I have heard it said that all sin is insanity. And I think that Asaph illustrates that well here in the jumble of discouraging questions and statements he first poses in Psalm 77 and maybe best in verse 8.
“Is his unfailing love gone forever? Have his promises permanently failed?”
When we are struggling to trust God, everything becomes upside down. So we say things that don’t make sense. We say something that is unfailing has failed. We say that unfailing love could be gone forever and permanently failed. So which is it? Which is true: the permanent failure of God’s love or the unfailing nature of God’s love? And so are all the fears, concerns and complaints of Asaph in the first 12 verses of Psalm 77. I invite you to find the other blatant inconsistencies of our fears and complaints to God expressed by Asaph in Psalm 77 or in our own thinking and prayers. I’m not a psychologist and I don’t know all the proper terminology for mental health problems, but I have definitely suffered from my fair share of them and so I think I can recognise someone suffering the inner turmoil of such conflict. Yet even in the fears and complaints, disappointments and depression, Asaph recognises a few things in verses 1-12 that do make sense.
If you were ever really rescued, you’ll remember two things: what it was like to need to be rescued and how it felt when you were rescued. You will remember an immense feeling of gratitude. If you have not experienced understanding that you needed a saviour and you never remember being sure you had just been delivered from a terrible tragedy, then friend, question your relationship with God. With the help of others who have been saved, you should be able to remember even a moment when your face had a smile of joy and a sign of relief from the burden you once carried and the deep sense of rest that followed. John Bunyan describes it well in Pilgrim's Progress.
So I saw in my dream, that just as CHRISTIAN came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was CHRISTIAN glad and lightsome, and said, with a merry heart,
"He hath given me rest by his sorrow,
And life by his death."
“I think of the good old days, long since ended”
I have a friend who struggles like Asaph in verses 1-12 (I’m not the only one with troubles) and I often think of the day he came into the store in Genk with such a burden-free smile and willingness to serve. I knew the Spirit of God was in my friend and that he was saved. I have often tried to remind him of that day when he is in the deepest of depression. Admittedly Asaph is just adding the absence of such a feeling to his complaints, but it was there and Asaph can’t deny it. What are your undeniable ‘God moments’?
Instead of picking apart Asaph any longer (not that that is bad to do) I will focus on the obvious remedy to the insanity problem of our sinful, though understandable fears.
MAIN POINT: Rehearse what you know God has done to inform your heart of what it can expect from God.
“Your thunder roared from the whirlwind; the lightning lit up the world! The earth trembled and shook.”
The Biblical occasions in which God uses an earthquake or a light from heaven to declare His power and authority are numerous and point to God’s work through Jesus.
“Then, in heaven, the Temple of God was opened and the Ark of his covenant could be seen inside the Temple. Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and roared, and there was an earthquake and a terrible hailstorm.”
“At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart”
Matthew 27:51 NLT
“Suddenly there was a great earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled aside the stone, and sat on it.”
Maybe you have been plagued with persistent thoughts of God’s failure to meet your needs or you have come to accept defeat and can’t shift the deep fear and burden that now weighs you down. Is it possible you have embraced the lies so dearly that you find comfort in the complaints against God and His failure to save you? Have you become a slave to your defeatist, depressive thoughts and complaints against God? So was Asaph. But He swapped those thoughts for new thoughts. He reached back and reminded himself of the stories he knew were true, of God doing amazing things. And he became a slave to a new, glorious thought: God can and will rescue.
“But then I recall all you have done, O Lord;
I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.
They are constantly in my thoughts.
I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works.”
Asaph told his heart the truth. I can’t get out of my head the Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe quote by the Great Lion Aslan (a type of Christ) when he had risen from the dead said to his friends,
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”
In the New Testament in Acts Stephen the Deacon is facing a sure death penalty. He declares the history of God’s great works as a comfort to his soul and as a witness to the unbelievers that God does hear and listen and save.
Do you want to break the habit of doubt and complaints against God? Then replace it with the habit of being overwhelmed by His power to save.
Asaph arrives at the end of his history lesson and he sees Moses and Aaron as shepherds, because that is what God is doing in your darkest moments: He is shepherding you through the valley of the shadow of death.
Conclusion:
So whenever we remind ourselves of God’s great moments of salvation, we are working our way to the ultimate moment of salvation when Jesus turns our fears into freedom (John 8:32) and our doubts into dedication of praise Matthew 28:17.
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