The Hand of God (Psalm 77)

Posted by Chris on June 27, 2004 under Sermons

The Questions That Keep Us Awake At Night:

I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought theLord; at night I stretched out untiring hands and my soul refused to be comforted. I rememberedyou, O God, and I groaned; I mused, and my spirit grew faint. You kept my eyes from closing; Iwas too troubled to speak.

If we can be perfectly honest, most of us would admit to asking questions that keep us awake atnight. We might call it stress or too much coffee, but there are terrors, fears and doubts that strikein our most vulnerable hours. We pace the floor or lay awake with our eyes wide open staring intothe empty dark. The quiet intimidates us. We find it difficult to even name our feelings or the exactreason why we are distressed. It is there, but we cannot speak about it.

3,000 years after the Psalms we have available to us a variety of remedies: The “quick-fixes” of ourage – some of them are socially unacceptable (alcohol, drug abuse, pornography). Some are lesscontroversial (anti-depressants, TV, chocolate and carbs). Yet, the “quick-fixes” of all sorts have atendency to fail – if we can be perfectly honest with one another. Even the religious “quick-fixes”fail us – these are the pat answers that attempt to repair our grief and distress:

When minister, William Sloane Coffin, lost his twenty-four-year-old son, Alex, in a terribleautomobile accident, he said he received letters, cards and telephone calls from manyfriends and acquaintances, all of them well-meaning, but very few of them helpful. He saidsome of the worst of them came from my fellow ministers who proved by what they said thatthey know more about the Bible than they do about the human heart. “I know all of the rightBiblical passages,” said Coffin, “Blessed are they who mourn. Weeping endures for thenight, but joy comes in the morning. I know all of that. But the depth of my grief made thosewords unreal.” (see Thomas Long, “Through the Churning Waters,” at 30 Good Minutes http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/long_4603.htm)

It’s hard to know what to say to those who hurt – (sometimes I think we err to the other extreme bysaying nothing at all – thus alienating those who hurt.) But, if we are perfectly honest with oneanother, we all hurt, don’t we? Now I know that it is considered presumptuous to say to thegrieving – “I know how you feel” when in fact we cannot ever know exactly how someone else feels- and it is meaningless to say “I know how you feel” it doesn’t really do any good. But “everybodyhurts, sometimes.” Right?

The Psalms are not an attempt to fix the hurt. They are the perfect honesty of God’s people who areexperiencing grief, fear, doubt. They are a proclamation that those who hurt are not alone. We haveseen how each psalmist pours out his heart in anguish and despair. He doesn’t express it simply forone verse or two verses or three verses, he goes on and on and on with his grief. But more still, thePsalms are perfectly honest before God.

In Psalm 77, the perfect honesty of the hurting soul gets right to the core of matter – Has Godturned against me? “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has hisunfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to bemerciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”

Then the moment of perfect honesty: I will say it, “What really wounds me is that the righthand of God Most High (El-Elyon) has changed.” – 77:10 [In my opinion, the NIV translation of thisverse (v. 10 in English, v. 11 in Hebrew) does not communicate the sense of the Hebrew, which communicateshonest disappointment and hurt (chalôthî) and concern that the Right Hand (yemin) of the Most High (Elyon) haschanged (?enôth). See the Contemporary English Version translation of this verse.]

Right Hand of God Most High: God is supposed to be watching over us with his strong right handof power. He is the Most High – the ultimate power. But it seems like all that has changed. That’snot right. It seems disrespectful, we ought to know our place – but the question is “Is God in hisplace?”

And ironically, false humility cannot do what perfect honesty does: the honest admission – the angerand disappointment with God opens a door to a new hope. It is as if there is a breakthrough in therelationship.

Like a couple who have been in a “cold war” for years, their relationship only has a hopeof being healed when the partners decide to be perfectly honest – rather than avoid conflict,they face it head on and all the past comes welling up.

The Psalmist also decides to dredge the past – to remember who God is and what God has done inthe past. He pulls out the old albums and scrapbooks of his memory … I will remember the deedsof the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your worksand consider all your mighty deeds.

The Faith that Gives Us Hope Day and Night

Your ways, O God, are holy. What god is so great as our God?
You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples.

The movie, “The Story of Us” is about a couple planning to divorce. In the end they resolve to staytogether because they have a story – they have a history both good and bad and they just can’t startover with someone else. For no one else shares their story. (For more information see http://www.smartmarriages.com/story.of.us.html Note: “The Story of Us” is rated R by the MPAA. Do not assume that mention of this movie or the SmartMarriages Impact award constitutes anendorsement of the film. You are urged to use your own judgment in deciding whether to see thisor any movie.)

The movie realizes something so often missed in the real world: that knowing someone involves alot more than just being happy with him or her. Knowing someone involves much more. It involvestime, trust & faith.

Relationships – How do we really know someone? [To explore the concept of knowing God, I recommendPhillip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).] It takes time. Taking someonefor granted seems bad, but there is something wonderful about the stability of a long term relationshipfor it is the unnoticed, ordinary, everyday things that make all the difference. These are the coresubstance of the relationship. Certainly we always want to honor and show grace to those we love(because we certainly need it! – and this is where trust is important), but what sort of a relationshipis built on having to continually make progressive effort to maintain it lest it collapse – with that inmind it will at some point break down – because we are breaking down!

Now, if even our best human relationships are built on time, trust and faith, then isn’t that true ofour relationship with God?

If we are perfectly honest as we look over our history with God we see that there is much we havetaken for granted. Things we may not have noticed that are in fact the substance of the relationship. We discover all over again that God’s ways are holy and there is no one else like him – we just don’thave a story or history with any other God.

Ok, but relationships change and what if God has changed? The days of miracles and power haveceased, right? – What if we really just cannot expect much from God anymore? That’s the tragedyof it isn’t it. In our effort to make faith reasonable and then to prevent God from being the magicpower of hucksters and well-intentioned people who want to put a claim on God so he will grantthree wishes – maybe we reduced God to a code of ethics or an overseer of standards and practices. But this extreme is no better than the one we tried to avoid. If God is limited then is he still God? If we cannot expect greatness and power from God then is he still God? Is he God for us? Magnifying the problem of trust and faith is the fact that God isn’t seen. Couldn’t he show up a littlemore often like he did in the old days? Doesn’t all of it mean that he changed on us – and notnecessarily for the better? I have heard the argument that “this age of reason” is better than “the ageof miracles” – but I have never bought it (I would give up ten principles about God for one burningbush, wouldn’t you?) – after all God was more visible and near in those days . . . or was he? Was itreally all that different? Then and now …

Was he really all that visible during the Exodus? The Psalmist says that he was still unseen and hisfootprints were unseen. What was seen was the influence of God’s hand that parted the sea andguided the Israelites through Moses and Aaron.

Was God so visible at the cross? To many it seemed the end, they abandoned Christ. They left him. They insulted him. Even at the resurrection there were those who doubted and others whodisbelieved despite the evidence – What was seen was the influence of God’s hand that shook theearth and raised Jesus from the dead and opened the tomb.

When God seems absent, his influence is there – even as he chooses to remain hidden. The way thepsalmist puts it is: in the middle of the churning waters, your footprints were unseen. God was therehealing, bringing redemption and hope, but God could not be seen.

To be perfectly honest, God is even nearer than before. He is just as active as always – even moreso now that Jesus rules. His fingerprints and footprints are everywhere – and they are fresh! Maybethe absence of God is due to our lack to be perfectly honest with ourselves and others.

We are using the wrong senses to experience God. When we look for God with reason or doubt weare looking with the wrong senses. It’s like trying to feel red, touch sour, taste loud. And this isn’ta touchy-feel cop-out. For the scientists among us: It is not just that God is at the edge of oursensory range – but we have to keep in mind that this isn’t a laboratory experiment – we areparticipants, not observers – we influence the outcome. God is perceptable to a sense for which wehave no name – that closest we come is to call it spirit. It is more than intellect and action. It is morethat a sterile, non-participatory gaze.

This sense is honed and developed in relationships of perfect honesty: Relationship with Godand with one another. We affirm to one another the experience of the hand of God. Not just all ofus here, but the Scripture is the deposit of faith passed on to us – the Bible did not fall out of heaven- no it is inspired of heaven but it has been passed on to us through our cloud of witnesses. Peoplesuch as Asaph who, like us, have been so disturbed that they stayed awake all night – but in his nightmusing he beheld the hand of God.

And we also need people like you and me. We need to be perfectly honest with one another – and Iregret that we sometimes are not. We put on more than our best clothes for church. And none ofus wants to draw undue attention to ourselves – that’s a good characteristic. But maybe we are lessthan honest with God and one another because we are not honest with ourselves.

We are concerned with the problems of burdening one another or fearing what happens if we speakup. Our only category for the invitation is penance and public confession -other wise we bear upprivately. But what do we miss if we aren’t perfectly honest? Would Psalm 77 be inspired if Asaphhad held back and said everything fine? When we are not honest, we miss the opportunity toexperience the hand of God in the past, present and future.

We believe that the hand of God is as powerful and as mighty as ever – Why? Jesus is risen, he isliving in his church. Now more than ever God is strong and powerful to save. You don’t want yourstory with God to end with the questions that keep you awake at night – do you? Rest in the Handof God!