Text: Psalm 77
Topic: Turning to God in desperate times

• For this psalmist, prayer—like all genuine theology—begins in pain.
• Prayer is not reciting a formula learned by rote and repeated at a prescribed moment.
• Nor is it the cozy communion of a self-satisfied soul contemplating the comforts of a well-ordered world.
• Look at his verbs: I cried out; I sought and stretched out; I groaned and was troubled; I mused and pondered; I was dazed and could not speak; All night long I was in deep distress.
• For this supplicant, prayer truly begins in pain.

• Perhaps his pain was caused by some national crisis or catastrophe that had befallen the children of Israel.
• Perhaps this psalm reflects the experience of the Exile, the cajoling sneer and contempt of the captors' taunts.
• Maybe it was a little more personal than that.
• What are the depths?
  • Illustration: George offers snapshots of the depths: parents losing a child; a marriage coming to an end; a pastor realizing the congregation is turning on him.
• Sooner or later, all of us know these depths.
• Prayer is born in these depths.
• There are four movements or stanzas in this psalm.
• We've been dealing with the first one—six verses that we might call the troubles or the depths.
• There are two images for the depths in the Psalms: the image of a person who is drowning and the image of a pit.
• The depths or the troubles are those places where pain and prayer come together.
  • Illustration: The Irish poet William Butler Yeats captures it best in a poem about love "pitching his mansion in the place of excrement."

• The troubles in this psalm lead to the second stanza, which I call the questions.
• It appears that there are six of them, but I'm going to argue there are really seven questions.
• Notice the questions: Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?
• The background to these questions is Exodus 34:5–6, where the children of Israel were being prepared for the Promised Land.
• This is an Old Testament creed or confession of faith that is at the very heart of the faith of Israel.
• In Psalm 77, each one of these great characteristics of God is called into question.
• Why are these seemingly inappropriate questions in the Bible?
• They're in the Bible because we do not serve an antiseptic God who is removed, remote, untouched, or untouchable.
• There is no pathway to Easter Sunday that does not lead through Good Friday.
  • Illustration: Dr. Gardner Taylor was once encouraged to keep preaching despite the lights going out because: "We can still Jesus in the dark!"
• The good news of the gospel is that whether we can see him in the dark or not, he can see us in the dark. 
• The NIV translates verse ten as a declaration, but I think it's a seventh question.
• There is a variant way to read this in Hebrew as evidenced in the New English Bible translation: "Has God's right hand lost its grip?"
• This is the presupposition of process theology: that God changes and does the best he can with what he has.
• We can be certain, though, that God knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen—his right hand has not lost its grip!

• I call the next two stanzas—beginning in verse 11—the confession.
• The confession begins with the key word remember.
• This is the turning point of the psalm.
• The surest way to reconnect when you're in the depths is to remember how good God has been to you.
  • Illustration: George quotes an African-American spiritual: "If it had not been for the Lord on my side, where would I be? Oh, where would I be?"
• The psalmist is talking about remembering God's faithfulness in days gone by, letting it sink into his soul.
• God is at work everywhere in this world, and don't you ever forget it.
  • Illustration: George uses the movie The Notebook to show how remembering who we are through the reading of God's Word will focus us on the love story shared between God and us.
• When we're in the depths, we take out the notebook and we read, "In the beginning, God created" and "he delivered my people out of Egypt with a mighty hand," and "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."
• As we read, we come back to reality, knowing who we are because we know who God is.

• There's a final stanza I call the conclusion.
• This is a thunderstorm psalm where it seems you cannot see the footprints of God.
• We often don't immediately see how God is at work in the circumstances that are swirling about us when we're in the pit, but the witness of the Holy Scriptures is that God has never left his people alone.
  • Illustration: God is not unlike Francis Thompson's "hound of heaven."
  • Illustration: George goes on to tell the Apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon.
• You can see the Devil's footprints, but the footprints of our God are unseen.
• God's footprints lead us through the depths where he's gone before us.
• The song concludes with an emphasis on this idea: "You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron."
• The words recall Psalm 23: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down."
• God always leads his people to that land where there will be no more tears, no more sorrow, no more death—no more pits.
• Once there, we shall forever bask in the presence of our great and living God.