theology that leads to great distress. No, god is mighty. The passage speaks of God's right arm as a picture of his strength and his might, that there's absolutely nothing that is too difficult for him. But then we're balancing that power with the great care and goodness of God as being a shepherd to his people. So the writer then highlights those three aspects, but of course God reveals himself in many other ways throughout the rest of scripture.

Speaker 1: 21:59

That it's important for us to call to remembrance, that we also remember God's works, as verses 11 and 12 and verses 15 through 20. Remind us, you know, we can recall things like the way God delivered us from a past time of distress or if we're a part of the community of faith and we can see the way in which God has moved and worked in our brothers and sisters in lives. And this is where church history is so helpful, as we look back on how God has moved and worked in his people's lives in the past. And of course, we have Scripture as well. But the primary thing, as we consider all of the works of God, what we come back to is God's great work of redemption.

Speaker 1: 22:50

And in the end of the Psalm, when it's talking about waters and thunder and all of these things, it's referring to God leading the people out of their bondage in Egypt through the Exodus, through the blood of the Lamb spread on their doorposts, where they were redeemed and delivered. And that is the Old Testament greatest act of redemption and deliverance that points us to our deliverance through Jesus Christ. The redemption that we have in Christ, where we were in bondage to an oppressor in sin far greater than ourselves, where we were unable to release ourselves from that bondage, but through Christ's blood, the blood of the Lamb, by paying the debt of our sin upon the cross and rising again from the dead, the Lord has delivered us from our sin, and so we remember the song that we sang a little while ago that told us to remember the empty grave. In your struggles, in your difficulties, remember that Jesus has conquered death and the grave. And if God has taken care of the greatest need that we will ever face, surely we know that God is not going to abandon us, even in those seasons and difficulties where we feel like he is not with us. We need to let the truth of Scripture control our view of the struggles and the trials that we face together.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Well, how do we remember? We've looked at what remembering is and what particular things that we are to call to mind in our distress. But how do we do that? Well, we've talked about meditation. I'm not going to mention that. I'm just going to mention three other things from the Psalm in the broader context of Scripture. One's going to be controversial, one is going to be very common and one's going to be a little bit unusual for us. Let's start with a controversial one, shall we? So? There are different places that Scripture calls us to remember. We should remember God's day.

Speaker 1: 25:00

In Exodus, chapter 20, scripture says remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. We know that there are some who will say that the commandment to remember the Sabbath is the only commandment that is not repeated out of the Ten Commandments in the New Testament and therefore it doesn't have any validity for New Testament believers. Well, I don't agree. When you look at Scripture, the Sabbath pattern was initiated at creation, before sin entered the world. God worked six days, he rested the seventh day. He codified it in the Ten Commandments. Why would nine of them be ongoing and one not?

Speaker 1: 25:46

You would expect there to be some kind of provision saying, hey, all these are still in force except this one, if it wasn't going to continue like the rest of them, and then Jesus himself observed the Sabbath, setting the example for us. But then remember that our future salvation, in terms of going to glory, where the Lord will bring all of his work to completion, is described in Scripture as entering our Sabbath rest. Our God is so good that he put into our weekly rhythms one day out of seven that we should set aside so that we would remember God's great works of redemption, that we would remember God's blessings to us, that we would compare them then to the struggles and the trials that we face and how the Lord would call us to follow him. But here's the thing even if you don't believe that the Sabbath is an ongoing, valid commandment for today, surely the period of rest and remembering within the context of our lives should be an important one, and you should do it on some regular basis anyway, because that is the example that God has set himself for us. And so we set aside our worldly employment, we set aside many of the activities that we ordinarily occupy and fill our days with, so that we have intentional time together with God within the community of faith, within our families and individually, where we rehearse what God has done for the benefit of our souls, and it greatly assists the people of God. My email is Dwight at Westtownchurchorg. I will take questions and complaints Should you feel the need.

Speaker 1: 27:43

But we remember not only through his day, but we also remember through his supper. We remember the very common words of Jesus in Luke 22. After he took the bread and he gave thanks, he gave it to them saying this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so the Lord's Supper is described as a means of grace, where we recall God's past act of redemption and we bring its blessings into our present as we reflect on what God has done for us and how it should influence our daily lives, where we forsake sin and we cling to Christ, where we have our doubts resolved by looking at the redemption portrayed for us in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and where we cling to the hope that Jesus said that he would not drink of the fruit of the vine and again, until that day when he drinks it anew with us in his father's kingdom, that we know that, because Christ has conquered the grave, that we are more than conquerors through him, and even though there is suffering in this life and we understand it's intense, we know it's temporal, and glory will follow, and that should encourage our hearts and souls. So, yes, you should be remembering the Sabbath every week and gathering with God's people to worship and setting aside time in your individual devotions, but especially on the first Sunday of the week. No, that made no sense. The first Sunday of the month you should gather with us as we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper together and greatly encourage your soul Now. So that was the common one. We've done with the controversial one. We've addressed the common one and I'm gonna address the uncommon one, at least in terms of a lot of sermons, because most sermons at this point would conclude read the Bible and pray right as a way of remembering, and those are valid probably for every sermon, for every believer. But I wanna encourage you to do something else Sing his songs First. Six.

Speaker 1: 29:57

The ASAP, remembers singing his song in the night in the time of his distress. You know the book of Psalms, which Jesus playlist. It was his song book. It were the songs that the Jewish people in the Old Testament synagogues that carried over into the New Testament. That was a part of their regular worship and we find the encouragement to sing all throughout the Psalms. Psalm 146, verse two I will sing, I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

Speaker 1: 30:37

Singing is an important part of the Christian life. One of the things that I so greatly enjoy about the Psalms are the way in which it gives voice to the everyday circumstances that we face. We don't sing a whole lot of songs that talk about crying aloud to the Lord in our distress and holding our hands up through the night and crying out to him and so on and so forth. But we encounter those experiences and when we sing the Psalms, we join the saints of the ages who, in the past years, have sung of similar distress but also found their relief, and who God is and what he's done. I encourage you to sing as part of your devotions.

Speaker 1: 31:21

Now you might think I can't sing. Well, I can't sing. In fact, I describe myself as a prison singer. You know what that is, a prison singer? Somebody that's two bars behind and can't find the key. And I am always careful that the guys operating the sound booth know to mute my mic when we're singing, because nobody should hear that. But in my private devotions I'll get on YouTube, I'll get on Spotify, I'll put on some music and I'll begin to worship the Lord by praising him. It's a wonderful gift that God's given us. It's one that we don't talk about much when we talk about growing in our faith.

Speaker 1: 32:02

And if you would like to begin to sing some Psalms I don't whether you're more of a traditionalist or more of a contemporary one of the great things in the last several years is there's been a resurgence in the singing of the Psalms, and it's wonderful. So you can find contemporary versions of the Psalms. You can find old traditional versions of the Psalms. Talk to some of our music folk up here If you're looking for some. If you wanna go on YouTube and search, type in Shane and Shane, s-h-a-n-e Psalms and then you'll come up with a whole list of contemporary Psalms that they've done.

Speaker 1: 32:37

And if you got your recommendations turned on, that will lead you to other groups like indelible grace and sovereign grace music, where they do a wonderful job setting the Psalms to contemporary settings and you can begin making a part of your devotional practices singing the Psalms and other Christian songs. Word of caution just don't go on YouTube and type in Psalms because you will get some secular rapists songs and, trust me, you don't wanna hear that. The Christian rap music adaptations of the Psalm are great. Go for it. The secular ones no, you don't wanna go there. So in your distress, in your difficulty, when things in life oppress us, remember, remember his day, remember his supper, remember his songs and cry out to God in your distress that he would meet you by his grace. Let us pray.