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A Steadfast Heart in the Midst of Suffering
Psalm 108
Andy Nagahara
0 A song. A psalm of David.
1 My heart is steadfast, O God; I will sing and make music with all my soul.
2 Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.
3 I will praise you, O LORD, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples.
4 For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.
6 Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered.
7 God has spoken from his sanctuary: “In triumph I will parcel out Shechem and measure off the Valley of Succoth.
8 Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my scepter.
9 Moab is my washbasin, upon Edom I toss my sandal; over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
10 Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?
11 Is it not you, O God, you who have rejected us and no longer go out with our armies?
12 Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless.
13 With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies.
A. How two songs came together and produced one song
This psalm has two completely different contents between the first half up to verse 6 that’s about the praise and appreciation, and the second half after verse 7th that’s about the cry to be saved.
If you are familiar with Psalms, you may have noticed something. The first half is almost identical with chap 57, the second half with chap 60.
In other words, chap 108 is a composition of two psalms.
If this were literature, it could have been criticized as plagiarism, but psalm is worship music. For the psalmists of the time, it was appropriate to use the old materials and arrange them to suit the style of the time, similar to today’s “sampling” or “remix.”
Anyway, how did these two completely different psalms become a psalm that was appropriate for the era?
It was because the psalm was made through the event of Babylonian captivity.
The situation people are placed in varies per time in the long history. Both fear and trust for God co-exist in the hearts of the people.
Doesn’t that sound familiar to you too? Aren’t their times when you wonder if your faith is real when you see your emotion shaking?
That is not a contradiction. God’s hands are certainly not idle no matter what the circumstances are.
Even in the pouring rain, the sky is covered with thick clouds, it doesn’t mean the sun doesn’t exist behind them. If the sun didn’t exist, it would be pitch black even during the daytime. God’s glory always shines like the sun that never sinks.
Grief and crying can co-exist with praise and appreciation within us and within our church.
The fact we are a part of the church means there are people who praise and thank God on behalf of your mouth and hands, even when your emotion cannot do so in a difficult situation.
And you can also praise and thank God on behalf of those in pain, in advance for the grace they will see sooner or later.
B. How to read the Old Testament (6-13)
6 Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered
7 God has spoken from his sanctuary: “In triumph I will parcel out Shechem and measure off the Valley of Succoth.
8 Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my scepter.
9 Moab is my washbasin, upon Edom I toss my sandal; over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
10 Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?
11 Is it not you, O God, you who have rejected us and no longer go out with our armies?
12 Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless.
13 With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies.
In the second half of this psalm, we saw the name of people, Edom, the descendants of Esau we heard in the message last week – they are the people who were not chosen as Israelites despite being the descendants of Abraham.
They are recorded as the enemy of the nation and God, along with the Moab, the descendants of Lot, the Philistines that are considered to have come from Europe, with no relationship to Abraham.
Let’s think of the message from the last week. The Israelites back then thought God was the god only for them.
They thought they were the only people God loved, instead of how they were chosen in terms of the reason we heard last week.
However, as we learned last week, God who loves all people would not intend to destroy certain people. What we read is considered as a prophecy of God, but it is not His intention.
There are lots of scriptures, particularly in the Old Testament that make us wonder if God really said so with such intentions.
Even if such words are recorded as a people’s misunderstanding, it still doesn’t spoil the value of the Bible as God’s words. We can interpret God’s intentions that may not be the same as the superficial words.
That is possible by carefully examining Jesus’ words and actions that lived on this world as a person.
C. The strength of a life centered on worship (1-5)
1 My heart is steadfast, O God; I will sing and make music with all my soul.
2 Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.
3 I will praise you, O LORD, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples.
4 For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.
Let’s put our eyes on the situation we are in. There are those who are in great difficulties, pain, and despair among God’s family – Your Church.
Even if it’s not so extreme, there is no one who has never gone through worries and depressions. There are those who have just gone through a big challenge and facing a new challenge.
People may say, “what will change by believing in God?” “God is just your false belief”
God certainly doesn’t make actions as we wish. Faith is not to wrestle with God to affect His actions.
There is an Episode of Jacob, the brother of Esau we heard last week, that his name was changed to Israel by God’s will because he wrestled with God’s angel and said he wouldn’t let him go until he received the blessing.
But the blessing for Jacob was what was granted before he was born – not what he won, as we heard last week.
So, faith is to play the role given by God even in difficult times – not to play the game as you wish with the strongest card called God.
God who comes to your difficulties, God who shares the pain may sound like a false belief to some people. But it certainly shouldn’t be the case for you. That is because you believe God represented Himself through Jesus.
God is the one who lived 30 years on this earth 2000 years ago going through the people’s pain, sorrow, shame, cries, laughter, anger, and love.
Let us worship the everlasting Lord Jesus, in the same way, Israelites sang to God combining two songs, so we can be sure we are still connected to God who has overcome the physical death and welcomes us to eternity. Let us continue to worship.
We can be sure that God is with us in any situation, by continuing to give worship.
Let us worship with all of our hearts.
(Prayer) God, we thank you that you are always protecting and guiding us in any situation. Please remind us that you came to this world as Jesus, and went through all the pain, sorrow, and shame when we forget to worship you in great pain. Please let our heart face you to worship.
Summary
The strength of a person whose life is centered on worship becomes evident in adversity. As we embrace experiences of both joy and suffering, our faith and trust in God grow stronger within. We cannot avoid the suffering that life brings, often unexpectedly, but it is possible for our hearts to grow strong enough to withstand it through faith. We strengthen our hearts as we build our lives with worship at the center.
For Discussion
- What does it mean to have a steadfast heart?
- Who is your enemy?