(upbeat music)
Welcome to our look at Psalm 74 today
in "Drive Time Devotions."
It's a Psalm that talks to us about what to do
when you feel like God is far away.
Asaph, the writer of Psalm 74,
certainly felt far away from God.
Listen to what he says in Psalm 74, one.
"Why have you rejected us forever, O God?
"Why does your anger smolder
"against the sheep of your pasture?"
He felt rejected by God.
He felt that God was angry with him.
And these, honestly, are feelings that often come
when you feel that God's far away.
If you've ever had these emotions,
if you know someone who's feeling this way right now,
and especially if you're feeling far away from God
in this moment, there are four things
that Asaph tells us to do in this Psalm
that will bring you a breath of new life
when you feel like God is far away.
And I just want to say, I've never met a Christian,
an honest Christian, who won't say there are times
in their life when they feel like God is far away.
Our emotions, they go up and down.
Our feelings go up and down.
And sometimes we feel like God is so close,
it takes our breath away.
And sometimes we feel like he's far away.
What do you do when you feel like he's far away?
Four things in this Psalm.
Number one, you remember that you're in God's family.
You are in God's family.
Verse two, remember the people you purchased of old,
the tribe of your inheritance whom you redeemed,
Mount Zion, where you dwell.
You're a member of God's family,
God's no matter what family.
Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.
That's the truth of who you are.
The Bible tells us in Romans eight,
this important truth about who we are
when it says Romans eight 38 and 39,
for I am convinced that neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future nor any powers,
neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God
that's in Christ Jesus our Lord.
You see, God's family is greater than any human family.
In our families, sometimes people ignore each other.
God always has his attention on you.
In our families, people sometimes disown each other.
God will never disown you as his son or his daughter.
You are not in God's family
because you feel like you're in God's family.
You're in God's family because the power of Jesus' sacrifice
for you on the cross and his resurrection from the tomb
put you in God's family.
Jesus really died for you.
Jesus really rose from the dead
and you are really in God's family
through your trust to your faith in him.
So you remind yourself, remember, I'm part of God's family.
However I'm feeling right now,
I'm part of God's family.
Second thing you do when you feel far away from God
is you ask God to meet you
at the place of your greatest hurt.
Asaph felt far away from God
because everything seemed to be falling apart.
When I face a hurt, too many times my strategy
is to try to pretend that it didn't happen,
to just not bring it up.
And then maybe I think it'll just sort of go away.
Well, that doesn't happen.
Instead what you do is you ask God
to enter into that place of hurt with you.
And I want to encourage you to take some time to sit down
and do the three things that Asaph did here.
Number one, you sit and you review with God what happened.
Listen to what happened beginning in verse three.
He says, "Turn your steps toward these everlasting ruins,
all this destruction the enemy has brought on the sanctuary.
Your foes roared in the place where you met with us."
They set up their standards as signs.
They behaved like men wielding axes
to cut through a thicket of trees.
They smashed all the carved paneling
with their axes and hatchets.
They burned your sanctuary to the ground.
They defiled the dwelling place of your name.
Turn your steps toward these everlasting ruins, he says.
What a phrase, what an invitation.
God, join me in the place where the destruction happened.
And he's talking about the destruction of the temple
in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BC,
one of the worst events in Old Testament Israel's history.
Notice he doesn't just say,
"God, you know what happened," and move on.
He takes the time to sit in God's presence
and go over the details of what happened,
but he didn't end there.
Number two, you tell God your disappointments.
You tell God how you feel about it.
In verses nine and 10, "We are given no miraculous signs,
no prophets are left,
and none of us knows how long this will be."
How long will the enemy mock you, O God?
Will the foe revile your name forever?
Remember, God can handle your disappointment.
If you hide it, it just rots in secret places in your heart.
When you bring it out, God can work with you
to bring healing.
So then you do the third thing.
You tell God what you want him to do.
You just say, "God, this is what I want."
Verse 11, "Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?
Take it from the folds of your garment and destroy them."
Now, God will not always do exactly
what you want him to do.
He's saying, "Destroy this whole nation."
I don't know that he really meant that in the moment
when he would have looked back on it.
He meant it in the moment.
I don't know if he meant it if he would have looked back on it.
The truth is, you may not even want him to do exactly
what you want in that moment once you've voiced it,
but you need to voice it.
This is how I'm feeling.
This is what I want you to do, God.
This is what I want you to do right now.
So you invite God into the place of hurt
and you go over it with him.
But there's a third thing that he teaches us to do here
when you feel like God is far away.
Number three, you remind yourself of what God has done.
You take the time to remind yourself historically
in your life and all through scripture of what God has done.
Listen to verses 12 to 17, faith-building verses.
But you, O God, are my king from of old.
You bring salvation upon the earth.
It was you who split open the sea by your power.
You broke the heads of the monster of the waters.
It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
and gave him his food to the creatures of the desert.
It was you who opened up springs and streams.
You dried up the ever-flowing rivers.
The day is yours and yours also the night.
You established the sun and the moon.
It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth.
You made both summer and winter.
We get so focused on the place of destruction,
we lose sight of God's powerful creation.
We get so focused on the hurt, we lose sight of his love.
We get so focused on the miracle that's not happening now,
we lose sight of the miracles that have happened in the past.
And I hope you noticed as I read through that,
you couldn't help but notice those three words
again and again, it was you.
I encourage you to follow Asaph's example here,
to practice those three words when you feel far from God.
It was you, God, who did this.
You've heard of escaping from reality.
What I'm encouraging you to do here
is to escape to reality, the reality of what God has done.
When you're hurt, you need a place of escape,
a place of safety, so escape to reality.
The reality of what God has done in your life,
the reality of what God has done in history, it was you.
Find your place of rest and security,
whatever the circumstances or storms in your life,
in the reality of what God's done.
Now, there's a fourth thing in this psalm to do
when you feel like God is far away.
Number four, you turn your mind to God's promises,
because in the end, your life is going to be defined
by God's promises.
Beginning in verse 18, he says,
"Remember how the enemy has mocked you, O Lord,
"how foolish people have reviled your name.
"Do not hand over the life of your dove to wild beasts.
"Do not forget the lives of your afflicted people forever.
"Have regard for your covenant,
"because haunts of violence fill the dark places
"of the land."
In Israel's history, you can read it for yourself,
here's what would happen again and again.
Things would go badly for Israel,
and they would feel abandoned.
And instead of living in a relationship
of covenant love with God,
they lived more in a relationship of circumstantial love.
So when the circumstances went badly,
they felt abandoned and they quickly turned to false gods.
And then things went even worse,
and finally, they got so bad,
they turned back to the true God.
And then they trusted him for a while
until they began to rely on themselves
and things would go badly for Israel,
and the whole process started again.
That history is a reminder that your relationship with God
is not based on your current circumstances.
Your relationship with God
is based on his eternal promises.
He says in these verses,
"Have regard for your covenant,
"for your promises in my life."
A covenant is a promise made between one and another.
God has made many promises to you.
And I want to tell you,
God does have regard for his covenant in your life.
Jesus told us this.
Jesus told us that his blood on the cross
sealed a new covenant.
1 Corinthians 11, 25 says,
in the same way, after supper, Jesus took the cup,
saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
"Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me."
Every time we take the Lord's Supper,
it's a reminder that God has sealed his covenant
in Jesus' blood.
All the promises of God are, yes,
in Jesus Christ in your life.
And when you feel far from God,
you lean on God's promises in your life.
Let's take a minute to talk to God together.
Remind ourselves of his love for us.
Father, thank you.
Thank you for your promise of love in Jesus.
It's a promise that I can hold on to right now.
And when I'm tempted to look to circumstances
at the basis of my relationship with you,
remind me that I have a relationship with you
that's so much above the circumstances.
You work in the good and the bad that comes into my life
with love and with grace at every step.
So thank you, Jesus, for your love for me.
And when I feel far from you,
help me to practice these things
and remind myself again and again
that even though I may feel far from you,
you are not far from me.
You're always closer than I can imagine.
Thank you for your love for me.
In Jesus' name, I pray.
Amen.
Tomorrow, we're gonna look together at Psalm 75
and some truths to give you daily confidence
in your walk with God.
(upbeat music)