Psalm 74 - Arise, O God, Defend Your Cause

Psalm 74, a massacre of Asaph.

O God, why do you cast us off forever?

Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?

Remember your congregation which you have purchased of old.

Would you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage?

Remember Mount Zion where you have dwelt.

Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins.

The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.

Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place.

They set up their own signs for signs.

They were like those who swing axes in a forest of trees.

And all its carved wood, they broke down with hatchets and hammers.

They set your sanctuary on fire.

They profane the dwelling place of your name, bringing it down to the ground.

They said to themselves, we will utterly subdue them.

They burned all the meeting places of God in the land.

We do not see our signs.

There is no longer any prophet.

And there is none among us who knows how long.

How long, O God, is the photoscoff?

Is the enemy to revile your name forever?

Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?

Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them.

Yet God, my king, is from of old.

Working salvation in the midst of the earth.

You divided the sea by your might.

You broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.

You crushed the heads of Leviathan.

You gave him his food for the creatures of the wilderness.

You split open springs and brooks.

You dried up ever flowing streams.

Yours is the day, yours also the night.

You have established the heavenly lights and the sun.

You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth.

You have made summer and winter.

Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs.

And a foolish people reviles your name.

Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beasts.

Do not forget the life of your poor forever.

Have regard for the covenant.

For the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.

Let not the downtrodden turn back in shame.

Let the poor in needy praise your name.

Arise, O God.

Defend your cause.

Remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day.

Do not forget the clamor of your foes.

The uproar of those who rise against you which goes up continually.

This psalm is a community lament.

Have you ever suffered with others through something terrible and unexpected death in the family?

A betrayal by church leadership?

A natural disaster.

God's people at the time of this psalm had just endured the destruction of the very heart

and center of their life together, the temple.

They have set your sanctuary on fire.

They profane the dwelling place of your name.

The psalm is cries out for God's deliverance throughout this psalm,

remembering God's covenant promises and deliverance in the past.

You and I read this psalm today with deeper insight into the ways of God that was possible

for God's people at the time of Asaph.

For we see that the greatest destruction directed toward God's people came not upon the people

as a whole, but upon a representative Israelite.

In the fullness of time the temple was again destroyed, not the temple made by human hands

but the true and final temple, the temple of the body of Jesus Christ,

in which God's presence was most clearly displayed.

And why?

Was this final temple destroyed at the whim of an invading army?

No, it was the preordained plan of God, set in motion from time immemorial,

so that the hosts of heaven and hell would stand and wonder at the glory of the love of God.

In the destruction of Jesus, your own destruction is assured to be behind you instead of in front of you.

When you look at the cross, you see your punishment being carried out,

so that before you is only peace with God and an eternity with Him.