Latest / Reformed Thinking / Why Does God Seem Silent When His Sanctuary Is Ruined? (Psalm 74) | Charles Spurgeon

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Why Does God Seem Silent When His Sanctuary Is Ruined? (Psalm 74) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to reformed thinking. It's good to be here with you.
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  We're two friends, fellow believers who hold to the
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  Westminster Confession, and today we get to open up the
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  Scriptures together. And not just the scriptures, but
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  some of the great commentary that's been handed down to us.
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  That's right, we're looking at what the Saints of old have to
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  say. We have a pretty substantial
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  task ahead of us today. We're turning our full attention
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  to Psalm 74, but we're not just going to read it on its own.
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  We're going to be looking at it through a very specific lens.
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  We are. We're using the monumental work
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  by the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
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  The Treasury of David. The Treasury of David, yes.
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  I mean, it's a resource that, you know, every Christian home
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  should probably have. Spurgeon didn't just write down
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  his own thoughts. No, he was more like a curator,
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  wasn't he? That's the perfect word for it.
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  He gathered the sharpest insights from, I mean, everyone,
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  the Church Fathers, the Puritans, the Reformers.
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  And then he weaves his own voice in with them.
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  He does. It's like having a whole library
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  in just one set of books. It's fantastic.
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  And Psalm 74 is a it's, it's a heavy text, right?
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  I spent the last couple of days just reading through it and the
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  notes and the mood is, well, it's undeniably desolate.
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  It is. It deals with what we'd call the
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  suffering Church. It really gets at that
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  terrifying gut level feeling you get when it seems like God is
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  just gone silent, like he's abandoned his people.
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  And that's the central tension, isn't it?
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  The whole Psalm is anchored in a Reformed understanding of God's
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  sovereignty, but at the same time it is brutally honest about
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  the emotional reality of feeling cast off.
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  It's labeled as a Moschel of Asaph, and I think we should
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  pause on that title for a second.
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  We often just skip right over those superscriptions in our
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  daily reading. We do, but they give us so much
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  context. Yeah, What's the significance of
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  Meshel? What does that mean?
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  Meshel means it's an instructive Psalm.
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  Its main purpose is to teach us something.
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  So it's not just a song, it's a lesson.
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  Exactly. And Spurgeon points out
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  something I think is really insightful here.
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  He says the history of the suffering church is always
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  edifying. That's a big counterintuitive,
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  isn't it? You'd think we'd learn more from
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  the victories. You would, But Spurgeon argues
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  that it's in the dark nights, in the laments.
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  That's where the real curriculum of the faith is found.
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  So this isn't just a complaint, it's a Lesson plan for the
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  believer. That's a great way to put it.
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  It's teaching us that when these fiery trials happen, it's not
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  some strange thing. We're walking a path that the
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  Saints have walked for centuries.
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  It frames our suffering not as an accident, but it's a a period
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  of instruction. That's it.
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  Now, the author is listed as ASAF, but Spurgeon in the source
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  material seems to really wrestle with the timeline here.
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  He does. The title says Asaph, but the
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  Psalm describes the complete and total destruction of the temple.
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  Right. The sanctuary being burned, the
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  carved work smashed to pieces. But the famous Asaph, the one we
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  all know, was King David's contemporary.
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  He lives when the temple is being planned, or maybe just
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  being built. He certainly didn't live to see
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  it destroyed by the Babylonians centuries later.
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  So there's a disconnect. How does Spurgeon try to resolve
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  that? Well, he lays out three main
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  possibilities that commentators have suggested.
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  First, it could be a prophetic song.
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  Meaning the Spirit of God gave the original Asaph a vision of
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  the future. Yes, a vision of the destruction
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  by Nebuchadnezzar. Or maybe even looking forward to
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  the Romans in 70. AD and that would fit with how
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  we see Prophecy working in other songs.
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  It would, Spurgeon says. There's really no difficulty in
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  supposing that. But he gives a second option
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  too, which is that Asaph became a sort of family title, a bit
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  like Pharaoh in Egypt or Caesar in Rome.
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  So this could be a descendant of the original Asaph writing
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  hundreds of years later. Maybe during the invasion of
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  Sennacherib or the Micah be in wars.
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  Exactly. But regardless of the specific
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  date, I think the mission for our deep dive today is pretty
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  clear. Yeah.
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  We need to understand how the faithful should behave, how we
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  should pray when the Church is under fire and it feels like God
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  is just silent. And that whole inquiry starts in
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  the very first verse, with a cry that has just echoed down
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  through the ages. Oh.
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  God, why hast thou cast us off forever?
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  I mean, what a question it's. Just so heavy.
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  Why hast thou cast us off? It feels so permanent, like an
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  abyss of misery, and I have to think that a lot of people
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  listening can relate to that feeling, that sense that the
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  silence of God is a door slamming shut for good.
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  Oh, absolutely. And Spurgeon acknowledges that
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  he says to be cast off at all is hard, but to feel deserted
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  forever. I think he calls it an evil
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  beyond endurance. The.
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  Chief of woes, Yes. But right after acknowledging
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  the emotions, Spurgeon offers a vital theological correction.
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  Because if we hold to the doctrines of grace, if we
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  believe in the perseverance of the Saints, God can't cast off
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  his people forever. Precisely, Spurgeon points us
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  right to Romans 11.1. Hath God castaway his people?
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  God forbid. So the question the psalmist
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  asks, why hast thou cast us off? Actually has a negative answer.
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  So the psalmist is asking a question that's based on a false
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  premise. In a sense, yes.
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  He's asking based on his feeling, on his perception, not
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  on the ultimate reality of the covenant.
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  So Spurgeon draws this really helpful distinction between God
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  casting off his people, which implies total rejection, and God
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  hiding his face. Which implies chastisement.
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  Yes, that is a crucial difference, isn't it?
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  Rejection is a judge passing a final sentence.
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  Chastisement is a father disciplining a son he loves.
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  And. That changes everything.
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  It does. God is never weary of his people
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  in a way that makes him abhor them.
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  Even when his anger is turned against them, the scripture says
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  it's for a small moment, and it's always for their eternal
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  good. But Spurgeon has a wonderful
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  line. He says Grief asks strange
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  questions. Grief makes us surmise
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  impossible terrors. That phrase just jumped off the
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  page for me. We imagine God has put us away
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  like an old coat, but the text reminds us he hates putting
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  away. And then the Psalm moves from
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  that feeling of rejection to this very visual description of
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  God's anger. It asks, why define anger?
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  Smoke against the sheep of thy pasture.
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  That imagery, smoking anger, is so vivid.
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  Why smoke? Why not just say fire?
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  Well, Spurgeon asks us to look really closely at the words
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  there. If the anger were a roaring,
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  devouring fire, what would happen to the sheep?
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  They'd be consumed. Instantly.
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  Instantly. The fact that it's smoking
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  suggests that the anger hasn't yet burst into a devouring
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  flame. So even in the description of
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  God's wrath, there's a little hint of mercy hidden in there.
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  I think so, yes. Smoke is terrible.
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  It's irritating, it blinds you, it chokes you, it durkins the
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  day. It represents confusion and
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  misery. But it's not the end.
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  It's not the consuming fire that destroys utterly.
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  It suggests the fire is smoldering, but it's being held
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  back. It's a warning, not an
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  execution. And the object of this anger is
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  the sheep of thy pasture. That seems like a very specific
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  metaphor to use. He doesn't say you're warriors
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  or you're priests. No, he says sheep.
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  Why? I think it highlights 2 things,
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  their helplessness and their ownership.
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  OK, helplessness makes sense. Sheep are, you know, pretty
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  silly and defenseless creatures. They can't fight a wolf's, let
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  alone an angry God. Right.
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  But even more than that, they are owned by the Shepherd.
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  And Spurgeon makes a great point here.
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  He says it's a terrible thing for a shepherd to be angry with
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  his own flock. It is.
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  I mean, if a stranger gets angry with your dog, it doesn't matter
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  much. But if the shepherd, whose
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  entire job is to protect and care for the sheep, is angry
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  with them. Then they're truly lost.
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  Yeah, there's nowhere else to go.
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  Exactly. The plea is basically Lord,
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  we're just sheep, we're weak, we're silly, but we're gonna
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  fuck your property. Why would you be so wroth with
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  your own investment? And that idea of ownership flows
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  right into verse 2, which I think is one of the strongest
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  theological arguments in the whole Psalm.
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  Remember thy congregation which thou hast purchased of old.
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  This is where you can really see the Reformed doctrine of
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  redemption just shining through. Oh, absolutely.
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  The plea isn't based on the sheep's good behavior or their
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  merit. It's based entirely on the blood
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  mark on the sheep. It's the argument from the
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  purchase. Which thou hast purchase of old.
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  This isn't a new deal. No, the Church is no new
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  purchase. Spurgeon reminds us that from
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  before the foundation of the world, the chosen were regarded
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  as redeemed by the Lamb who was slain.
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  So the argument is, can ancient love just die out?
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  Can an eternal purpose be frustrated by by this?
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  That's the question, and it connects right to the doctrine
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  of particular redemption, or definite atonement, if God
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  actually paid an infinite price for a specific people.
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  You can't just lose them. Otherwise the purchase was for
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  nothing. The payment didn't work.
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  That's the logic of the prayer. It's flawless.
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  If he paid the price, they are his, Spurgeon asks.
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  Can he desert his blood, bought and forsake his redeemed?
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  And the theological answer has to be no, That's impossible.
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  The woes of Calvary are the security of the Saints.
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  What a line. If Christ died for them, they
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  cannot be cast off forever. The text also calls the people
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  the rod of thine inheritance. I have to admit I wasn't totally
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  sure what rod meant here until I read the notes.
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  Is it a rod of discipline? That's a good guess, but in this
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  specific context, no. It's a reference to a land
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  surveyor's rod. Oh OK.
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  In the ancient world you'd measure out your property
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  boundaries with a measuring Reed or a rod.
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  So the rod of thine inheritance means this is the portion of
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  land I have measured out for myself.
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  It's a symbol of boundaries and exclusive ownership.
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  Exactly. It means this plot of land is
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  mine and the argument just keeps building.
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  No Prince willingly gives up his own Kingdom.
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  If God has measured out the church as his own private
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  garden, will he just let the enemy trample all over it?
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  And then the clique gets even more specific, even more local,
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  this Mount Zion wherein thou hast dwelt.
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  The argument of habitation. So first, you bought us.
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  Second, you measured us out as your own.
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  Third, you actually live here. It's a bold argument, isn't it?
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  It's asking God to defend his own house.
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  It's incredibly bold. Spurgeon notes that this was
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  likely written with the solid temple in mind, not just the
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  tent from David's time. The destruction described is of
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  carved work, a substantial building.
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  So the psalmist is saying, Lord, are you going to allow this
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  sacred place, the place where your glory literally resided, to
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  be desecrated by heathens, defend your home?
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  And Speaking of that destruction, verse 3 has this
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  really striking request, Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual
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  desolations. I love that anthropomorphism.
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  It pictures God as just sitting there.
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  Yeah, observing, maybe with his arms folded.
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  And the psalmist yells out, step out, lift up your feet.
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  Come quickly. It implies a heavy tread,
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  doesn't it? Like a giant coming to survey
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  the damage his enemies have done.
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  Yes, or a judge coming to execute a sentence.
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  The context is that the enemy has done wickedly in the
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  sanctuary. Every broken stone in the ruins
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  is crying out to God for justice.
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  Psalmist wants God to walk through the rubble and see with
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  his own eyes what they've done to his house.
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  And what they've done is just horrific.
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  Which brings us to the second section of our discussion, this
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  desecration of the sanctuary in verses 4 through 8.
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  The first thing Spurgeon notes is the contrast and sounds.
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  Verse 4 says Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy
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  congregations. Where the Saints once sang like
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  angels. Now the enemies roar like wild
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  beasts. Is the intrusion of blasphemy
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  into the holy meeting place. Spurgeon compares them to lions.
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  They have no respect for the solemn gathering.
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  Where the reading of the law and the singing of songs once filled
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  the air, now you just have the shouting of soldiers and the
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  mockery of the heathen. And then it says they set up
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  their ensigns for signs. That feels like a play on words
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  it. Is very much so.
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  A sign in the Old Testament often referred to the tokens of
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  God's covenant, the Sabbath, the sacrifices, the ordinances.
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  The enemy has taken all those away.
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  And replaced them with their own.
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  Our military standards, their flags, their idols.
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  They've replaced the sacraments of God with the emblems of their
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  own power and their own false gods.
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  And Spurgeon, as he always does, makes a very sharp modern
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  application here. He doesn't just leave this back
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  in Babylon. No, he rarely does, does he?
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  He connects us directly to the theological battles of his own
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  day and frankly, of our day too. He talks about Papists, Aryans
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  and Neologians. Neologians.
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  That's a term you don't hear very often.
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  Who's he talking about? It refers to the theological
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  liberals and rationalists of the 19th century.
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  Neo Wallageny literally means new word.
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  These were scholars who are bringing new interpretations to
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  Scripture. Stripping away the supernatural,
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  denying miracles, that sort of thing.
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  That's it. Questioning the inspiration of
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  the Bible. So Spurgeon is saying that those
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  who bring these new words or this carnal wisdom to replace
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  the ancient. Truths.
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  They're setting up their own ensigns.
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  They're setting up superstition and human philosophy in the
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  place of the cross. He says the horror a Jew felt
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  seeing an idol in the temple is the same horror a believer
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  should feel seeing false philosophy in the pulpit.
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  That is the classic Reformed stance.
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  The pulpit is the place for God's truth.
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  To replace the gospel with human philosophy is a desecration of
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  the sanctuary. It is planting an enemy flag in
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  God's holy territory. He's incredibly militant about
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  it. He views the corruption of
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  doctrine as a far worse tragedy than the burning of a physical
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  building. Though the destruction of the
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  building is described so vividly in verses 5:00 and 6:00 with the
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  axes and hammers. And there's a bitter irony there
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  that Spurgeon really highlights. He points out the contrast
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  between the construction of the temple and its destruction.
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  In Solomon's day, men were famous for lifting up axes
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  against the thick trees, the Cedars of Lebanon.
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  It was a noble work to chop down a tree.
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  To build God's house was an act of worship.
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  You were famous for it. But now?
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  But now the enemy uses those same tools axes to smash the
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  carved work to pieces, and they're just as proud of
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  destroying as the builders were of erecting.
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  And this is where we get that classic Spurgeon line.
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  He's lamenting the state of the church in his day, and he says,
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  oh, for an hour of Luther's hatchet or Calvin's mighty axe.
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  It's just a brilliant turn of phrase.
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  He's wishing for men who would use their axes to strike at
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  error rather than striking at truth.
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  He sees the modern critics of his time hacking away at the
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  Gospel, breaking down the carved work of doctrine, the atonement,
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  the resurrection, the inspiration of Scripture.
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  And he's just longing for the reformers to come back.
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  Not to build, but to fight. To swing their axes in defense
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  of the truth, to clear away the thorns and briars of heresy.
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  It's a call for theological courage.
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  The destruction doesn't stop with axes though.
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  Verse 7 says they have cast fire into thy sanctuary.
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  And fire denotes a kind of total erasure.
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  The malice just knows no bounds. The goal isn't just to damage
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  the building, it's to extirpate the very presence of God from
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  the land. To root out completely.
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  Like Haman in the Book of Esther or Pharaoh in Exodus, the enemy
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  says let us destroy them together.
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  They want to wipe the name of Israel, and by extension the
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  name of Christ, right off the map.
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  But Spurgeon offers a little bit of reassurance here, even in the
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  middle of the fire. He does.
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  He reminds us of the burning Bush the church is so often in
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  the fire. It's often surrounded by flames,
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  but it is never consumed. The intent of the enemy is total
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  destruction, but God preserves his people even in the furnace.
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  Now verse 8 brings up a historical controversy that the
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  source material spends a good bit of time on.
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  It says they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the
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  land. Right, and this is where the
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  dating of the Psalm gets really tricky.
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  The big question is, does synagogues even exist before the
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  Babylonian captivity? Spurgeon sites a couple of
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  scholars on this, Prideaux and McCall.
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  What's the conflict between them?
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  Well, Prideaux takes the view that synagogues could wouldn't
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  have existed before the captivity.
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  His logic is that synagogues require the public reading of
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  the law. Right?
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  But we know from the story of Josiah that copies of the law
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  were incredibly rare. I mean, Josiah was shocked just
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  to find one copy in the temple. So if there were no Bibles, how
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  could there be synagogues? That seems like a pretty solid
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  argument. You can't have a Bible study
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  without any Bibles. It's logical.
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  It is. But then McCall argues that the
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  argument from silence is weak. He says there must have been
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  gathering places for people on Sabbaths and new moons.
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  He cites the Shunamite woman in 2 Kings who went to see the
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  prophet on those days. Where did she go?
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  She went to a meeting. So where does Spurgeon land on
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  this? He seems to side with the idea
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  that the word used here, mode, just refers to assemblies or
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  meeting places. Whether they were formal
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  synagogues as we know them later on is debatable.
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  But the point is the enemy strategy.
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  Exactly. The strategy was to destroy
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  every single place where the faithful gathered for worship.
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  If you stop the worship, you scatter the people.
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  You cut off the lifeblood of the nation's faith.
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  If you burn the meeting places, the community itself starts to
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  disintegrate. And that disintegration and
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  leads directly to the terrible silence that's described in our
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  third section, verses 9 through 11.
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  It starts with we see, not our signs.
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  And this is the deep spiritual depression of the believer.
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  They're looking for the tokens of God's presence, the markers
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  of his favor, and they see nothing.
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  Spurgeon lists what some of those missing signs were for
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  Israel. It's quite a devastating list.
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  It's the total loss of the supernatural.
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  The Ark of the Covenant is gone. The fire from heaven that used
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  to consume the sacrifices is gone.
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  The Shekinah, that glory cloud that dwelt between the cherubim,
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  it's gone. The Urim and Thummim for
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  guidance also lost. Gone.
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  It's not just that they lost a building.
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  They felt like they'd lost the Direct Line to heaven.
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  And Spurgeon applies this to us today.
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  He talks about those times when a believer loses their evidences
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  of grace. Yes, when you're just groping in
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  darkness, you don't feel the presence of the spirit.
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  You can't see any fruit in your life.
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  The comfort of the Word just isn't there.
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  It's a spiritual famine, a famine of comfort.
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  And explicitly verse 9 says there is no more any prophet.
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  The famine of the Word. This is the worst judgement of
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  all. When God stops speaking, when
• 18:17
  there's no faithful pastor to declare the truth.
• 18:20
  And Spurgeon issues a warning here.
• 18:22
  He says that contempt of the Word leads God to withdraw it.
• 18:25
  It does. If we don't value the prophets,
• 18:27
  God will remove them. He he says a congregation
• 18:30
  without a faithful pastor is just a starving flock.
• 18:32
  And the misery is all compounded by that phrase.
• 18:35
  Neither is there any among us that knoweth how long.
• 18:38
  That uncertainty is just brutal, isn't it?
• 18:40
  If you know a trial will end in a month, you can brace yourself.
• 18:43
  You can count down the days. But an indefinite trial, A trial
• 18:47
  with no end insight that just breaks the spirit.
• 18:50
  It does. It creates this overwhelming
• 18:51
  sense of hopelessness. Will this last forever?
• 18:54
  That's the question that just haunts the sufferer.
• 18:56
  And this desperation leads to a very bold, almost shocking
• 19:00
  prayer in verse 11. Why withdraws thou thy hand,
• 19:03
  even thy right hand? Pluck it out of thy bosom.
• 19:06
  That is some startling imagery. He's picturing God standing
• 19:10
  there with his arms folded, his right hand, the hand of power
• 19:14
  tucked away inside his robe. Just resting while his people
• 19:18
  are being slaughtered. And he says, pluck it out.
• 19:20
  It sounds almost disrespectful. I mean, can we really talk to
• 19:24
  God like that? Spurgeon would say yes.
• 19:26
  In this context. It's the boldness of a desperate
• 19:29
  faith. He calls it a rapture of prayer.
• 19:32
  A rapture of prayer. Yes, dying men have to venture
• 19:36
  for their lives. The petitioner knows that God's
• 19:38
  inaction is effectively a victory for the enemy, so he's
• 19:42
  appealing to God's own honor. He's saying, for your own sake,
• 19:45
  stop folding your arms. Strike.
• 19:47
  It's a real shift from Save Us to Defend Yourself, which is a
• 19:51
  theme that really grows as the Psalm goes on.
• 19:53
  It is. And right after this incredibly
• 19:55
  intense plea, the psalmist does something amazing.
• 19:58
  He pivots. He stops looking at the ruins
• 20:00
  around him and starts looking at the history books.
• 20:02
  Which brings us to Section 4, verse 12.
• 20:05
  For God is my king of old. This is the turning point of the
• 20:08
  entire Psalm. It's a deliberate act of the
• 20:11
  will. He looks away from the ruins of
• 20:13
  the temple and looks back at the history of redemption.
• 20:16
  The logic seems simple but really solid.
• 20:20
  If God is the ancient king, he hasn't changed.
• 20:23
  What he did once, he can do again.
• 20:25
  And he starts talking about some pretty wild stuff.
• 20:27
  Sea monsters that'll break us, the heads of the Dragons in the
• 20:30
  waters, and Leviathan. Verses 13 and 14 Yes, this is a
• 20:35
  clear look back to the Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea.
• 20:39
  The Dragons and Leviathan are poetic symbols for Egypt and for
• 20:42
  Pharaoh himself. Berger mentions A literal
• 20:45
  interpretation here, connecting Leviathan to the crocodile.
• 20:48
  He does. The crocodile was a major symbol
• 20:50
  of Egypt, and he mentions this fascinating numismatic detail.
• 20:54
  A coin or a medal from Julius Caesar's time that depicts a
• 20:57
  crocodile with the inscription Egypt taken.
• 21:00
  So breaking the head of Leviathan is a poetic but also
• 21:02
  very political way of saying God crushed the power of Pharaoh and
• 21:06
  his army. Precisely.
• 21:07
  But then you get this very strange phrase.
• 21:09
  And gave us him to be meat to the people inhabiting the
• 21:12
  wilderness. Right.
• 21:14
  That's one of the most difficult lines in the whole Psalm.
• 21:17
  You gave Leviathan his meat. What does that even mean?
• 21:20
  Spurgeon offers a literal interpretation, first citing A
• 21:24
  tradition from Diodorus. He mentions the atheophagy.
• 21:27
  Yes, the fish eaters tribes who lived along the coast of the Red
• 21:30
  Sea. The literal idea is that when
• 21:33
  the tide turned and Egyptians drowned, the sea might have cast
• 21:37
  up not just the bodies, but fish and sea creatures, or even the
• 21:41
  supplies from the Egyptian army. So literally providing food for
• 21:45
  the people in the desert, scavenging the supplies of a
• 21:48
  drowned army. It's a graphic image, but
• 21:50
  Spudgeon, being a preacher who's always concerned with the soul,
• 21:54
  really prefers the spiritual interpretation that the
• 21:57
  destruction of Egypt became food for Israel's faith.
• 22:00
  The memory of that great victory was their sustenance when they
• 22:04
  were in the wilderness, hungry and afraid, they could feed on
• 22:07
  the fact that their God had destroyed Leviathan.
• 22:10
  The spoil of the enemy becomes the provision of the Saint.
• 22:13
  That's it. God gives us former mercies as
• 22:16
  food to feed on while we're in the wilderness of present
• 22:18
  trouble. We look back at how God saved us
• 22:21
  in the past, how he crushed that dragon, and that memory
• 22:25
  strengthens us for today. It's memory as nutrition.
• 22:29
  And the psalmist continues this tour of history in the next
• 22:31
  verse, verse 15, though it's cleave the fountain and the
• 22:35
  flood. This is pointing to the crossing
• 22:37
  of the Jordan River, and there's a little note from Jonathan
• 22:39
  Edwards here that's really insightful.
• 22:41
  The Great Awakening preacher. The very same Edwards notes that
• 22:44
  the text mentions both the fountain and the flood.
• 22:47
  This signifies that God handled both the ordinary river water,
• 22:51
  the fountain, and the flood, which was the extraordinary
• 22:54
  extra water from the harvest rains.
• 22:56
  So the Jordan was at flood stage when they crossed.
• 22:58
  It was so. God didn't just conquer the
• 23:01
  river, He conquered the river at its absolute strongest and most
• 23:04
  impassable. He dried up mighty rivers.
• 23:08
  It just emphasizes that no barrier is too high for God.
• 23:11
  Right. So the psalmist has established
• 23:13
  God's power over history, over nations.
• 23:16
  But then in Section 5, the scope widens even further.
• 23:20
  He moves from history to creation, itself to nature.
• 23:25
  Verses 16 and 17 The day is thine, the night also is thine.
• 23:30
  Why does he go to nature? Here?
• 23:31
  We were just talking about armies and temples and rivers.
• 23:34
  It seems like a strange turn. But it's about establishing
• 23:37
  total sovereignty. If God rules the simple
• 23:40
  alternations of time day and night, then He also rules the
• 23:43
  nights of the church as well as the days.
• 23:46
  There's a poem Spurgeon quotes something like There is not more
• 23:49
  night than day. Yes, it's a reminder of balance.
• 23:52
  God has ordained the darkness just as much as He has ordained
• 23:55
  the light. The night isn't an accident, it
• 23:58
  is thine. It belongs to God.
• 23:59
  It's under his control. And Speaking of light, verse 16
• 24:03
  says Thou has prepared the light in the sun.
• 24:05
  Right, and here we get into a little bit of 19th century
• 24:08
  scientific apologetics, which is fascinating.
• 24:10
  Spurgeon sites writers like Sharon Turner and Paxton Hood to
• 24:13
  defend the Genesis account. This is about the light before
• 24:16
  the sun issue, isn't it? It is in Genesis.
• 24:19
  Moses places the creation of light on day one, but the sun
• 24:23
  isn't created until day four. And for centuries critics mocked
• 24:27
  this. They'd say, how can you have
• 24:29
  light without the sun? This proves the Bible is
• 24:31
  scientifically illiterate. It did seem like a pretty
• 24:34
  glaring error for a long time. But Spurgeon points out that
• 24:37
  science eventually vindicated Moses.
• 24:40
  By the 19th century, scientists understood that light, or what
• 24:43
  they called the fluid of light actinism, is distinct from the
• 24:47
  solar orb light. This independently of the sun.
• 24:50
  The sun is just a holder or a projector of that light.
• 24:54
  So the Bible was ahead of the critics the whole time.
• 24:56
  As is so often the case, and Spurgeon then dwells on the
• 24:59
  moral influence of light. It represents order, purity,
• 25:03
  health. God prepared it.
• 25:05
  Then the psalmist moves to geography.
• 25:07
  Thou has set all the borders of the earth.
• 25:09
  And Spurgeon quotes a German pastor, Sturm, who reflects on
• 25:13
  the globe's shape. It's a classic argument from
• 25:16
  design. The earth is round.
• 25:17
  Why does that matter? If it were square, or a cone or
• 25:21
  a hexagon, the distribution of light, heat and wind would be
• 25:24
  totally messed up. It's the Goldilocks principle,
• 25:27
  just. Right, exactly.
• 25:28
  If the shape were different, much of the earth would be
• 25:31
  uninhabitable, either drowned in water or a dried up desert.
• 25:34
  The borders where the land ends and the sea begins are set by
• 25:38
  God to allow for civilization and contact.
• 25:41
  And then the seasons thou hast made, summer and winter.
• 25:45
  This is the final argument from nature.
• 25:47
  God made winter, and winter is cold and dead and harsh.
• 25:52
  It looks like everything is dying.
• 25:55
  But it's part of the plan. It's a necessary part of the
• 25:57
  plan. Nature rests in winter.
• 25:59
  It's a secret activity that prepares for the life of spring.
• 26:02
  And the application for the suffering church is just it's
• 26:05
  right there on the surface, isn't?
• 26:07
  It it's unavoidable. If God arranges the seasons of
• 26:10
  nature with such profound wisdom, then the winter of the
• 26:13
  church, the time of desolation and silence is also part of a
• 26:17
  wise plan. It's not an accident.
• 26:19
  It's a season prepared by God for a future purpose.
• 26:22
  That brings us to our final section, Section 6, which is
• 26:25
  perhaps the most touching part of the whole Psalm.
• 26:27
  Yeah, the covenant blee. It starts in verse 19.
• 26:29
  O deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of
• 26:32
  the wicked. Why a turtledove?
• 26:35
  Of all the birds, God could have chosen eagles, Hawks, sparrows.
• 26:38
  Why this one? It's such a layered and
• 26:41
  beautiful image. First, the turtle dove is weak.
• 26:44
  It's silly in the old English sense of being simple and
• 26:47
  defenseless. It has no talons, no sharp beak
• 26:50
  for fighting back. It's also known as a mournful
• 26:52
  bird. Yes, the Sighing Sisters, they
• 26:55
  were sometimes called. The dove mourns for its lost
• 26:58
  mate. So it represents fidelity and
• 27:00
  grief. And it's innocent, harmless.
• 27:03
  Spurgeon also mentions a historical note about how Arabs
• 27:06
  and Egyptians would spare the turtledove.
• 27:08
  Right for the sake of hospitality.
• 27:10
  The bird is so trusting and gentle that even in rough
• 27:13
  cultures it was often spared. The psalmist is using this to
• 27:16
  tug at God's heart. Lord, we are your turtledove.
• 27:20
  We are weak, we are mourning, we are innocent.
• 27:22
  Don't give us to the beasts. And then comes the strongest
• 27:25
  plea in the entire Psalm, the one he's been building towards
• 27:28
  verse 20. Have respect into the covenant.
• 27:31
  This is the sheet anchor. For those of us who aren't
• 27:33
  sailors, what exactly is a sheet anchor?
• 27:35
  The sheet anchor is the biggest, heaviest anchor on the ship.
• 27:39
  It's the one you only drop as a last resort when the storm is at
• 27:42
  its absolute worst and the ship is about to be smashed on the
• 27:45
  rocks. And for the believer, that final
• 27:49
  unbreakable anchor is the covenant.
• 27:52
  It is when our works fail, when our own righteousness is nothing
• 27:55
  but filthy rags, when our sin testifies against us, the
• 27:59
  covenant remains, Spurgeon says. God can't look at the Sinner
• 28:03
  because the Sinner is vile, so the prayer asks him to look at
• 28:06
  the covenant instead. Because another way of saying
• 28:08
  look at Christ, look at the agreement that was sealed in
• 28:10
  blood. That's it.
• 28:11
  The covenant is the one thing that binds God's own honor to
• 28:15
  the survival of his people. It's the unbreakable argument.
• 28:17
  It's saying you promised, you swore by your own name.
• 28:20
  You cannot break your word. The verse continues with the
• 28:23
  very dark description of the world outside the covenant.
• 28:27
  The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of
• 28:29
  cruelty. This is a profound sociological
• 28:32
  observation, really. There is a direct link between
• 28:35
  spiritual darkness and physical cruelty.
• 28:37
  Where the light of the gospel is missing, humanity just descends
• 28:41
  into brutality. And Spurgeon gives some chilling
• 28:43
  examples from the source texts about he the nations in his
• 28:47
  time. And we should be clear he's
• 28:49
  reporting the realities of the 19th century as he saw them.
• 28:53
  He is. He mentions China and the
• 28:55
  practice of infanticide carts. Literally collecting dead
• 28:58
  infants before dawn in Beijing, cast out like rubbish.
• 29:01
  He talks about India and the practice of study where widows
• 29:05
  were burned alive on their husband's funeral pyres.
• 29:07
  He also mentions the Thugs, that secret fraternity of murderers
• 29:11
  devoted to the goddess Kali. It's a stark reminder, isn't it?
• 29:15
  We can sometimes romanticize ancient cultures or non
• 29:17
  Christian religions, but Spurgeon is pointing out the
• 29:20
  reality. Hedonism is not innocent, it is
• 29:23
  cruel. And only the light, the gospel,
• 29:25
  can cure this. The dark places are habitats of
• 29:27
  cruelty. The church This little turtle
• 29:29
  dove is surrounded by it. And that's why the plea to the
• 29:32
  covenant is so urgent. Lord, if you don't save us, this
• 29:35
  cruelty will just take over everything.
• 29:37
  Finally, the Psalm ends with that shift we hinted at earlier.
• 29:40
  Verse 22 Plead thine own cause. The psalmist stops asking.
• 29:44
  God to save them and starts asking God to save his own name.
• 29:48
  Remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily.
• 29:51
  It's not just about us anymore. It's.
• 29:53
  About your reputation, precisely the.
• 29:56
  Enemy is blaspheming God's name, and Spurgeon notes that the
• 29:59
  Sinner is like a crocodile that just grows bigger and bigger.
• 30:02
  Quam do vivid Crescent. As long as it lives, it grows.
• 30:06
  Sinners don't stop sinning unless they're stopped by death.
• 30:09
  So the prayer for judgement. What we sometimes call the
• 30:11
  imprecatory nature of it, asking God to destroy the enemy.
• 30:15
  It's actually born out of a zeal for God's honor.
• 30:18
  It is. It's a cry against.
• 30:19
  The harlot of Babylon against Antichrist.
• 30:22
  It's asking God to vindicate his own holiness in a world that
• 30:26
  openly mocks him. If God doesn't strike, his name
• 30:29
  is dragged through the mud. What a walk this Psalm takes.
• 30:31
  Us on, I mean, from the depths of feeling cast off to standing
• 30:35
  in the ruins of the Sanctuary through that awful silence, then
• 30:38
  backs the Red Sea, through the laws of nature, and finally
• 30:40
  dropping that anchor in the Covenant.
• 30:43
  It's the road map for the suffering.
• 30:44
  Believer, it shows us how to navigate the dark night of the
• 30:47
  soul. So if we had to summarize the.
• 30:49
  Key takeaways for you, the listener.
• 30:51
  What would they be? Well, I think first and
• 30:53
  foremost. Affliction does not mean
• 30:55
  rejection. The smoke is not the fire.
• 30:59
  You may be chastised, but if you are one of his sheep, you are
• 31:02
  not cast off. OK, what's the second one?
• 31:04
  Memory is a spiritual. Weapon.
• 31:06
  You have to use the history of God's victories, Leviathan, the
• 31:09
  Jordan, the resurrection to feed your present faith.
• 31:13
  Eat the meat of the Leviathan while you're in your wilderness.
• 31:15
  I love that and. 3rd The God of nature is the God.
• 31:19
  Of the church, the same one who rules the cold winter and the
• 31:22
  dark night, is the same God who is ruling over your suffering.
• 31:26
  Your darkness is under his dominion and his boundaries.
• 31:29
  And finally. The sheet anchor, the covenant
• 31:33
  it is. The final unbreakable argument
• 31:35
  in prayer. When you feel you have nothing
• 31:37
  else to say, when your own heart condemns you, you can still say,
• 31:40
  Lord, have respect into the covenant.
• 31:42
  That brings us to our closing. Thought we always like to leave
• 31:45
  you with something to Mull over. We've talked a lot about the
• 31:48
  silence. Of God and about the
• 31:50
  defenselessness of the turtledove.
• 31:52
  So think about this. The Church is, by all worldly
• 31:56
  standards weak. It is surrounded by roaring
• 32:00
  beasts. It's been attacked by.
• 32:02
  Axes and hammers and fire. For 2000 years, empires have
• 32:07
  tried to crush it. Philosophies have tried to
• 32:09
  dismantle it. And yet, here it is.
• 32:12
  It's still. Here, if the only real defense
• 32:15
  is the covenant, then the continued existence of the
• 32:18
  church today might just be the greatest miracle of all, a Bush
• 32:21
  that is always. Burning, but is never consumed.
• 32:24
  Exactly the very fact. That you and I are sitting here
• 32:26
  talking about the Psalm thousands of years after it was
• 32:28
  written is proof that God remembers his turtledove.
• 32:32
  That is a powerful thought. We'd encourage you to read Psalm
• 32:34
  74 this week, Read it through this Covenant lens.
• 32:37
  Indeed. Thank you for joining us.
• 32:38
  On this deep dive. Sole de Gloria, Sole de O.
• 32:40
  Gloria.