Fri, 23 September, 2005: Today’s Bible readings.
12 Yet God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.
Psalm 74 appears to have been written in the context of the Babylonian captivity, although we don’t know for sure. Verses 4-8 describe how enemies have destroyed the temple, and so I presume that is referring to the Babylonians. Whenever it was written, the circumstances are very bleak.
Right in the middle of the Psalm, in the midst the Psalmist’s cry about the great calamity and destruction going on around him, the Psalmist pauses in verses 12-17 to praise God before returning to his lament over the circumstances. It is an interesting and instructive interlude.
What do we learn from this?
Notice how verse 12 begins: Yet God…. What a wonderful transition from thinking about the terrible things of life to then turn to God. The Psalmist doesn’t deny or minimize the difficult times. Things are truly bad. Yet God is acting in the midst of things. It is as we consider God that we can find hope in the worst of circumstances, and find the courage to continue on despite them.
For our own good and for God’s glory, even in the depths of our despair, we can and should find time to praise God. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us, our chief purpose in life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That includes the times of our greatest distress and trouble. Even then, we are to glorify God since there is no exemption for when we should glorify Him.
One way to do enable us to praise God whatever the circumstance is to look at the history of what God has done for His people. We see the Psalmist doing this in verses 12-17 when he reviews what God has done in the past. Here’s the logic: If God has been faithful to His people in the past, we can be confident that He will also be faithful to His people today, and in the future. Reviewing the past encourages us to trust in God now. This doesn’t mean that God will remove us from all of our problems, but it does mean that He will bring us through our problems and difficulties.
The Psalmist found comfort in thinking of what God has done in the past, and so can we.
Where is Christ in this passage?
Verse 12 tells us that God works salvation in the earth. Our salvation comes to us through the Savour God has provided: Jesus Christ. It is through His perfect life lived in our place, and His death on a cross paying the price for our sins that we are saved. Jesus Christ is the way that God worked the ultimate salvation for all those who come to Him in faith.
