I Will Remember The Deeds Of The Lord

As I said in my prayer, Timothy's going to be preaching to us this morning, and this is part of his work as a pastor's college student is to get experience preaching. And so I've told him, forget about yourself and teach us the Word. And I'd give us the same exhortation. Forget about yourself and receive the Word. It's God's Word, and it's what we need. So give your heart to it as we study it this morning. This morning we'll be in Psalm 77. I read the passage. I'll give you just a little bit of an introduction. This psalm is really about grief. And it's about what we should do with it. This psalm teaches us how to grieve well. It exposes our natural inclinations in our grief. And it gives us a road map to how Christians ought to grieve. So this psalm could really be split in two halves. In one half, Asaph describes his grief. He tells us what he does when his hardship comes and when his suffering comes.

He explains how intense it is. He explains what he's thinking because of his suffering. And in the second half, he prescribes for himself a remedy. He tells himself what he has to do in order to be comforted. And so he teaches us how to deal with hardship and sorrow. And so this psalm really teaches us how to grieve and how to do it well. My hope this morning is first that you'll be comforted knowing that you're not the only one who suffers. That suffering is, in some ways, part of being God's people. That grief comes. And that that grief can cause us to have questions. That grief brings out things in us. Asaph expresses his grief rather clearly. And Asaph wrote this psalm through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so that you might know that you're not the only one who suffers and grieves and has to express that suffering and grief. My second hope...

is that we learn from Asaph in the way he processes his grief. That we learn to remember the Lord and his deeds when we grieve. My desire is that this psalm will be a great comfort to you, whether you're grieving now or will grieve in the future. These are God's words to you who suffer and grieve. Please stand now for the reading of God's word. Psalm 77. My voice rises to God and I will cry aloud. My voice rises to God and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble, I sought the Lord. In the night, my hand was stretched out without weariness. My soul refused to be comforted. When I remember God, then I am disturbed. When I sigh, then my spirit grows faint. Selah, you have held my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I have considered the days of old, the years of long ago.

I will remember my song in the night. I will meditate with my heart and my spirit ponders. Will the Lord reject forever? And will he never be favorable again? Has his loving kindness ceased forever? Has his promise come to an end forever? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Or has he in anger withdrawn his compassion? Selah. Then I said, it is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed. I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your work and muse on your 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 strength among the peoples. You have, by your power, redeemed your people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph, Selah. The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So first, I want to call attention to the end of verse 2 here in this passage. Asaph tells us, my soul refused to be comforted. And in this verse, in this part of the passage, we see the intensity of Asaph's grief. The kind of pain that he's in is inconsolable. Whatever hardship he's facing is not... Going away. He says in the day of my trouble, I sought the Lord. I sought the Lord and I'm still not comforted. I still don't have peace. I still have my grief. I still have my suffering. And I won't be comforted until that grief ends. Until that sorrow, until that hardship goes away, I won't feel comfort. That's essentially what Asaph is getting at here.

And not only that he won't be comforted, he refuses to be comforted. I don't want to be comforted. I want this gone. When we think about this grief that Asaph is dealing with, I actually think about Jacob's grief in Genesis 37. So the story of Joseph is that his brothers sold him into slavery. He goes to Egypt. But what... Jacob thinks is that Joseph had been mauled by a lion or a bear or something, that Joseph had died. And so when Joseph's brothers come and tell their father, your son is dead, here's his cloak, Scripture tells us that Jacob refused to be comforted by anyone. It tells us that his sons and his wives and his daughters tried to comfort him, and he refused. I don't want your comfort.

whatever you're going to tell me or whatever you're going to do for me or whatever, you cannot bring my son back. You cannot ease the pain that I feel. And this is the kind of pain that Asaph's talking about right here. This is the kind of intense grief that he's feeling. He says at the end of verse 4, I'm so troubled that I can't speak. I can't even give words to what I feel. I can't give words to how bad this is. I can't give... I can't tell you exactly what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling. This is how bad this is. This is my grief. And in that verse, I consider what Job and his friends do. When Job suffers and he loses his children, he loses everything that he owns. He, in a lot of ways, essentially loses his wife who tells him just to curse God and die. He loses everything. And then his body is afflicted. And so he's sitting out in the middle of the open.

covered in boils and scabs, and his friends come to him. They heard about his grief. They want to come to him. How can we comfort Job? And they see him from afar off, and they tear their clothes before they even get to him, and they grieve, and they weep. And they come to him, and they just sit with him for seven days until he's ready to talk, because he's not ready to talk. He's not ready to speak. He doesn't know what to say. And so I want you to see the intensity of this suffering, that Asaph won't be comforted, And he doesn't even know how to, he's essentially telling us that I'm not really sure how to convey my grief. I don't know what to say about it. So we don't know what Asaph was suffering exactly. But whatever it was, it was serious. Whatever it was, it was incredibly hard. It was incredibly intense. Another thought about this is that when Asaph is describing what he can, when he says that my soul refused to be comforted,

and I can't speak. He also talks about not being able to sleep and just being completely depressed. And he's seeking the Lord in the day. In the day of my trouble, I sought the Lord. And in the night. And essentially what you see here is that Asaph's life just stops. His life, for all intents and purposes, it stops at this point. It's on pause. I can't do anything. I won't do anything. This is too hard. Whatever he's suffering, it subverted his entire life and plan. And then, he says in verse 3, when I remember God, then I am disturbed. And so of all the things that you think that might give Asaph comfort, I can't sleep, I won't be comforted, you can't comfort me, no one can come and comfort me, no one can speak into my life and help me through this. The one thing that you would immediately think, would at least give Asaph some comfort. He says, I'm actually disturbed by it. When I remember God, I'm disturbed. Why is it that in remembering God, Asaph is disturbed? And I think it's because Asaph is thinking about God's character. Here, Asaph is one of God's people, a Christian, if you will. And he's suffering. He's in pain. He's dealing with hard stuff. And so,

But God's made promises to us, to me. Isn't God supposed to be loving and kind and good? And so Asaph's really dealing with God's character. God, you're loving, you're kind, you're good. When I think about you, that disturbs me because why am I suffering hardship? Where are you? Asaph can't square God's goodness and his covenant promises with his suffering. He can't make it make sense in his head on his own. He knows that it's true. He knows that all of God's promises and everything that he knows about God's character is true, but in Asaph's mind, in our minds, if all these things about God are true, why am I suffering? Why do I hurt? Why do I grieve? Haven't you promised to prosper your people, to care for your people, to love your people, to be with your people through everything? And Asaph just doesn't know what to do with that.

And so it's hard. And so he continues. He says, I remember God and I'm disturbed and I don't really know what to do. I'm so troubled I can't speak. And he says here, again in verse 4, you've held my eyelids open. And the reason I mention that part of verse 4 is because Asaph knows that his suffering actually comes from God. That the hard things that he's dealing with and the grief that he's dealing with is actually sent to him by God. That it's God who has kept him awake through his pain. through his suffering. The suffering isn't random. God is sovereign. God's in control. God can take it away. And that's what disturbs Asaph. And this is what leads Asaph to his questions in verses 7-9. He's overwhelmed by his trouble and he begins to ask, will the Lord reject forever? Will he never be favorable? And so, Asaph's questions here tell us that he thinks that God is angry.

Or that God has abandoned His people. He's abandoned His covenant promises. And you see that in v. 9. Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger withdrawn His compassion? Has His promise come to an end in v. 8? Does God despise me so? Thanks, Asaph. Has He abandoned His people? Has He abandoned me? And how often when you or I are faced with grief, do we ponder our own assurance? Do we ponder what God thinks? Or what God's doing with us. Like Asaph, do you begin to think God has rejected you when you suffer? When you grieve? Because what Asaph's really getting at is hard because Asaph thinks, am I not one of your people? If all these things that I know about your covenant are true, if all these things I know about your promises to your people are true, but I hurt and I suffer, am I no better than Esau? Am I hated like Esau?

Have you rejected me? Have you despised me? Or is it even worse? Was I once welcome and now I'm no longer welcome? Have I been abandoned? My point in bringing that up is that these questions are the natural questions, I think, that come to our minds when we suffer, when we grieve. These aren't particular to Asaph. Asaph isn't different. These are the questions that when you deal with losing a loved one, When you deal with broken relationships, friendships, when you deal with loss, when you deal with pain, when you deal with tribulations, whatever those look like, these are your questions. These are my questions. This is what we ask. God, where are you and why? Why me? Why am I in pain? Why didn't you step in? Where are you? And what's funny is when we read this passage, you know, my stomach just turns.

I don't like these questions. I don't like verses 7 through 9. Because they reveal my heart, and I'd rather just hide that stuff. I'd rather just push that away and act like those thoughts and those things that I think just don't exist. And the problem is that they do exist. Not because they exist, but I think it's so common for us in our culture, but even more so as good Reformed people, that these questions... We can't think that. We can't say that. We can't have any part of these questions. And so why do I say that? Well, I say that because if you think about just your common everyday occurrence, just in our culture, okay, we'll start there, in our culture. When you greet someone, what do you say? How do you greet them normally? How are you? And how does everyone respond without fail in America today? How does everyone respond to that question? I'm good.

I'm fine. If you were ever in sales, it's I'm living the dream. And so I'm not saying that we should just become a heaping mess on the floor when someone asks us how we're doing and we just tell them all our griefs and pain. But what I want us to understand is that it's embedded in our thinking that we can only be fine. We can only be okay. There's no room for this. We can't deal with our grief. We can't express it. We can't ask these questions. We can't feel this. And so we push it down or we push it away. And I mention good reformed people because I think it's harder for us to do these things. Even just from a cultural perspective, it's harder for us. And I think it's because in some ways we just hide behind the sovereignty of God. Well, God's got a plan and so I shouldn't be upset about it. I shouldn't feel any grief or pain because...

You know, it just is. It is what it is. And it is true that God is sovereign and that He's sovereign in our suffering, but you are not going to be helped. We will not be helped if we just act like our pain doesn't exist. To act like your hardship and your grief just are, eh, whatever. It will not help you. It will not help us. And then the other thing I want to say about these verses in particular, 7 through 9, is that all of the questions that Asaph asks are actually answered with an emphatic no. That God actually doesn't reject his people forever. That he actually hasn't forgotten. That he actually hasn't withdrawn his compassion in anger. And so this will be kind of funny, but Asaph is wrong. Not wrong, wrong in a sense that he's so...

Confused. In a sense that these questions are, they seem that the answers would be yes. That his immediate response is that God is just gone. But it would be worse. And actually, it's more wrong. It's wrong if Asaph wouldn't have wrote these down for us. If Asaph wouldn't have actually verbalized what he felt, what he was thinking. Because, as I said earlier, he's not weird. These are the things that we think. Whether they're right or wrong to think, you could say that they're wrong. You could probably say that they're right. The fact of the matter is we think them. We feel them. And that's what Asaph is dealing with, that he actually does feel that God has rejected. And so these questions reveal something about Asaph, and they reveal something about us, that when we suffer, we're tempted to question God's goodness. And the final thing I want to say about these verses is don't despair because you ask the questions.

Don't despair because you feel this way. God knows your thought afar off. God knows what you think. God knows what you feel. You need to deal with these questions when they rise up in your heart. You need to thank them. You need to ask them. And you need to process. We can't just act like they don't exist. And so what does Asaph do? He asks the questions. And then he transitions his thinking. And he says, I will remember. I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely I will remember your wonders of old. And I want to point this out first, but notice how in the first half of this psalm, my voice, my voice, I will cry in the day of my trouble, in the night my hand, my hand, my soul, when I remember, when I sigh, I am so troubled, I can't speak, I've considered the days of old.

I'll remember my song in the night. I'll meditate with my heart. The first half of the psalm is about Asaph. Everything's about me. My pain, my suffering, my response, my hardship. In the second half, so I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. I'll remember your wonders. I'll meditate on your work. I'll muse on your deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. He transitions the thought. It's not actually about me. It's actually about God. I can't get through this if I keep thinking about myself. I have to think about God. I have to remember the deeds of the Lord. And so he reminds himself of God's deeds. In the midst of our suffering, think about all the mighty deeds God has done. That's what we have to do. That's what Asaph...

is saying, I have to just change the way I think. Verse 10 is kind of a transition. He seems to kind of realize that it's my grief. I'm thinking way too much about myself in this. And that's caused me to ask these questions. My suffering is about me right now, and I need to think about God. I need to remember God. And not just remember Him, but remember what He's done. That He's been faithful. And so he says, I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely I'll remember your wonders of old. Think about your past grief. Go back. Look way far back to your past circumstances, your past hardships, your past griefs. Look at them. And then ask yourself, did God answer my cries to those griefs? When I grieved, where was the Lord? How has God been faithful through that?

Has God answered my cries in the past? And even without that, think about God's faithfulness in your life. All the ways that God sustains you, all the ways that God is faithful to provide, to make provision for you, to bless you, to give us children, to give us spouses, to give us every spiritual blessing that we need. I mean, you're here. And you're under the care of men who love you and care for you. And God has put them over us to love us and care for us. And that is part of his faithfulness to us. It is part of his faithfulness to us that he has brought us out of sin, that he has helped us in our past afflictions, that he's blessed us with good gifts that we don't need, that we don't deserve, really.

Think about God's faithfulness in your life and in the lives of those around you. Look at what God's done for others and the way that He's been faithful to them, to sustain them, to give them faith in their grief. It has been one of the greatest encouragements. It is a greater encouragement to me when I see the Lord sustaining people suffering than when my grief goes away. I am more comforted By knowing that God has been faithful to my brothers and sisters in Christ. To answer their cries and to make them faithful in that suffering. To see them give their lives to the Lord even in the midst of pain and agony. To give their lives to the church. To give their lives to us. And so we would do well to think about God's faithfulness to our brothers and sisters. About God's faithfulness in the past.

And we would do well to meditate on those things and not just vaguely think about them. Not just vaguely think about, yeah, I remember that time that God was faithful to so-and-so or that even God was faithful to me. But that you would sit and you would think about, did I ever deserve that? That you would actually dwell on that and meditate on it and muse on it. Consider it. He says in verse 12, I'll meditate on all your work and muse on your deeds. And so this is not a one time. I'm just going to remember this thing and it's going to help me.

it's the only thing I'm going to think about. This is where I'm going to live. I'm going to find where God has been faithful, and that's where I'm going to stay. And I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but that's exactly what Asaph does in verses 16 through 20. He picks out a particular thing, a particular place where God has been faithful, and this is where I live. I'm going to think about these scriptures. I'm going to think about what God has done for his people. Because that's the only way I'll get any kind of comfort. Because I wasn't comforted back here when I was just thinking about myself. And I wasn't comforted by asking the questions. They actually made me feel like I wasn't one of God's people. Because who of God's people would ask these questions? And so I'm going to remember, because I am one of God's people, I'm going to remember God's faithfulness to His people. And then he says in verse 13, Your way, O God, is holy. What God is great like our God.

And so we need to think about the holiness of God. That God is just in all of His dealings. In all of His dealings with us, God has been just. God is not wrong. God has not failed. In everything that we deal with, in all the hardships that we face, God has been just. His way is holy. His way cannot be anything but just. And not only is it that His way is holy, but His desire is for you to be holy. That His desire is actually for our sanctification. I think about 1 Peter 1.15, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves. And it's often that through suffering is when the Lord does the most work in making us holy. Romans 5. Romans 5 verses 3-5 says, And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance proven character, and proven character hope. And hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Your hardships and your tribulations, the pain that we suffer, that we endure, they sanctify us. They bring about proven character.

endurance, perseverance, faithfulness. They make you more holy. They make you more like Christ. Think about the suffering that Christ endured going to the cross. The beating and the rejection of His disciples. Then dispersing. His false imprisonment. His false accusations. And then ultimately, His death on the cross. A most severe and painful, unjust punishment on a holy man. And he suffered. And he's our Lord. And is any servant better than his master? Should we expect anything less? And the beauty of this suffering and this grief, and you see it with Asaph, is that it does actually bring him closer to the Lord. I'll remember your deeds. I'll muse on them. I'm going to meditate on them. Your way, O God, is holy. I see now.

Or I'm beginning to see. My suffering has a purpose. My grief has a point. I'm not entirely sure what it is. But what I do know is that it is ultimately for my sanctification. It is ultimately for me to be more like Christ. And there are many other texts that we could go to where we see this. 1 Thessalonians 4.3 says, For this is the will of God, your sanctification. That's the will of God for you. For us. And then Asaph continues and he says, What God is great like our God? So your way, O God, is holy. What God is great like our God? Who can do what you do? Who is worthy of our worship? Who is able to change my circumstances? Who can step in and do anything about my suffering or our suffering? Who can comfort us? What God is great like our God? Only...

Only the Lord. Only the Lord will be able to help Asaph. Only the Lord can step in and ease his pain and suffering. Only the Lord can change his circumstances. Only the Lord can cause him to be faithful, can help him be faithful through the suffering. Who can comfort us and where will we find peace? 1 Corinthians 3-4 tells us that our God is the God of all comfort. That He will comfort you and He will give you peace. And your circumstances may not go away. You may still suffer that hardship. You may still have to grieve. But your God is the God of all comfort. And trust Him to comfort you. Ask Him to comfort you. Look to Him to comfort you. Asaph continues, you are the God who works wonders. Asaph is remembering God's work and now it's strengthening him.

You are a God who works wonders. How else would he come to that conclusion? I mean, this is a complete paradigm shift from verses 7 through 9. Verses 7 through 9 is complete despair. Complete despair. And here now, Asaph says, your way is holy. What God's great like our God. You work wonders. Something happened between verses 7 through 9 and now here at verse 14. Verse 13 and 14. And it was that Asaph remembered the deeds of the Lord. That Asaph remembered God's faithfulness. That Asaph's thinking had completely changed from being about my current grief and my current pain and my current suffering to now it's actually about all the ways that God is faithful. All the ways that God has been faithful. All the ways that he will be faithful. Faith that God will step in. That God will comfort. That God has not left him alone. And so God makes, makes known His strength. And even in our suffering, God is displaying His might. And then Asaph says, you have by your power redeemed your people. Who are we? If you are a Christian, if your faith and your hope are in Christ Jesus, who are you? Who are you? Is no one going to say it? We're God's people. If we're in Christ, we're God's people. This is the most important fact. This is one of the most important things in this psalm.

is that God has redeemed his people. That is the mightiest act of God's faithfulness. That when you are tempted to despair and consider the hard things that you're dealing with, the loss that you suffer, great affliction, great grief, the greatest act of God's faithfulness is that he saved you. And that is something worth remembering. That God has... Come into your life and he has shined his light on you and he has delivered you from every act of wickedness and evil that you have ever committed. That you were guilty of that and deserving of hell and yet Jesus saved you. And how could that not be comforting to us in our grief, in our pain and in our suffering? God saved us from the worst of it. He's redeemed us and delivered us from eternal punishment and guilt and shame.

And we are His people. Not because we've done it, but because He's done it. And this is the greatest act of God's faithfulness to His people. To us. And so, in our suffering and in our grief, what I would exhort us to do is preach the Gospel to ourselves. We are not going to make it through this life if we are not continuously preaching the Gospel to ourselves. Your life is in Christ. Your life is as one of God's people. Your entire life is based on that fact. Who you are and everything is based on God saving you. We're not going to make it through our sufferings, through our hardships, through our grief without that. Without remembering that God has redeemed us. That He's bought us. So remind yourself of God's redemption when you suffer and when you grieve. And consider Romans 8.

I'm going to turn there really quick just so I can read it. Romans 8, verses 31. Not 28. Normally we look at 28 for this, but Romans 8, verse 31. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? In your suffering and grief, God has not withheld anything from you. He has given you. Everything that you need because He's given you Christ. He's given you the best gift He could give you, which is to save you. And so finally, Asaph actually gives us a detailed account of this. Verses 16-20 is actually an example for us to follow in our remembrance. And so, the waters saw you, O God. The waters saw you. They were in anguish. The deeps trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth a sound.

On and on. Your way was in the sea and your paths in the mighty waters. Your footprints may not be known. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. And so what's Asaph talking about? God bringing Israel out of Egypt. Rescuing His people out of Egypt. Where does Asaph get this from? From Scripture. And so we would do well in our remembrance of God and His deeds. Not just... Not even really to look at ourselves, but to look at what He's done in Scripture. Look at how God was faithful to Israel. Look at how He was faithful to Abraham when He promised him a son. And Abraham was 100 years old. No son. No prospect of having the amount of offspring that God had promised him. And God was faithful and He gave him a son. And God was faithful and made His name great.

And God was faithful to the people of Israel. And even when they sinned against God and they despised Him in the wilderness, He still forgave them and was faithful to bring them out of the wilderness into the promised land. And then in the promised land, He was faithful to give them into the hands of their enemies. I said that wrong. To give the enemies into their hands. That's how you're supposed to say that. And God was faithful. And even in judges, when they sin and sin and sin, and they turn back to God, and they repent, and God gives them a judge, and He delivers them from the hands of those that oppress them. And even think about God's promise to David that His line, His kingdom, would have no end. That there would always be a king. As long as those kings followed God. And then you see Solomon and...

Solomon does for a time and then doesn't. And then you have a long string of Israel abandoning God and not being faithful. And God causing them to suffer. But ultimately, God was faithful because who was the son of David? Whose kingdom has no end? The Lord Jesus. And so the Scripture should be the first place we go when we decide to remember. When we get past the point of our despair and we say, I know that I'm... thinking about myself, and I feel the weight of my grief and it hurts. This is where we need to go. This is where we need to be. And you can go to Psalm 77. Psalm 77 has been a great comfort to me in my griefs because I am forced to remember God's faithfulness. And it makes me think about all sorts of other things in God's Word. And so use the Scripture. Remember the Scriptures. Remind yourself of God's work throughout.

throughout them throughout the scriptures remember his faithfulness remember the gospel and its power to save you from your condemnation and your slavery to sin that's really my only point of application for us today is that we would remember what god has done that we would remember that god has been good to us to save us and to give us his word and that we would remember god's faithfulness to those to to those that we read about in Scripture. Let's pray.