Really thankful to the Lord for our brother, John Bonomo, will be bringing God's word to us. We should have him as our associate pastor. He's been filling the pulpit for us several weeks. Thank you so much for doing this. Good morning, beloved church. It's good to be with you once again. Many thanks to Pastor Mark and your session and to all of you for having me back this morning. I would invite you to turn with me to Psalm 77, Psalm 77, and as you're turning there, let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, who have we in heaven but you? And what is there for us to desire on earth besides you? Lord, in a world of sin and misery, where would we be? without your gospel and your word and the ongoing abiding presence of your spirit. In the face of our own sins and our own suffering and the sins and the suffering that we see all around us, we give you thanks, O Lord, that you continue to point us again and again to your word, which is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. And so help us as we consider this passage of scripture this morning. Point us to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now seated victorious at the right hand of the throne of God. In whose name we pray, amen. Psalm 77. To the choir master, according to Jeduthun, 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 water saw you, O God, when the water 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. As we consider this prayer, this song of Asaph this morning, I want to consider with you the question, what does it look like for us to wait upon the Lord in times of sorrow and suffering in our lives? What does it look like to wait upon the Lord? in those times of sorrow. And I want to start here with a saying. It's become kind of like a cliche in Christian circles, and I wonder what you all think of this saying, this cliche. It's the one that goes like this. God won't give you any more than you can handle. Have you heard that one? What do you think about that? For me, you know, there was a time in my walk with the Lord early on where I would say that. I sort of bought into it, but the more and more I reflect on the world in which we live, the more and more I go through suffering myself, the more and more the Lord gives me opportunity to walk with other people amidst their suffering. And the more and more darkness we see around us these days in the world that we live in, I come to question that more and more. And these days, it actually kind of annoys me. It irritates me when I hear people say that, to be honest with you. God won't give you any more than you can handle. Listen to this. The Apostle Paul. There was a time in the life and the ministry of the Apostle Paul, who I think we can all probably agree was a man of faith, and he knew what it was like to suffer and to bear witness to the gospel. There was a time in his life and ministry where he wrote these words. Listen to this. This is 2 Corinthians 1, verse 8. He says, we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength beyond our strength, that we despaired of life itself. Despaired of life itself, that's the Apostle Paul. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on who? on God who raises the dead. You see, no, the truth is not that God won't give you any more than you can handle, because he will bring things into your life, and things will come into our lives. And maybe today you find yourself at a place like this, that are things that feel like they are more than we can handle, and they indeed are more than we can bear. But the purpose of those things is to cause us to rely not upon ourselves, but upon the Lord, and so the truth It's not that God won't give us any more than we can handle. The truth is that he won't give us any more than he can handle. Amen? God won't give you any more than he can handle. And when those things come into your life that are more than you can handle, he is there for you to rely upon him, which is precisely why passages like Psalm 77 are in the Bible. This passage, this psalm, Psalm 77, is given to us for those times in our lives that are more than we can bear. And so as we go through this psalm this morning, I want to consider with you three things about Psalm 77 as we go through. First, what it's like to be sinking in sorrow, sinking in sorrow. Second, what I'm calling the long reach of faith. And then third, the peripheral vision. of faith. But first, we enter the pit with Asaph, sinking in sorrow. Now, we don't know a whole lot about this guy, Asaph, who this psalm is attributed to, other than there are 12 psalms that bear his name, Psalm 50, and then the collection of psalms that we find this one in Psalm 73 to Psalm 83. We also know that this, we could probably assume that this is the same Asaph who was appointed as one of the temple musicians by David in 2 Chronicles chapter 6, 1 Chronicles chapter 6, but really those are the only things that we really know about this man Asaph. We also don't know what the situation was, the specific thing that was going on at this time that led Asaph to write these words. All we know is that it was really, really bad, right? It is a time that Asaph refers to in verse two simply as the day of my trouble. And here are some of the things that Asaph tells us he was doing on this day of his trouble. He says in verse two, In the night, my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted. He's trying to give some comfort, some solace to his soul, but my soul is refusing that. You have those other passages in the Psalms where the psalmists are talking to their souls, right? Why are you cast down, oh my soul, Psalm 42. Asaph says, I'm trying to say those things to my soul, but it's refusing to be comforted. Verse three, he says, when I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints. You know what it's like when you're going through those times where it's just like your spirit is fainting within you, like your inner being is just sunken in and you're trying to reflect upon the Lord and sing his praise, but all that's coming out is moaning. Verse four, you hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. So you get a picture of a sleepless night, right? I'm trying to give some rest to my eyes, I'm even crying out to God, give me some sleep, but the Lord is holding my eyelids open, and my arms are stretched out, and I'm refusing to be comforted, and I'm moaning, and my spirit is fainting. Have you known times in your life like this? Surely most of us, I think, can relate to this, can we not? This man, Asaph, is so distraught, he says, that he cannot even speak, and yet, here's the thing, he can't speak, but he has given us these words. You see, and that's the thing about the Psalms, well, one of the many things about the Psalms, right? The Psalms give us words for those times in our lives where there are no words, right? You know, have you had those times in your life where it's just like, whether it's suffering that you're going through, something that somebody else is going through, or even just the times that we're in right now as a nation and in the world, I have no words, right? There are no words for this. The Psalms are there so that we can have words to speak to God at those times when we can't find the words for ourselves. And that is a gift. How incredible that our God would give us a book of Psalms and prayers that he has inspired for us to say to him at those times when we don't know what to say ourselves. And for me personally, psalms like Psalm 77 are so deeply meaningful because I'm somebody who's battled throughout my life with depression. And you know, the thing about depression, for those of you who may not know quite what it's like, is that you can't always articulate what's going on. And there's not always a situation or a circumstance that you can point to and say, oh, this or that happened, therefore, that's the reason why I'm feeling the way that I'm feeling. Depression is sort of just like a weight that you carry around with you, or like a dark cloud that follows you everywhere you go, no matter what it may be, whether the circumstances of your life are good or bad, right? Or it's like a bully. who just keeps coming back again and again. And he may go away for a period of time, maybe the family goes on vacation for a couple weeks or something like that, but you know the bully's gonna come back. And when he comes back, he's gonna steal your lunch money, right? He's gonna steal your joy. And that's the way depression is, just keeps coming back, it's always there. And so Asaph talks here in Psalm 77 about the day of his trouble, but in reality, Whether you find yourself today in a place where you're feeling pretty good about things, which in our day I'm not really sure how any of us could really feel pretty good about the world in which we live. But even if you do today feel good about how things are going in your life and in the world, or if you're somebody who is just just oppressed by the weight of sorrow and suffering. We need to see, wherever you find yourself on that spectrum and how you're feeling on a given day, we live in a world of trouble, right? Asaph talks about the day of his trouble, but this is a world of trouble. This is a world of sin and misery, which is why in our day, right, depression does not just touch a few people in our society. It is truly an epidemic, right? And the numbers at large are staggering enough, right? I think something like 20 million American adults are diagnosed with depression, and that's just the people who are diagnosed with it. How many people don't have an official diagnosis? But through the past couple years, you know, while all the focus has been on COVID and politics and the economy, I really have to wonder whether we are focused on the thing, the true, the real, the most serious pandemic, epidemic that is before us as a nation. And that is mental health, right? That is this sorrow, this sense of dread, this hopelessness that is pervasive in our culture. Because with the darkness and the fear and the isolation that is all around us right now, I think it was going to be years and years before we really see the full fallout of all of these things. And really the most jarring thing to me is what we see happening in the young people in our culture. You know, it's bad enough in the population at large, but specifically the young people. It is jarring. In 2019, so we're talking here before the COVID pandemic hit, the US Department of Health and Human Services concluded a study that produced the following results. It said this, between 2009 to 2019, depression among 20 and 21-year-olds had more than doubled from 7% in 2009 to 15%. in 2019. Among 16 and 17-year-olds, it had risen by 69%. Among adults between the ages of 18 and 25, serious psychological distress, meaning things like anxiety and feelings of hopelessness, had risen by 71%. Suicide attempts among people in their early 20s had doubled. And beloved, we're talking here about a period of 10 years, one decade. And things had increased that much. And how much more over the past couple of years. You know, what is all of this saying to us? I think there is something prophetic about this, and that is this. It is speaking, it is bearing witness to the truth, to the fact that our world is broken, that things are not the way that they are supposed to be. And if history has anything to say to us, and if the last several years has anything to say to us, it is this. the solution to the brokenness is not going to come from the wisdom and the knowledge of humanity. It's not gonna come from our learning, it's not gonna come from our attempts to figure it out, because think about it. I mean, really think about this. We live in a time where we have more medication to treat depression than we have ever had, and yet we are more depressed than we have ever been. We live in a time where we have more things to distract ourselves and entertain ourselves than any society in the history of the world, and yet we are more bored than we have ever been. We live in a time where we have more ways to connect with other human beings than any culture in the history of humanity, and yet we are lonelier, we are possibly the loneliest society that has ever walked the face of this earth. The solution to our problems is not going to come through the learning and the knowledge of men. It has to come to us from the outside. It has to come to us from God intruding into our world and giving us the solution that we know that we need. Now the reason I'm saying all of these things to you is not to ruin your day, not to make you feel worse about things. It's actually simply to wake us up to the reality that this is the world that we live in. And not only is it the world that we live in, beloved, this is the world that our God loves and has compassion on, amen? And this is why Jesus came into this world. One of the many reasons Jesus came into this world was in order to taste our suffering and our sorrow so that he might be a good and merciful high priest that we can draw near to at those times in our lives where we're going through things that we can't even speak about. The suffering is so great. It's why Jesus is referred to in scripture as a man of sorrows well acquainted with grief. prophesied about him hundreds of years before he ever even came into this world. In Isaiah chapter 53, he is a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. The king of kings, lord of lords, God in human flesh. Why would he come and walk among us as a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief? Because he came into this world precisely in order to taste the depth of our sorrows. and take our sins upon himself so that he might go to the cross and give us the remedy that takes these things away. And there was a time in Jesus' life where he says to his disciples, now is my soul troubled. Echoing Asaph, right? That's in the Gospel of John, John chapter 14. The night on which he was arrested, and taken away in order to be crucified for our sins, he said to his disciples, now is my soul troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. And why was his soul troubled? His soul was troubled so that he might take your trouble away. The very things that troubled Jesus are the things that take our trouble away. And so, beloved, we need to see, when we come to Psalm 77 times in our lives, the first thing that we need to remember is that our Lord Jesus Christ was there before me and for me. He was there. He experienced this trouble of soul, with no sin of his own, but he entered into this suffering, into this ongoing cry of humanity, generation after generation after generation, crying out to God, we are troubled, Lord. Jesus came and was troubled among us, and he took the words of this Psalm on his lips. He sang these words. I mean, remember, even from the cross, taking the words of Psalm 22 on his lips. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And because of Jesus, beloved, when we cry out, like Asaph does in Psalm 77, I cry out to God, we have confidence that we're not crying out simply into the abyss, into the void, we are crying out to a God who hears us and to a great high priest who is there before us and knows even greater than we do the depth of the suffering. Which is at least one reason why I think, notice as you go on from that first section in Psalm 77, Asaph eventually begins to rise above his circumstances with what I am calling this long reach of faith, this long reach of faith. Look at verses five and six. Asaph, crying out from the depth of sorrow, 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 should not be lost on us, beloved, that the place where Asaph's heart begins to play a different tune is where it is with a song. He remembers his song in the night. You see, when you and I moan under the weight of sorrow in our lives, when we're moaning within ourselves, we need to muster up the strength, do everything that we can, dear friends, to turn our moaning into singing. Because there's something about singing, isn't there, that has a tendency to change the tune of your soul. Right, remember your song in the night. One of my favorite songs of the night is the hymn that we're going to sing at the end of the service this morning. It's the hymn, Abide With Me, Fast Falls the Even Tide. And, you know, one of the things that's so important to me about hymns like that is that, you know, it's one thing to say the words, God is my only hope. Right? And that's true. And we should say those words, yes. We should say them all the time. God is my only hope. But it's one thing to say those words, and it's another thing to sing words like this. 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. Those are life giving words for us to sing to God in the darkness of the night. And so don't miss what happens in Psalm 77. Asaph, having remembered his song in the night, he tells us at the end of verse six that he began to make this diligent search. I made a diligent search, he says, and what is this diligent search that Asaph makes? He asked this string of questions, five questions specifically. This is Asaph's diligent search, right? Verses seven through nine, five questions. Question one, will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? What's the answer? No, right? Question two, has his steadfast love forever ceased? Answer, no. Are his promises at an end for all time? Are you detecting a pattern here? What is the answer? You can say it. I know we're Presbyterians, but I'm asking you to say it, right? What is the answer? No. Has God forgotten to be gracious? No. Has he in anger shut up his compassion? No. Right? No, no, no, no, no. And what is that no saying? It is saying this situation that I find myself in is not final and it is not permanent. Why? Because my heart and my feelings want to tell me that it is, and it's hopeless, and God isn't there, and he's not listening, and I got the enemy whispering in my ear those same things, right? Those two things go hand-in-hand, don't they? But I know Why? Because I'm remembering, I'm searching God's promises. My heart is making a diligent search. I know better. I'm going to hold fast to the truths, those unchanging truths that I know about God and his promises. That's what Asaph is saying here. What does he do? It's as if there is this dark wall, this wall of darkness, of sin and misery standing in front of him. And he's staring at this wall. But then he takes out the ladder of God's promises. And each of these questions Each of these questions is like another step in the ladder. And he climbs up the steps of this ladder so that he can get to the top of the wall of suffering, which does have an end. It has a limit. so that he can reach beyond that dark wall and grab hold of God and his promises by faith. And you see, beloved, that is at bottom what faith is. And it is not a feeling, and don't ever buy into the lie that faith is a feeling, right? Because we're so tempted to think that, to equate our faith with our feelings. And so what happens? If you equate your faith with your feelings, then when you feel good, you assume that your faith is good, which very much is not necessarily the case, right? When you're feeling bad, what happens there? You start to think, well, my faith must be bad, which also is not necessarily the case. Faith is not a feeling. Faith is like the arm of your soul. that reaches beyond what you see and what you feel to those things that you know to be true that are unchanging things about God and his promises. That's what faith is and we need to remember that because my feelings, I mean, I don't know about you, but sometimes I just feel like a yo-yo, up and down, up and down, up and down, right? Especially in tumultuous times like what we're in today. That's what our feelings are like, they will deceive us time and time again, but faith is what reaches beyond what you can see and experience in this world. Hebrews 11, what is faith? The substance, the substance, something you can grab hold of, the substance of things hoped for, the assurance. of things not seen, and I would add my own words to that, and also of things not necessarily felt either. And so yes, Asaph says, right, 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. This is how it is now. But this is not how it always will be. And it does not change the reality of the promises of my God. I know better. And here's the thing, beloved. How do you know better? Why do you know better? Well, notice where Asaph looks to show that he knows better. He looks to the past, doesn't he? Look at verses 10 through 15. The way that God has worked in the past gives Asaph what I am calling this peripheral vision of faith, right? So we have, if you're sinking in sorrow first, reaching up with faith, and then now the peripheral vision of faith, verses 10 through 15. Then Asaph says, 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. Asaph says, I will remember, right? In the day of my trouble, I'm going to remember the deeds of the Lord. You see, beloved, what you know about how the Lord has already acted in the past for your salvation both informs your present and shapes your vision of the future. It informs your present and shapes your vision of the future. But what is the problem? I don't know about you, but I can tend to be really, really forgetful. We have a tendency to forget, which is why Remember, you need to summon your soul to remember. This is a proactive discipline, right? It is a daily decision that you and I need to make in our lives when we're tempted to forget. Because we're not just talking about a cognitive understanding here, we're talking about something that gets into the depth of your soul, remembering and taking to heart what you are remembering. We need to make the self-conscious and proactive decision each and every day of my life to say, I'm going to be somebody who remembers the gospel. And I'm not going to forget it. I'm going to keep it before my eyes. It is a daily fight to do this. Because the world and my flesh and the devil all conspire every day of my life to sidetrack me and to get me to forget and to get me to doubt and to get me to not remember, right? And in front of me, what do I see and feel? I see that dark wall. I see an ongoing pandemic that continues to grip the people around me in fear. I see a situation with my brothers and sisters in Ukraine right now that I cannot imagine what they're going through and what is going to be the result of all of these things. I see widespread political unrest. I see an economy that's always on the brink of collapsing. All of these things, and my daily battle with depression, I see all of these things in front of me. And this is why all of the things that Asaph talks about doing here are proactive disciplines. Notice the verbs that he uses. Not only I will remember, but in addition to I will remember, he says I will appeal, I will ponder, I will meditate, right? And see, this is not just reading, this is not just thinking, this is at bottom what? This is worship. Right, this is worship. He says, I'm gonna search out what God has said and what God has done, and I'm gonna let those things be the things that define me. Because you see, if we don't appeal, and we don't remember, and we don't ponder, and we don't meditate, what will happen? We will be stuck. We will be stuck in the darkness indefinitely. But our calling is to reach up and to look out, and when you do remember, and you do ponder, and you do meditate, what do you find? Well, at least one thing you find is that this God that we're talking about here is not a God of mere philosophical or theological speculation. This is a God who has acted and has entered in to real flesh and blood history. Because notice, there is one specific act of the Lord that Asaph ponders and remembers and meditates and reflects upon, isn't there? One specific act, what is it? It is the exodus of his people Israel out of Egypt. That's what he's talking about with all this imagery that he ends on in verses 16 through 20 when he talks about the waters saw you and they were afraid. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind. The earth trembled and shook. And look at how, when he's drawing things to a conclusion, what he says in verse 19, your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters. What is he talking about there? He's talking about the Red Sea. Your path was through the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen. We didn't see God's footprints. What did we see? Well, what they saw was not a walk on the beach like that footprints in the sand picture, right? What they saw was dread. What they saw was chaos. What they saw was the storm. What they saw, now think about this. Imagine yourself as an Israelite standing with your back to the Red Sea looking at the army of Egypt coming at you. What do you see? You see death. Because you see, the Red Sea, without the presence and the promises of God, do you know what it was? It was nothing but a giant grave. That's what the Red Sea was for the people of Israel, without the presence and the power and the promises of God. And so, Let me remind you of how the people of Israel reacted when they were standing at the Red Sea. This is Exodus 14, verses 10 and 11. It says, 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 brought us out to die in this wilderness? You see, beloved, the Red Sea for the people of Israel was a situation that was more than they could handle. They could not do it. They were as good as dead, but what did God do? He acted on behalf of his fearful, wavering people. He brought them through that sea. led them by the hand of Moses and Aaron, which is the last verse of Psalm 77. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron, parted that sea, brought them through the sea, safely on the other side, and then, what did he do? He buried their enemies in the same grave that should have overtaken them. Now, dear friends, does that sound familiar to you? It should, because that is precisely what your God has done for you in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. His way was through the cross and the grave. He made a way where there is no way. We are each and every one of us in a situation apart from him that is more than we can handle. That is every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth, we cannot handle the situation that we are in. This world of sin and misery and the wrath of God that apart from Jesus would come crashing down upon us but God made a way where there is no way and was no way and his way was through the cross and the grave and the wrath of of the grave and the eternal punishment against our sins from the hand of God that should have overtaken us because of the presence and the mercy and the power of God has drowned all of those things in the sea of his love and mercy, amen? And that is the gospel and that is what we need to remember every day of our lives. Hold thou the cross before my closing eyes. shine through the gloom and point me to the skies. Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me. And so, beloved friends, remember your story if you are found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amidst your suffering, as you wait upon the Lord in a day of trouble, amidst your sorrow, remember that your story has been taken up into His greater story. The true story from suffering to glory, from death to resurrection, from trouble to peace, from the temporary darkness of the night to the eternal light of the morning. And as you do this waiting and you cry out in this day of your trouble, remember your song and reach upward. Remember what you know to be true about your God and all of his promises, which are all yes and amen in Christ Jesus. And look outward and remember all the ways that he has shown his faithfulness to you, both in the death and resurrection of Jesus and in the presence of his Holy Spirit and the ways that he has worked in your life and remember how both of these things, this upward reach of faith and this outward look of faith come together in the cross of your Lord Jesus Christ. Let those things be the things that inform your present and shape your vision of the future as you look toward the day and that day is coming That day when your God says, enough, and all of the trouble stops, and the one of whom it is said he holds every one of your tears in his bottle, will himself come and wipe those tears away. On that day, when he will wipe every tear from every eye, and in the words of Revelation 21, death will be no more. Neither will there be sorrowing, nor pain, nor suffering anymore, for the former things on that day will have passed away, and the light of new creation life that shines from the presence of our God and from the Lamb will endure forever and ever, world without end. Amen. Let me pray for us. Lord, I confess to you that I am slow of heart to believe all that you have said. My own flesh and the world and my enemy the devil conspire against me daily to sidetrack me, to get me to forget, Lord, but I thank you that you are a God who by your word and your spirit fights for your people. So I pray for this precious flock and for myself this day Fight for us, oh Lord. Shine through the gloom and point us to the skies. Hold your cross before our closing eyes and give us a renewed vision as we continue in a time of great, great suffering and we also remember our brothers and sisters in Ukraine and what they're going through right now, a situation that is no doubt more than they can handle. Visit them, visit us with a renewed confidence and assurance in your great and glorious promises that would give us courage and strength that we need to continue to bear witness to you in a time such as this. We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. I would invite you to stand