When Trouble Comes: A Sermon on Psalm 77*

Introduction:

What do you do with trouble? I don’t mean trivial trouble, like burning a DiGiorno pepperoni pizza or struggling to find the perfect parking spot for service on a busy Sunday morning – trouble that doesn’t really matter that much in the end. I don’t mean that kind of trouble. I mean hard trouble, sleep-depriving trouble. What do you do when trouble like that comes into your life? The Bible tells us that, “man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7) and so the question is not if trouble comes, but when it comes, how do we deal with it? As Christians, how can we handle trouble well before the Lord? Psalm 77 – our text for this morning – provides great insight as to how we can handle our trouble well before God. It also paints a vivid picture of the power of trouble – what it’s like and what it can do to us. First then, following the structure of our Psalm, we’ll sit with trouble so as to better understand it. Second, taking the Psalmist’s lead, we’ll see how we can handle trouble well. The first thing for us to understand about trouble is that it can make us spiritually restless.

1. Trouble makes us spiritually restless.

Starting in verse 1 of Psalm 77, we read: “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. My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I groan. When I meditate, my spirit faints. You hold my eyes open, my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot sleep.” We don’t know what trouble stimulated these poignant words. We don't know what might have been going on in Asaph’s life – the author of this Psalm – to produce such restlessness. What we have here is a simple yet poetic portrayal of day and night restlessness, dusk till’ dawn restlessness, round’ the clock restlessness, caused by his trouble. This restlessness registers at the center of his being – that part of us that the Bible teaches is so critical to our humanity: the soul.

The internet is full of great advice, and so I figured I’d share some with you today. It’s a really tremendous piece of advice, so be sure to listen closely. Here it is: “Give your trouble to God, and go to sleep.” Just give your trouble to God and go to sleep. I’m curious as to how Asaph might have received counsel like this in his day of trouble. “Asaph, what’s your problem, man? You’re losing all this sleep. Your eyes are bloodshot. You look a mess. You’re just not yourself… You know what, I have an idea. I know how to fix this: you should just give your trouble to God, and go to sleep. Why don’t you try that? Just go to sleep, man.” Maybe you’ve lost a friend; maybe you’ve learned of a parent’s accelerating illness; maybe you yourself have received a bleak medical diagnosis. And maybe someone, out of a genuine desire to comfort you, has said something like that. “God’s got this, just give your trouble to God.” We know that life's not always that simple and trouble isn’t always solvable. Sometimes trouble keeps us up at night, despite our best efforts. Sometimes trouble renders us spiritually restless. And there’s not always a quick fix to hard trouble and spiritual unrest. Sometimes all we can be for a person going through that kind of trouble is present. 

Soul restlessness often provokes restlessness of thought. When trouble strikes, it’s natural that start asking hard questions, which is exactly the progression reflected in Psalm 77. The second thing for us to understand about trouble, is that it can make us doubt God and His goodness.

2. Trouble can make us doubt God and His goodness.

At the end of verse 6 we read: 

“My spirit then made a diligent search. 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?” 

These are some of the heaviest questions a believer in God can ask about God. These are questions that go directly to His character. These are questions born out of spiritual exhaustion and desperation – the Psalmist is asking, “where is God? Where is God in my troubles? Where has He gone off too?” 

The philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell became well-known for his atheism. For a variety of reasons, he didn’t think Christianity was true, one of which was the presence of trouble in our world, often referred to as the problem of evil or suffering. In his essay, “Has Religion Made Useful Contributions To Civilization?,” he issues a sort of challenge to Christians, saying, “Christian, I urge you to come with me to the children’s ward at my local hospital. Take a walk with me. Just come with me to the children’s ward. See the agony on their faces, hear the suffering, and after all that – I dare you to maintain that God is good.” You see, for Bertrand Russell, he witnessed trouble, he felt its weight, and he concluded, “If God exists (which he didn’t believe he did) He must be a cruel god, and certainly not the omni-benevolent God that Christians say He is.” This objection to the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God wasn’t first made by Bertrand Russell, but has been around forever. Its initial philosophical formulation may be traced back to Epicurus, who more than 2,000 years ago put it like this: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” These are Asaph’s questions put philosophically and abstractly – apart from a context of personal fellowship with God. It would be natural for us to look at the questions being raised in Psalm 77 and think, “Asaph’s on the same path of inquiry as a Bertrand Russell or Epicurus. He feels the burden of trouble, and he is trying to make sense of it — especially in light of his genuine faith in God. Maybe Asaph is gonna go the way of Bertrand Russell and deny God outright. Or maybe he’ll go the way friends in my life have gone, who’ve told me, “I’ve just gone through too much to believe there’s a God who loves me, who cares about me.”” A non-believer might read this passage and say, “Asaph’s starting to think clearly and rationally – he just has one more step to go.” But that is not where Asaph goes. Asaph’s doubts about God don’t cause him to deny God. But why not? Well, it’s because Asaph handled his trouble well, and here we come to the central insight of our passage – how it is that Asaph handles his trouble. This is not how he gets a quick fix to his trouble, restlessness, and doubts, but how he deals with it well before the Lord. 

3. When trouble comes, Asaph gets specific about who God is and what He has done. Which is exactly what we are to do. When trouble comes, get specific about who God is and what He has done. 

There’s a turning point in our text at verse 10, where Asaph says: 

“Then I said I will appeal to this, the years of the right hand of the most high. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way O 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.”

Asaph commits himself to a deliberate consideration of what he already knows about God – what he knows God has done in space and time; the particular dealings God has had with His people in ages past; the myriad ways in which God has demonstrated his holiness and greatness. He’s getting specific. The Biblical faith is historically rooted. It makes claims about things God has actually done and more than that, it sees the things God has done as reflections or displays of who He is. This is a very important difference between the Christian worldview and many other philosophical and religious systems – which will often discuss and consider God in purely philosophical or metaphysical terms. Deism, for instance – that popular 18th century philosophy claiming many of America’s Founding Fathers – while believing in a grand designer of the universe, shuddered at the thought that such a mind would ever need to act in the world. Would not such action and intrusion into time and space demonstrate that the initial conditions he set for the universe were imperfect? That is, would divine action not suggest an imperfect deity? The Christian faith has a long tradition of rigorous philosophical and theological discourse, but insofar as it has been properly Christian, its impetus has always been faith in God’s revelation – Christian theology considers God as He has revealed himself through His many acts. By all this I am not suggesting that Asaph deals with his trouble with a bit of philosophy, or that Asaph solves the problem of suffering for us. I am simply saying that Asaph drew his attention to the God he knew and the works he knew God had done already in his people’s history. Asaph gets specific about one of God’s great wonders: the Exodus. Verses 15-20 of Psalm 77 are all about the Exodus. But why the Exodus? The Israelites’ “day of trouble” as slaves in Egypt lasted centuries — centuries of spiritual restlessness and doubts. They probably asked questions and had their doubts: “where is God? Will he confirm His promise to be our God? Has He forgotten that promise? Has His love ceased? Is He still our God?” God answered these questions decisively for the Israelites. In Exodus 14, starting in verse 30, we read:

“Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.”

The Exodus is God’s great act of redemption in the Old Testament – revealing undeniably His commitment to setting His people free and to always being their God. Asaph may not understand his trouble, but he knew something of His God – he knew the main thing, really: God is a God who works redemption. The Exodus prefigured an even greater act of redemption, one that as Christians we need to be especially mindful of when trouble strikes: the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 2,000 years ago Jesus entered into the great day of trouble for all those in spiritual bondage — all of us, the day of wrath against sin, bearing our shame and guilt, and the penalty merited by our sin. While he was dying on the cross the son of God cried: “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A question born out of unimaginable trouble and suffering. God defeated Israel’s adversaries and brought them safely through the Red Sea, and in Jesus’ death and resurrection God defeated the final enemy, death our ultimate trouble, to set sinners free. A vast span of time passed between the Exodus and the Cross, but it’s the same God; a lot of trouble transpired between the Exodus and the Cross, but it’s the same God; much time has elapsed between the Cross and whatever trouble you may be facing or may soon have to face, but you have the same God. When trouble comes, trust the God who redeems. May we remind each other of these truths, and may the Spirit empower us to believe them.

In Jesus’ name,

AMEN.

*This sermon was preached on September 18th at GCC.