(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom,
and I want to welcome you to our look at Psalm 77 today
in drive time devotions.
It's a Psalm written by Asaph,
who wrote a number of the Psalms.
And he asks, let me just get you into this
with the feeling, the place that Asaph was in.
In this Psalm, you see that Asaph asks six questions,
and they all deal with God's character.
So he's struggling with the character of God
and who God is.
In verses seven to nine,
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?
Those questions show you where the heart of Asaph is.
He was in emotional turmoil.
In fact, in verse one, the Psalm starts by saying,
I cried out to God for help.
I cried out to God to hear me.
In verse two, two to six,
when I was in distress, I sought the Lord.
At night, I stretched out untiring hands
and my soul refused to be comforted.
I remembered you, O God, and I groaned.
I mused and my spirit grew faint.
You kept my eyes from closing.
I was too troubled to speak.
I thought about the former days, the years of long ago.
I remembered my songs in the night.
My heart mused and my spirit inquired.
So you can see he's going through this internal struggle.
He's got these questions that are going on.
He's got these emotions
that are tumbling through his heart.
This is a Psalm for sleepless nights.
I wasn't able to sleep.
My eyes couldn't close, he said.
In this Psalm, Asaph moves from focusing on himself
to focusing on the Lord.
And all of us have had sleepless nights.
You may be going through right now,
this time of emotional confusion,
wondering what's going on.
This is a Psalm for you.
How do you move from focusing on yourself in those days
to focusing on the Lord?
It's not enough just to say focus on the Lord.
You just keep coming back to yourself
on the struggles you're going through.
How do you do this?
You do it by asking questions.
You do it by expressing hurt.
You do it by facing your pain.
You need to reorient yourself
so that you can focus on the Lord.
And it doesn't work to ignore yourself
to focus on the Lord.
It'll just come out sideways.
It doesn't work to promote yourself to focus on the Lord
because you need the Lord, not yourself.
When you focus on only your past experiences,
you often end up feeling like you can't trust anyone.
When you focus on only your questions,
you often end up feeling like there are no answers.
All of life is confusing.
So how do you reorient yourself?
It's one of the most important questions of life.
And I want to look together
at what happened in verses 10 to 12.
And as I read these verses,
I want you to notice the word meditate.
This is where the change happens.
Verses 10, let me read through verse 13.
"And then I thought to this I will appeal,
"the years of the right hand of the Most High.
"I will remember the deeds of the Lord.
"Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
"I will meditate on all your works
"and consider all your mighty deeds.
"Your ways, O God, are holy.
"What God is as great as our God."
This is what makes the difference, meditation.
Now I know when I say the word meditation,
it's been covered over by other words
in our culture sometimes.
And sometimes you think of some Eastern kind of meditation
where you sort of lose your mind to the universe
or some kind of a thought meditation
that has to do with exercise.
This word meditation is all through the Bible.
And we need to understand
what biblical meditation is all about.
Because it is the answer when our thoughts are confused.
It is the answer when our emotions are in turmoil.
Meditation is stringing enough single thoughts together.
It's not just one single thought.
It's stringing enough single thoughts together
that they can change your thinking.
Meditation is focused thinking.
Now I just have to pause here and say,
as we talk about confused thoughts
and going through difficult times,
there are sometimes physical reasons
you're going through that.
You might need to see a doctor.
There are sometimes some things you faced in your life
that have caused you to struggle.
You may need to talk to a counselor, to a therapist.
This is a multi-pronged approach
to struggle with the reality of who we are.
But one of the weapons in your arsenal
needs to be meditation.
One of the ways that you and I can allow God
to speak to us in confusing days is meditation.
And these verses actually teach us how to meditate.
I don't know that anybody ever taught me how to meditate
until I saw it in these verses.
Notice he says, in these verses he says I thought
and then he says I will remember
and then he says I will meditate.
So he's building from, here's how you meditate,
from a thought to a memory to a meditation.
That's how you do it.
A thought to a memory to a meditation.
So let me show you how this works.
A thought is God is good.
But then you add to that a memory.
This is where and how I saw God's goodness.
To me, to others, doesn't have to be to you.
Throughout history, these are places
where I saw God's goodness.
And then a meditation.
I'm gonna sit still and I'm gonna rest
in this thought and memory for some time.
I'm gonna see what truth it gives to my soul.
Or maybe there's no truth, maybe there's just some rest.
Some meaning that it gives to my soul in the quietness.
So to show you how this works,
I want to show you two examples from this song.
In verse 10, which we just looked at,
he says then I thought to this I will appeal,
the years of the right hand of the most tight.
So he says here's a thought.
I'm in turmoil, here's a thought.
It's about the years.
It's not about just where I am right now.
It's about the years of how God has worked,
not just the present moment.
Well that's a good thought, that's a start.
But that will not get you out of the confusion,
out of the turmoil.
You have to add to that thought a memory like he does.
In verse 11, I will remember the deeds of the Lord.
Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
This is the memory that he attaches to that thought,
the miracles of long ago.
He thinks of the Red Sea.
He thinks of the manna in the wilderness.
He thinks of the pillars of fire and of smoke.
He thinks of how God had worked.
I'm gonna remember the deeds of the Lord.
And then in verses 12 and 13,
I will meditate on all your works
and consider all your mighty deeds.
Your ways, O God, are holy.
What God is as great as our God.
So what is it that you can't stop thinking about?
A place that your mind is stuck in this circle.
For this psalmist, because he attached a thought
to a memory, it started to become God's mighty works.
Now for me, it's often my little worries that I'm stuck in
or my own faults or my own plans.
But he's able to say thank you, God, for your mighty works
'cause he's done the work to take a thought
and attach a memory to it and sit with God in that memory
and that thought and meditate on the truth of it.
This is so important.
Let me give you one more example from this psalm.
Here's another thought from verse 14.
You are a God who performs miracles.
You display your power among the peoples.
So he thinks about, he says, here's a thought.
I've got all these questions, but my thought is
you're a miracle-working God.
You're a God who displays your power.
That's who you are.
That's who I've seen you to be.
And that thought leads to a memory in verses 15 to 18.
With your mighty arm, you redeemed your people,
the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.
The water saw you, O God.
The water saw you and they writhed.
The very depths were convulsed.
The clouds poured down water.
The skies resounded with thunder.
Your arrows flashed back and forth.
Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind.
Your lightning lit up the world.
The earth trembled and quaked.
So notice how he brings out all the parts of this memory
of how God had worked in his people.
He brings out the sights.
He brings out the sounds, thunder and whirlwind.
You lit up the world, the lightning.
The more senses and experiences
that you can attach to that memory,
the more powerfully it can lead you to reorient your heart.
We're a package deal.
We have sight, we have sound, we have smell.
We have all these things going on.
And if you can remember all of those things,
it will powerfully lead you to a different place.
And then that memory leads into a meditation.
As I meditate on this, I see how God is at work, he says,
in verses 19 and 20.
Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.
You led your people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
Well, in meditation, we often see how the thought
and the memories apply to our current circumstances.
And he sees that here.
Your path led through the sea.
God has pathways that no one knows are there.
I've got questions, but God always has pathways.
And he wants me to tell him my questions,
but he also wants to show me his pathways.
Though your footprints were not seen,
it would not have been obvious to anyone without faith
that it was your pathway.
But with faith, I could not miss it.
It's your pathway.
God, you are leading your people like a flock.
So this Psalm starts with questions,
with emotional turmoil,
but it ends with you're leading your people like a flock.
Well, if you've ever had the kind of questions
that Asaph had, you're not alone.
They're all throughout the Bible.
In fact, many of the Psalms start out this way.
But by the end of the Psalm,
the writer's heart is reoriented.
In 20 or so verses, everything changes.
Their circumstances don't change,
but a new heart and a new strength is given.
And that's because they practice
a simple truth of meditation.
They take a thought and they add to it a memory,
and then they meditate.
They focus on that memory.
So let's do that right now.
Just in your heart and mind right now,
what thought is God bringing to your heart,
to your mind, to face what's in your life right now?
God is good.
God is here.
God will never fail me.
God knows.
He cares about what I'm going through.
And then just as we start to pray,
we may not have time to finish it in this prayer,
but what memories may be popped into your mind?
How could you consider that memory
and add to the flavor of that memory
more later in your mind?
And then out of that memory that God brought,
how can you just sit with that truth?
Find a place to be quiet.
You may need to write down some things
that God is saying to you,
or maybe more importantly,
you may need to just sit and listen.
He may not say any important phrases.
He may just want to speak through his Holy Spirit
into the quietness of your heart
in ways that you don't even understand.
You couldn't even explain, but God is speaking.
Father, thank you that no matter what we're facing,
you want to speak to us the truth of your word.
We praise you for this.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, join us tomorrow.
We're gonna look at Psalm 78
and the choice to either test God or trust God.
(upbeat music)