You know, three years ago, this week, roughly, I first saw a job posted at Lehigh Valley Presbyterian Church. And I only had one friend in this presbytery, and that was John. And early in that process, when we were kind of in between churches and situations, we visited, and I mentioned to him that I had applied for this position. And John knew this church, he knew Don, and he also knew what a slob I was, and I think he reflected for a minute on the robes up here, and he reflected on me and the way I used to dress when we worked in the library at Westminster, and I think he thought, this is a really odd fit, Matt, do you know what you're getting into? But God has a sense of humor, and so it is my honor to have him here today. Like I said, we met at Westminster, where we were both working in the library doing evening shifts, and we really bonded over sports. probably more than anything, and back then, if you can believe it, the Phillies and the Flyers were both really good, and both of us were fighting for those evenings off to watch those games, and it was hard to find subs. That was a tricky thing. But John is a great guy. He's a lot smarter than me. He was a published author before he even got to Westminster, I think. So he's just a great guy, and I am honored to have him here. So, John, come on up and tell us something. Good morning. The grace and mercy of God be with each of you. I bring you greetings. from your brothers and sisters in Willow Grove, and from all the saints at the Whosoever Gospel Mission in Germantown, where I now work as a chaplain. I'm a little bit nervous with you sitting so close behind me, Matt. I kind of feel like I'm going to get whacked here or something. It really is such a joy for me to be here. This church does hold a warm place in my heart. As Matt said, I've been familiar with Lehigh Valley Press for a while. I actually visited here, made the long trip up the Northeast extension during my time at Westminster when I was very interested in studying the history of Reformed liturgy and really appreciate the liturgy of your church. It's one of the strongholds of liturgical Presbyterianism, and so I have a long admiration for this church. I know Pastor Don and I, as Matt shared, we've been friends for a while, though I don't know why this guy would want to hang out with me. I want to consider with you this morning the question, what does it look like for us to wait upon the Lord in a time of sorrow? What does it look like for us to wait upon the Lord in a time of sorrow? It's a question that I grapple with, I mean really, throughout my time in ministry, but throughout my life as well, as I have experienced sorrow in my life and I've... worked with people who are in the grips of sorrow. What does it look like when you're sort of in those times where you just feel just the depth of sorrow and you don't feel like God is present, like God is close and all that is around you that you sense, that you can see with your eyes, that you experience in your life is just a sort of darkness and sorrow. This passage that I would invite you to turn to, a passage that is very meaningful to me, Psalm 77. Psalm 77. This is a passage that I think invites us to ask this question, and it has much good for us, and so Psalm 77, let me read it, and I would invite you to follow along with me in the reading. I'll read all 20 verses of Psalm 77. To the choir master, according to Jethathun, a Psalm of Asaph, I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord. In the night, my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints. You hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? Then I said, I will appeal to this to the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What God is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples. You, with your arm, redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid. Indeed, the deep trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth thunder. Your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind. Your lightnings lighted up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea. Your path through the great waters. Yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Pray with me. Lord, you and your word are light in our darkness and we ask you now, acknowledging and confessing that without you we cannot rightly understand your word and we certainly cannot apply it to our lives and have the strength to carry it out. So we ask you to shine in the darkness of our hearts this day to the glory of Christ our Lord in whose name we pray, amen. Let me start here with a cliché that gets thrown around a lot in Christian circles that, to be honest with you, really sort of annoys me, really gets to me. It's the one that goes like this. God won't give you any more than you can handle. Have you heard that one? Maybe you have said it yourself. I've said it in the past before I knew better. Maybe you've had somebody say that to you at some point in your life when you were deeply, deeply troubled and in the grips of sorrow. Why does that annoy me? Well, because I've come to realize that it is simply not true. It's not true according to scripture. It's also not true according to our life experience either. Listen to this, 2 Corinthians 1 verse 8. This is the Apostle Paul writing these words, 2 Corinthians 1 verse 8. He writes about a time in his life and his ministry this, we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. Sure sounds to me like Paul was going through some stuff that was more than he could handle, right? You see, the truth is not that God won't give you any more than you can handle. The truth is that God won't give you any more than he can handle, right? He won't give you any more than he can handle, but there will come things in your life and times in your life that are more than you in your own strength will be able to bear. And God's purpose for you in those times is that you, like the Apostle Paul writing there in 2 Corinthians 1, would rely not on yourself, but on God who raises the dead. And through that power that he has to raise from the dead that is sealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is given to you in your life to support you in times that are more than you can bear. And it's really in that sort of a context that this passage I just read in Psalm 77 is written, right? It's in the context of the sorts of things that are more than we can handle, right? A context of deep, deep darkness. And I want to consider with you this morning three things from Psalm 77. First, the sorrowful situation of Asaph. Second, the long reach of faith. Third, the peripheral vision of faith. Sorrowful situation, long reach of faith, peripheral vision of faith. So, we don't know a whole lot about this guy named Asaph who wrote this psalm, right, other than we have 12 psalms that are attributed to Asaph. Psalm 50, and then Psalms 73 through 83, which is where Psalm 77 comes in. And we also don't know what the situation was that inspired this particular psalm, but we do know that it was really, really bad. And actually, for me, when I come to passages, psalms particularly, that don't have a situation given to us that sort of tell us this is the situation that this happened in, that's important to me because it sort of invites me to see my own experience, to see myself in this psalm. And I do, and I think that as we go through, you may see yourself here as well. And so, this is a really, really bad time, right? It's a time in Asaph's life that he refers to in verse 2 simply as what? The day of my trouble. The day of my trouble. And here are some of the things that Asaph says that he was doing on this day of his trouble. Verse 2, he says, in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted. Verse three, when I remember God, I moan. Like I try to muster up the strength to call God to mind, but there's just moaning. When I meditate, my spirit faints. Verse four, you hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. So crying out with arms continually stretched out, refusing to be comforted, moaning, fainting spirit, unable to sleep, unable to speak. Have you known times like this in your life? I think many of us probably do, that this sort of sleepless night, you're not able to get any rest, you can't even close your eyes, and you're just moaning, you can't even come up with the words to say. Asaph is so distraught, he says, that he can't even speak. He can't even speak, and yet, it's amazing when you think about it. I'm so troubled that I can't even speak, and yet, he has given us these words. He can't speak, but he has written this psalm. He has given us these words. And you see, that's really one of the beautiful things about the psalms. The psalms are so deeply meaningful to me, because I don't know if you've had those times in your life where it's just like, I have no words, right? I can't even come up with the words to express the sorts of things that I am experiencing inside of myself. And you see, the Psalms are there, and particularly Psalms like Psalm 77. are there for us to have words when we don't have any words. How amazing that God would give us a book of prayers, that he himself has inspired for us to pray to him when we don't know what to pray for ourselves. That is why Psalm 77 is here. And for me personally, psalms like Psalm 77 are deeply meaningful also because I'm somebody who throughout my life has battled depression. Really since around, 14, 15, 16, those years, ever since then. I'm 41 years old now. And throughout my life, the Lord saved me when I was 20, and he transformed my life in so many ways, but one thing that has stayed with me throughout my life and throughout my walk with the Lord has been this ongoing battle with depression. And this is meaningful to me because it shows me that that's not abnormal. That's not weird. It's not because I don't have enough faith. If you today are somebody who battles depression in your life, and it just keeps coming back, then I want you to know it's not because your faith is not strong enough. Don't let anyone ever tell you that. That is a lie from the pit. Don't believe that. It is a lie. It's not a failure of your faith. And the thing about depression, for those of you who may not really know experientially what it's like, is that you can't necessarily pinpoint a particular reason for it. You can't, like, say, oh, this happened to me, therefore that's why I feel this way, right? It's just this sort of undefinable sense of sorrow and dread and darkness that just keeps coming back no matter what you do. It's like a bully that keeps coming back and beats you up and steals your lunch money day after day. That's what depression is like. Sometimes you can point to a particular thing that happened, but not always. And so Asaph talks here in Psalm 77 about the day of his trouble, but we need to see, don't we, that whether you're in a time in your life right now where you're really in the grips of sorrow or you're just sort of feeling like things are going pretty good, which at this time in the life of our world, I don't know how you could be thinking that, but even if you do think that, You have to be struck by the fact that we live in a world of trouble, don't we? This is the day of ASAP's trouble that we're reading about, but this is an expression of the world in which we live. It is a day of trouble. We live in a world of trouble, which is why, in our day, depression is not something that just touches a few people, right? It is truly an epidemic, and the numbers of the population at large are bad enough You know, 17 million American adults are diagnosed with depression. How many more actually have it but haven't been diagnosed? But through the year 2020 and now into 2021, while all the focus has been on things like COVID and politics and the economy, I really have to wonder whether we're focused on the thing that truly, truly aisles us deeply as a nation. This issue of our mental stability The wellness of our inner being is something that is truly, truly, I think, even greater than COVID, the real pandemic that is in front of us. And really, the most jarring thing to me, if you look at, if you read some articles about this sort of stuff, is the increase in depression among young people in our society, right? You know, it's especially jarring a little over a year ago, so pre-COVID, pre-COVID, the US, Department of Health and Human Services conducted a study that produced the following statistics. Since 2009, depression among 20 and 21-year-olds has more than doubled from 7% in 2009 to 15% in 2019. Among 16 and 17 year olds, it has risen by 69%. Among adults 18 through 25 years old, serious psychological distress, meaning things like anxiety and feelings of hopelessness, has risen 71%. Suicide attempts among people in their early 20s have doubled. And we are talking here about a period of just 10 years. And I would suggest to you, and how much more now with all of the darkness that we've experienced over the past year, how much more have those things even increased? I think it'll be many years before we see what the real fallout of all of these things really is. And I would suggest to you that there's actually something prophetic about this. There's something prophetic about this, and what is that? It is that we live, it testifies to the fact that we live in a world that is deeply, deeply broken. Deeply broken. Not just physical health issues, right? We all know that, pandemic and all of this stuff. But within us, within our hearts, there is something that is deeply, deeply broken. And people who battle depression have something to say to the world, and that is, this world is not what it was meant to be. We long, we long deeply for something so much more than what this world has to offer us. And it is for this reason, beloved, that Jesus Christ, our Lord himself, was said to be what, a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. Now, I want you to think about that for a minute, because those are famous words, Isaiah 53, we hear sometimes they can go in one ear and out the other. Why would the Messiah, the Savior, the Lord, the King, God in human flesh, why would he be a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief? Not because things just happened to him. He voluntarily became a man of sorrow as well acquainted with grief, right? The reason is because he came into this world in order to taste the deepest depths of our sorrow. To taste the depths of our darkness and our sins and our suffering and our grief and to weep with us in this valley of tears. He wept at the tomb of a man whom he was just about to raise from the dead with his sister Mary. Why? Because he came to experience all of these things in himself. The book of Hebrews talks about how throughout his life he would pray with loud cries and tears. Throughout his life, and of course coming to a culmination in the end at the Garden of Gethsemane when he sweat great drops of blood. Jesus, you need to see. When you cry out to God, you need to see that, and when you come to Psalm 71 situations in your life, that Jesus was there before you and for you. That Jesus prayed these words, and he prayed them from the depths of his soul. This was his prayer book. He knew what a day of trouble was like, and in fact, on the very last night of his life, one of the things that he said to his disciples in the Gospel of John is this, now is my soul troubled. Now is my soul troubled. That was the day of his trouble. That was the day of Jesus's trouble. And so because of that, we know that when we cry out, we don't weep into the abyss, right? You don't cry into the void, but you can say with Asaph, because you are one with Jesus, the man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief, I cry aloud to God, to God, and he will hear me. which is at least one reason why I think Asaph in this prayer can eventually, eventually start to rise above his circumstances with what I'm calling the long reach of faith, the long reach of faith. Look at verses five and six. This is where Asaph, starting at verse five, begins sort of this long, hard climb upward. He says, I consider the days of old, the years long ago, I said, let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. It shouldn't be lost on us, beloved, that the place where Asaph's heart starts to play a different tune is with what? It is with a song. I remember my song in the night. You see, when you and I moan like Asaph under the weight of the sorrow that we experience in our lives, we need to at some point turn our moaning into singing. Turn that moaning into singing, right? Remember your song in the night, because there's something about singing, isn't there, that can change the tune, that can change the tune of what is going on within you. One of my favorite songs of the night is the hymn, I don't know if you know it, Abide With Me, Fast Falls, The Even Tide, it's one of my favorites. And you know, when I sing that hymn, one of the things that I come to realize is that, you know, it's one thing to say the words, God is my only hope. And that's true, and we should say that, but it's another thing to sing words like these, and I'm not gonna try to sing it, so you'll be okay, don't worry. I need thy presence every passing hour. What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power? Who like thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me. That's life-giving stuff. Those are words of light to sing in the darkness of the night. And so don't miss what happens here in Psalm 77. Asaph, having remembered this song in the night, tells us at the end of verse six that he began to make what he calls this diligent search, right? And he asks a string of five questions in verses seven through nine. Listen to these questions. He asks, will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? Now, consider, what is the thing that each of these five questions has in common? They're essentially each asking, is this situation that I am in right now, is this final, and is it permanent? Is it final and is it permanent? And the answer to each one of those questions is no. It is not final. It is not permanent. You see, it is right and good to lay, when you're in a day of trouble, to lay your complaint before the Lord, right? The issue with complaining is not that we make a complaint, right? The Psalms are, are filled with all sorts of complaints to God about things that are going on. So it's not that we shouldn't make complaints, it's that we need to be good complainers, right? We need to be those who look to God in faith with our complaint. And so it's right and good to lay your complaint before the Lord, but you see the thing is, you can't stay in the place of complaint indefinitely. you have to eventually rise higher, higher to what you know about God, higher to what you know about what he has promised, higher to those eternal infinite treasures that are laid up for you in the heavenly places in our Lord Jesus Christ. And so Asaph, what does he do? It's as if there's this thick, dark wall of sadness and sorrow in front of him. And he can't see past this thick, dark wall. But what does he do in verses 7 through 9? He sort of climbs up each of these questions like a ladder so that he can get a peek over the wall into the eternal world of God and his promises. Amen? And that's what we need to do. We need to climb up the wall. Sort of like, you know, you see those rock climbing wall things? Each of the notches on the, you know, each of God's promises is like a notch on a wall for you to climb up and see God. and the eternal glories that he has given you in Jesus. And you see, this is at bottom what faith is. And it's so important to realize, because I think we get confused sometimes, and we struggle in our faith, because we start to think of faith as like a feeling. Right? And so what happens? If you see faith as a feeling, when you're feeling good, well, you assume that your faith is good. When you're feeling bad, well, then that means your faith is bad. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. If you feel bad, it doesn't mean that it's a failure of your faith. And Hebrews chapter 11, right, what does it say about faith? Faith is the assurance of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for. And I would add there, this is a little extrapolation on Hebrews 11, also it's the substance of things not felt. things not felt for you to lay hold of in those times when you don't feel it, right? When you don't feel like God is with you. You have times like that? I have times like that. I need to remember. No, God is with me. Faith is the arm of your soul. By which you can reach beyond the realm of things that stand in front of you and lay hold of eternal truths that you don't necessarily, each and every moment of your life, see and feel and touch. Yes, right now my circumstances are so desperate. The darkness is so thick, the tears are so constant that it seems like the Lord is absent, but I know better. That's faith. I know better, right? This is how it is now, but it is not the way it always is going to be. Will he spurn forever? No. Has his steadfast love forever ceased? No. Are his promises at an end for all time? No. Has he forgotten to be gracious? No. Has he in anger shut up his compassion? No, no, no, no, no. That's faith. No, I know better. And here's the thing, beloved, why do you know better? Where do you look to have this assurance of things not seen, to have this confidence about the future? Well, notice where does Asaph look as he comes to a conclusion in this psalm. He looks, where? To the past. He looks to the past. He looks to the way that God has worked in the past, and that looking to what God has done in the past gives to Asaph what I'm calling here the peripheral vision of faith, to see that there are things outside of just what he can see standing in front of him. Look at verses 10 through 15. Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and I will meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What God is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples. You, with your arm, redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. Asaph says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. You see, what we know about the Lord and how he has already acted in the past to redeem us, what does that do? It informs our present and it shapes our vision of the future. It informs our present and it shapes our vision of the future. What is our problem then? Our problem, if you're like me, your problem is that you are really, really forgetful, aren't you? I know that I am. I'm really, really forgetful. I'm tempted to forget every single day that these things are true, right? And it is a daily fight for me to keep before my eyes all the ways that the Lord has shown his faithfulness to me. Why? Because in front of me, What do I see? And what do I feel? What is there? An ongoing pandemic? that continues to grip the world around me in fear, widespread political unrest, hatred and violence everywhere, my own tendency to just wanna give up, right? A body that, yes, is starting to get older and I'm starting to have those aches and pains that do not go away that my parents used to tell me about. For me in my life, just give you some insight on the things I'm dealing with right now, You know, in this crazy housing market trying to find a house that the deal won't fall through for. All of these sorts of things. These are the things that we see in front of us day after day after day and that impede our progress. the works and the promises of God, when you see all of these things in front of you, it needs to be a daily and a conscious decision. You don't just get zapped, right? It's not just something that you sit around and it happens to you. No. Note the verbs that Asaph uses. in those verses we read. I will appeal, I will remember, I will ponder, I will meditate. These are proactive disciplines, right? And you see, this is not just reading. It is not just thinking. This is worship. This is the conscious reorientation of your heart toward God. And if we don't appeal, and if we don't remember, and if we don't ponder, and if we don't meditate, what will happen? We will be stuck. You'll just be stuck in the darkness and in the despair. But when you do remember, and you do ponder, and you do meditate, what do you find? Probably a lot of things, but at least one thing that you find is that we're not talking here about a God of just mere theological speculation, right? We're dealing here with the living God. We're dealing here with a God who has acted in real flesh and blood history and got dirty in this world for your salvation, took on flesh in the person of your Lord Jesus Christ. Because note well, there is one specific act of the Lord that Asaph has in mind, that he says, I'm going to ponder, and I'm going to remember, and I'm going to meditate. And what is that one specific act of the Lord? It is the exodus of Israel out of Egypt. This is what he's talking about with all of this imagery when he comes to a close here in verses 16 through 20. The water saw you and they were afraid, right? The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind. The earth trembled and shook. And look at how he concludes, verse 19. Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen. Your footprints were unseen. What was seen? It's not a walk on the beach like that cheesy picture, Footprints in the Sand. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. It was not a walk at the beach, right? What was seen was the difficulty and the chaos and the devastation, right? That is how it is in our lives. God is there. We don't see God, but we see the chaos of our surroundings. But though we don't see God with our physical eyes, we can See him with the eyes of faith because he is the one who both brings the storm and leads his flock through safely on dry ground, which is exactly where we are left at the end of the song. You led your people like a flock. by the hand of Moses and Aaron. And there it ends, there it closes. And you're left to assume, aren't you, that there's no resolution to anything in Asaph's life. We're still left to assume that this is the day of his trouble. There's been no change in his earthly circumstances. What has changed? What has changed is that he has made the decision to ponder and meditate and remember the deeds of the Lord because you see, When Asaph remembers the Red Sea, what is he remembering? What he's remembering is this, that without the presence and the power of God, what was the Red Sea? The Red Sea, without the presence and the power of God, was nothing but a giant grave. That's what the Red Sea was without the presence and power of God. It was a situation, in other words, that was far, far more than the people of Israel could handle. Without the presence and power of God, the Red Sea meant death, certain death, absolute final death. And do you remember? That's actually what the people of Israel thought. What they say to Moses in Exodus 14, 10 and 11 is this. It says, when Pharaoh drew near, Exodus 14, 10 and 11, when Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly, and the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in this wilderness? They saw it. The Red Sea, without the presence and power of God, was a giant, gaping grave. But what happened, beloved, what happened is that the Lord turned the place of death into the place of salvation. He brought them through that sea, and He crushed the enemy in that very same sea. Now, does that sound familiar to you? It should, because that is exactly what God has done for you in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. His way was through the cross and the grave. What God is great like our God who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, amen? And if He can do that, then certainly there is no darkness in your life and no sorrow that stands before you and no circumstance that stands in your way that God cannot turn into light and life and joy and peace, and he has assured you that this is what he is in the business of doing in the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. Amen? And so, beloved friends, in your struggle and your sorrow, What is the whole story? What do you see in this peripheral vision of your faith? You see Jesus, and you see your story being taken up into this greater, glorious narrative of his story, from suffering to glory, from sorrow to joy, from trouble to peace, from the darkness of night to the bright light of the morning of resurrection life. And so, beloved friends, as you wait upon the Lord, whatever you're going through today, as you wait upon the Lord in a day of trouble and you cry out, remember, remember your song in the night. Remember that God is with you and reach upward to what you know about his promises and his goodness and who he is. and look back and remember that there is more to the story, the ways that he has shown his faithfulness to you, and how these two things, this upward reach of faith and this peripheral vision of faith are tied together forever in the cross of your Lord Jesus Christ, who died to put an end to all of your sorrow and all of your trouble. Let these things inform your present, and shape your vision of the future as you look toward that day when your God says enough. And that day is coming. He's going to say it. When your God says enough and all the trouble stops, and the one who holds all of your tears in his bottle, and who himself wept in this valley of tears with you and for you will come again to wipe every tear from your eyes, and death will be no more. Neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. for the former things will have passed away. Amen. Let us pray. Oh Lord, you are good and your steadfast love endures forever. I am slow of heart to remember and yet you are so gracious to me to call these things to my remembrance. I pray for this precious flock, this flock that you love, whom you have redeemed by the precious blood of your only begotten son. Be with them. I don't know their stories, but you do. Be with each one here today, that they would see you through the clouds, that you would give them this reach and this vision of faith to lay hold of the eternal pleasures which are forever at your right hand where Jesus Christ is until that day when he comes again to take us to himself. We pray this in Jesus' name and for the sake of his glory, amen.