Let's turn now to that same psalm, Psalm 77, and read it as God had inspired it in his word. It's good to be here this evening with you, and it is not that I have been trying to avoid preaching or that they haven't asked me to preach from time to time, but our schedules just have never quite worked out, so it's good to be here tonight. Psalm 77 I cried out to God for help. I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord. At night, I stretched out untiring hands, and my soul refused to be comforted. I remembered you, O God, and I groaned, I mused, and my spirit grew faint. Kept my eyes from closing. I was too troubled to speak. I thought about the former days, the years of long ago. I remembered my songs in the night. My heart mused and my spirit inquired, Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion? And then I thought, to this I will appeal the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord, yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds, your ways of God are holy. What God is so great is our God. You are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the peoples with your mighty arm. Redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. The water saw you, O God. The water saw you and writhed. The very depths were convulsed. The clouds poured down water. The skies resounded with thunder. Your arrows flashed back and forth. Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind. Your lightning lit up the world. The earth trembled and quaked. Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. After reading that, you know why people turn to the Psalms in times of trouble. They are so honest about life and about feelings and about doubt. There is no pretense at all in the Psalms. How different from today, I would think, from most Christian testimonies, or at least many. I would imagine that if one of you children had written a poem like this, your mother, your teacher would have said, you know, that was a nice poem, but I don't think you should have been so honest. You know, you shouldn't really doubt God. You should have more faith. And if your pastor had written this poem and put it in the Sharon Care or in the newspaper, you probably would have said, well, it's a nice poem. But you know, he shouldn't peddle his personal problems. He shouldn't talk about his doubts. After all, the Christian life is one of victory and it is one of praise and it is one of joy. It is one of overcoming. It's one of turning scars into stars. and, of course, that's true. But the Psalms deal with the real world, where there isn't always victory, and where there isn't always joy, and where there aren't always smiles on faces, and we aren't always walking or flying with the eagles. We are in the dirt, grubbing for hope. Tonight I've chosen such a psalm, even though there are many psalms, a psalm for every occasion, of course, many psalms that speak of joy and victory and hope and praise, and we use many of them for singing. But I've chosen a psalm this evening that speaks about trouble. I had not intended to do that. I intended to do something else. But this week was the burial or the death of Jim Horton, And that brought back some long memories. Remembering that he had had surgery about a year or so ago, brain surgery. Many of you know that. You should all know that, I guess. He's a member of this church. And surgery was not successful. And for a year he was unable to communicate and lay on his bed. And his wife, his dear wife, was perhaps one of the few that could communicate to him and brought joy into his life. And then God struck her down with a stroke. And if you think about that, if you thought about that, you'd wonder, what is God doing? Is God really in control in all of this? The only joy, the only help this man had was his wife, and now she can't comfort him. And then this morning at Sunday school, of course, you were reminded of Catherine Van Drunen. Catherine Van Drunen. who from a human perspective will not live unless a bone donor is found for her. And you think about this young woman with a young child and a husband with such great gifts and so vibrant and full of life and with such a large future ahead of her. And then we think of someone who is in the rest home in a ward of the state and whose mind is, you know, not even functioning, whose elevator doesn't go up to the top floor anymore. and you wonder, what is God doing in all this? Is he really in control? These are things that Christians think about. And certainly we think about that in this church because you have had so many since I have left. The last funeral I had here was Keith Vander Paul, and you remember how the Lord took him in his prime of life. And then there was Nathan Van Eggman, just to mention a couple, The Lord strikes him in his youth. And Reverend Jacob Atpura from Nigeria, who was such a gifted student, and the Lord allowed him to be in the States, allowed us to get to know him and his wife and his first two children here. And the church in Nigeria needed him so badly, and he would be such an asset to them. And he goes home after all of this, and then he finds himself, or we find, that he is killed in an automobile accident. We say, where is God in all of this? If God reigns, why are these things happening? And it is that kind of doubt and that kind of struggle that the psalmist is facing, and facing with us. We don't know what kind of particular difficulties he is having, but he is experiencing trouble after trouble after trouble. In verse 7, he says, will the Lord reject forever? You see, it wasn't just one thing, but it was one thing after the other. Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? You see, what a pathetic cry it is. It is not just trouble, but it is trouble after trouble after trouble. And as I already began to indicate, many of you know that same kind of prayer, that same kind of cry to God. Perhaps you have ministered to a spouse in a long illness. Perhaps you have gone through other difficulties. Maybe you have lost one friend after another. Maybe you have had one disobedient child after another. Maybe you have had one business loss after another. And you say, where is God in all this? Has he forgotten to be kind? Has your unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? And then perhaps in your troubles, or maybe you know of someone in those troubles, in your trouble you have shared that with someone, what you are going through. They asked how you were and you actually told them. And then they said to you, well, isn't it wonderful that we can turn to God in prayer at a time like this? And that's a wonderful thing to say, of course. And it's a wonderful thing that we can do. And then when they leave, they perhaps said to us, we will pray for you. And that seems so Christian, and that kind of satisfies us. If we have said that to someone, we have, you know, given them some comfort. But would it be irreligious of me to say that maybe that wasn't much comfort? Maybe that person nodded silently, but I have said that to people and I could see tears welling in their eyes and I could almost see anger hidden behind their face because some of them have been praying. And some of them have had the courage to say, but I have been praying, I've been lifting up my hands to heaven and nothing happens. Heaven is closed. God has his ears plugged. I pray and I pray and I pray and nothing happens. I think the psalmist would have answered us the same way. We would have gone to the psalmist and said, isn't it wonderful to go to God and to pray? And he would have said in Psalm 1, he said, don't talk to me. In verse 1, he said, don't talk to me about prayer. Verse 1, I cried out to God for help. I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord. At night I stretched out untiring hands. My soul refused to be comforted. Man, I have been praying. Day in and day out, day in and day out. At night I stretch out my hands to God and he doesn't fill them. So don't talk to me about prayer. Maybe you have experienced that same thing. I trust that you have, at least some of you. Maybe some of you children have. You've been praying and praying about something, maybe about a grandpa or a grandma or a brother or sister or a teacher or a friend at school or whatever. Maybe you teenagers have been praying about something or you parents, and prayer doesn't seem to work. God doesn't answer. And then we come back and say, well, at least we have our faith. You know, if all else fails, at least we have our faith. We can live by faith. And that also seems like a wonderful Christian answer, and I hope that you won't think that I have backslidden since I have retired, but what if faith doesn't work? And sometimes it doesn't seem to work. As a matter of fact, faith sometimes is part of our problem. You know, sometimes when people go through tremendous struggles and we go to comfort them, we hardly know what to say, but then we say, isn't it wonderful at a time like this at least to have our faith? And maybe they mumbled something and maybe they were quiet after you said that and maybe they even said, yes, it is good to have faith. But if they were really honest with themselves, they would say, faith is just the problem. In effect, we haven't been relieved one bit by our faith. It has aggravated the problem. Does that surprise you? That faith in God could be a problem? That wouldn't have surprised the psalmist. He said in verse 3, he says, I remembered you, O God, and I groaned, I mused, and my spirit grew faint. How could that be, that thinking about God would make him grow faint? Well, the answer is pretty simple, you see. If we believe in God and we believe that God is holy and we know about God's majesty and about God's might and about God's sovereignty and about God's love and all of those things. And we know that nothing happens in this world without his divine will. And then we see these things that we can't understand. We are disturbed when a father, a young father with three children and a husband is taken away by death and the church needed him and we don't understand it. Then you see, faith in God makes it difficult. If it was just that life dealt me a bad hand, if it was just a bad roll of the dice, if it was just, you know, the way the cookie crumbles, then I could understand it, then at least I could face it, I could, you know, tough it out. If I thought, for example, that somehow or other it was the devil's work that a drunk, you know, hit a car full of people and killed him and he walked away untouched, only a few bumps and bruises, if it was just bad luck, you know, then I could understand it, then I could probably tough it out somehow. But I don't believe in that. I don't believe in luck. I don't believe the devil is in charge. I believe that God is in charge. Then how do I explain that double tragedy when a young person is taken and a ward of the state continues to linger on and on and on, only becoming a burden to society rather than a help? And you can multiply that problem, that paradox, that difficulty over and over again, a thousand times, every day. Or you can think of it in terms of a little different way, in terms of Psalm 73, where the same problem exists, only it's a little different view on it, where it doesn't pay to be good. That's what Psalm 73 is about. He looks at the wicked, and the wicked are prospering, and they scoff at God, and their mouth lays claim to heaven and and uh and he says in verse 13 surely in vain i have kept my heart pure in other words it didn't pay to be good the wicked prosper the righteous don't we think about that in our own life we understand we understand that we see a competitor whose business practices are as crooked as a mountain highway and he is prosperous and he is a plush office, and he is a plush wife, and he is a plush secretary, and we have an office that we can hardly stretch out our legs in, and we are just making it, just staying in the black. You see a kid cheating in school over and over again, and he gets straight A's, and the teachers honor him with, you know, praise, and you are honest, you don't cheat, and it's hard even to get a C, and you say, where is God's justice in all of this? Is God really in charge? You see, now I'm not saying that faith and prayer never work, because I certainly have been in the ministry long enough to be encouraged in my own faith and prayer life by others who have gone through great troubles and sorrows that would have devastated me, I suppose, and they have given testimony to the joy and the peace that they had through prayer and through the sovereign God working in their lives and great testimonies. I don't want to negate that. I don't want to say that that never happens. It often happens. But the problem is with so many of us that many times we find ourselves in faith and doubting and in prayer life wondering whether God is hearing us and then we have a double problem because we not only have the difficulty yet the sickness or the death or the sorrow or whatever it might be we not only have that difficulty yet but now I begin to wonder am I really a child of God? If I'm really a child of God how can I doubt? How is it that my prayers aren't answered? Why do I wonder if God is really in charge? And I begin to say has God forsaken me has my Christian testimony been genuine has it been true or has it been a facade have I been a hypocrite and then we ought to read the Psalms and begin to understand once again that God's people have often gone through periods of doubt not that that's a godly thing to brag about the psalmist said it was born of my infirmity these doubts and fears that troubled me were born of my infirmity it's an evidence of our weakness but even the greatest saints of God have demonstrated that same weakness that's why we talk about the fight of the Christian faith John the Baptist one of the great saints you know had that great testimony about Jesus. He sees Jesus come and he says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And he talked about Jesus being so honored that he wasn't even, shouldn't be allowed even to touch his sandals. What a testimony of John the Baptist. What faith, what confidence about who Jesus was and what he came to do. And then John finds himself in prison. And Jesus isn't doing what John expects. The kingdom isn't coming as John anticipated it to come. And he sends his servant to Jesus and he says, Are you the one or do we look for another? You see, doubt had entered into this saint's life. And here too in Psalm 77, we find a saint of God troubled. his prayer isn't working his faith is making him weak and slit so what does he do how does he get out of this dilemma and that we find in the last half of the psalm beginning at verse 10 we start reading at verse 11 he says I will remember the deeds of the Lord yes I will remember your miracles of long ago I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds. That was really the secret of his restored faith, of his coming again to a prayer life and to faith in God. He begins to remember. And now he doesn't remember God in terms of God's attributes, of God's holiness and his immensity and his sovereignty and his omnipresence and his omnipotence and all those attributes of God. He doesn't remember God in that way, but he remembers God in terms of what God did, in terms of how God's people experienced God's actions and God's presence in history. That was the secret of his restored faith. In the first ten verses, his mind is on himself. He reminds us of what he was going through. And when you look at the first ten verses, you count all the personal pronouns and you find I and me and my, you find that 20 or more times there. But then you get to the second part of this psalm and there are that many references to God. So he begins to think about God, what God had done in history. Not just what the prophet said about God, but what God had done in history. And he mentions in verse 15, Jacob and Joseph. With your mighty arm, you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Kind of interesting that he would use Joseph there. We kind of put off guard a little bit with that. But if you think about it, what perfect people to remember when he remembered what God had done. Because as you boys and girls know, the story of Joseph began out in a very tragic way. Well, it didn't begin in a tragic way, but in the middle it was very tragic because Joseph was one of Jacob's sons, and he was the most godly of all the children of Jacob. And Jacob loved Joseph more than all the rest of his sons. And his brothers hated Joseph because he was the spoiled brat. And so they sold Joseph into slavery, you remember. And can you imagine this young man who had a godly perspective on life, how desperately afraid he must have been when he was put on that caravan and they started to leave and his brothers became smaller and smaller in the distance and finally he couldn't see them anymore. What fear and despair must have filled his life. God, where are you when I need you? What disappointment must have filled his heart when he resisted the advances of Potiphar's wife only to be thrown into prison because Potiphar didn't believe his story and believed his wife instead. Has God forgotten to be kind? You know, that would be the question that the psalmist would ask and that Joseph certainly must have asked. Has God forgotten to be kind? Is God still ruling and reigning in Egypt too? But, of course, we know the outcome of that. We know that Joseph became the second ruler in the kingdom and that finally he prevented famine in the land and his brothers came and they admitted their sin and then he began to realize that God meant it for good. They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. But how long it took for him to realize that. and his descendants. I mean, he was not killed, as they thought, but his descendants lived and became part of the tribes of Israel. Then he mentions Jacob, and so often we think about Jacob in other ways, but can you imagine Jacob's despair? When they came with that bloody robe, and they talked about Joseph being probably killed by animals, and how he must have grieved. and probably gone back over the path that Joseph went and thinking if it was a mountain lion, they usually kill their prey and they eat part of it and then they bury the rest of it to come back a week later and perhaps trying to find some evidences of a scuffle and blood on the trail and trying to find at least some bones of Joseph that he could bring back and not finding that and then condemning himself for month after month after month for letting his son go alone. He shouldn't have done that. And then the famine coming, and problem after problem, the famine coming, and then having to move to Egypt when God had promised them that promised land. Where was God in all this? Now he not only took away his son, but now he sends him to Egypt and his whole family, away from the land that God had promised. And there they stay for 400 years, and first they don't want to go home because it's too prosperous there, and later on they can't go home because they are slaves. Where is God in all of this? Where are his promises? I thought he loved us. I thought he promised Abraham and Isaac and Jacob these things. And God finally comes and delivers them in the way that the psalm talks here with these ten plagues and dividing the sea and the pillar of fire and the thunder and the rain and the manna and the water from the rock and the promised land. So the psalmist focuses on what God had done in history, But what they saw, what had happened, not what people simply said they thought about God, but what God did, how God acted, how God delivered his people, how God was faithful to his promises. As he thought about that, brick by brick by brick, in a sense, the wall of his faith began to grow and to steady. And his doubts disappeared. And he became more like Habakkuk. He would sit on that high place and look and know that he must live by faith to see what God would do. And of course, that's where we must go to. When our prayers don't seem to work and when faith in God seems to be misplaced, then we must remember what God has done. We must go back in history, maybe in our own history. Maybe some of you can think about God's great deliverances when you were young or when you immigrated to this country or when you had a serious illness or a pregnancy that you were very concerned about. And on and on you can go and you can see how, you can remember how God answered prayers and you can begin to build your faith up in that way and have courage that God does live and God does hear. Maybe if we have trouble remembering what God has done in our own life, Maybe we have to remember that God is more concerned about things than simply our immediate happiness. You know, God has a whole people. God has a whole world. God has a whole church that he is concerned about. And so maybe we have to have a broader perspective than just our little narrow perspective of the Escondido URC. So we begin to look and we begin to remember that our faith is not a leap in the dark. You know, sometimes people describe faith as a leap in the dark. Our faith isn't a leap in the dark. That's stupidity to jump in the dark, you know. If you don't know anything, you'd be foolish to jump in the dark. Our faith is grounded in what God not only has said, but in what God has done. We are not like those who believe in a myth. Our Bibles don't talk about once upon a time many years ago in a deep dark woods, you know, in the land of Oz and all of this. No, it talks about Herod and Pontius Pilate and Caesar Augustus and Pharaoh and all of these things, all of these men in history. It happened in time. It happened in a place. We live in the year 2002. Where does that date come from? It comes from the birth of Jesus. what God has done in history. If you can't think about anything else, what better place to go than to remember what God has done in Jesus, huh? Jesus was different than other religious people. He didn't just say, believe in me. He didn't just say, you know, I have a vision of God. I have a direct connection with God. But he asked people, he called people to discipleship and he called people to faith because of what he did. He demonstrated who he was through his miracle. These things are written, said the Apostle John. Jesus did many, many things, many miracles, but these things are written that you might believe. Jesus wasn't a fictional hero. Jesus showed himself to be the Son of God by the things that he did. And those things that he did were done in the face of witnesses, of reliable witnesses who, on the basis of what Jesus did and their faith in him, were willing to give their life. It isn't that Jesus just said, you know, believe in me, I am the good shepherd. But he demonstrated that he was a good shepherd, That he could feed his sheep by feeding the 5,000. That he was indeed the life giver by raising Lazarus from the dead. He demonstrated who he was through those things. And this wasn't done in a corner. It was done at the very crossroads of the world with all kinds of witnesses. Therefore, you see, when I begin to wonder if God is in charge and where God is and whether God hears my prayer, then I, before I give up, I say, then what am I going to do with Jesus? What am I going to do with him who was born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered and died? What am I going to do with an empty grave? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he not only claimed to be, but he demonstrated to be none other than God himself. The Apostle John in the epistle, as you already know, said, that which we have seen and that which we have heard, that which we have touched, we declare to you. Jesus didn't, his resurrection wasn't attested to by one or two, but the grave was emptied and he showed himself to one, two, five, ten. 120 at one time, he showed himself over and over again until the proof of the resurrection could not be denied. So when I began to wonder, is God in charge? And before I go my wayward way, I asked myself, but what am I going to do with Jesus if God so loved the world that he gave his own son if God spared not his son but delivered him up to be crucified will he not then freely give me all things then must not everything work out to my good is there any good thing that God would withhold from me perhaps my immediate happiness but not my joy and my hope of the future. Has God forgotten to be kind? No. But his ways are above my ways. His thoughts are above my thoughts. His ways are holy. And in childlike faith I must follow because he has demonstrated that he is a God who redeems his people and he has redeemed us Amen Father in heaven help us to remember to remember what you have done when we do not see light in our current situation when darkness seems to prevail when our prayers seem not to be answered, when you seem not to be concerned, then may we remember your ways. May we remember that you gave us your Son and that therefore you will not withhold any good thing from us. And give us patience to wait then until we see that big picture and then we will praise you as we ought. Help us then to be patient for Jesus' sake. Amen.