Psalm 80
READ PSALM 80.
A ninety-year-old couple sat on the front porch one night. The old man was overcome with the romance of the evening and he said to his hard of hearing wife, “I’m proud of you.” “Huh,” she said. “I’m proud of you.” “I’m tired of you too,” she said.
More often than not, the fact is that over time the more familiar we are with something the less fascination we have with it. We get tired of things very quickly. Things that once fascinated us now bring little emotion. A young person gets a new CD and listens to it over and over again but eventually the CD gets old and sits on a shelf. An adult gets a new car but after awhile the newness has worn off and he wants a new one.
Bob Barker on The Price is Right has a saying that “familiarity breeds contempt.” But more often than not, I’ve discovered that “familiarity just breeds indifference.” And the more we become familiar with something the less fascination we have. The newness fades and we lose the wonder.
Today, here we are at the first Sunday in Advent…again. We’re not ready for the Christmas season! We’re not ready to bring all those decorations down from the attic and up from the basement. We’re not ready to think about finding the perfect gift for each of the 25 or 30 people that will make up our lists. We’ve heard the Christmas story over and over and slowly the wonder of what occurred some 2,000 years ago diminishes. It fails to do much for us spiritually. The old, old story has become just that: the old, old story.
That’s why we need to hear and read Psalm 80. In this Psalm, which is actually a prayer, the writer asks God for revival and restoration. Three times the author uses the phrase, “Restore us, O God.” And this request to be restored is made to the only one who can revive us again: Our God, Our Savior, Our Lord.
The psalmist begins the prayer with; "Give ear (or listen to us), O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth…Stir up your might and come to save us!” Note that it says, “You who lead Joseph like a flock.” It’s in the present tense. In Israel of old, God was guide, supporter, and protector. God has always guided His people.
Also, the psalmist put God enthroned with the cherubim, which places Him over the mercy seat above the Ark of the Covenant. He is the God of the Mercy Seat, and the writer requests God to “shine forth.” Shine forth, showing His full glory.
In the New Testament there is a fuller revelation as we discover the Glory of God shining in the person of His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. It seems that God never ceases the chore of continually restoring His people, renewing and reviving us.
The word, “restore,” is a returning again to a certain condition, one we were in “before.” What a state we were in when God came to us. And we were the ones who gradually put some distance between God and us—maybe by skipping church a few Sundays when it was nicer to stay in bed, sleeping late, maybe by our busyness that kept us from reading our Bible as often as we should, maybe by waiting until bedtime to say our prayers and then falling asleep before we said, “Amen.”
But when we realized how far we had traveled away from God and we asked, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine down on us so that we may be saved,” He restored us again, and His face shined upon us, and we were renewed, revived, energized.
We all need to be restored. From time to time we need a thorough and complete renewal. We need reviving, on a regular basis. As a cup of icy cold water on a blistering hot day revives our wilting body, so the mercy of God revives the whole person, body, soul, and spirit. Do you feel parched right now? Are you longing to be revived, for God to shine forth before you? The water that flows from the throne of God is waiting for your asking. “Restore us, O God, let your face shine that we may be saved.”
The prophet cries, "Listen, our Shepherd! Look what is happening to us! Come! Save us! Restore us! ” But we have to know that there are some things we have to do before that will happen. The first thing we must do for that newness and excitement to appear again is we must TURN TOWARD GOD.
Over my lifetime some strange, mysterious things have happened to me. They have been things which I didn’t understand at the time. One of those was a divorce just at the time when I was reborn as a child of God, just when I was turning my life over to Him. I knew God hates divorce and in my joy at discovering the Lord, I believed he would put my broken marriage back together and we would all live happily ever after.
But it didn’t happen that way. Jesus literally led me away from that abusive, adulterous situation with me crying, “Why?” every step of the way. The surprise came later when I could look back and see God’s hand in every step and learned the reason why God had allowed those things to happen.
When we ask God to restore us, then turning to God is all-important; so important that God will do anything to bring it about. There are times when we turn away from God, maybe not even purposely, but a gradual slipping into the old patterns of sin. And then He brings something drastic into our lives, in an effort to restore our relationship with him. Tears and hard times often turn us toward God. In the midst of the turmoil of many countries today, many hearts are crying out, "O God help me!" We forget Him in our happy times, but in our suffering and woe, we turn to Him.
Another part of the process of restoration is when God beams on us. “Shine forth!” (the cover of our worship bulletin says. “Let your face shine,” verses 3, 7, and 19 in Psalm 80 say. His light is our health. When God deals drastically with us, to restore us to a relationship with Himself, He does not take out a big stick: He shines on us. There is a light from the Mercy Seat – the throne of God. Picture that light as the smiling of the Father's Face. In the days of Jesus' birth, there was a group of devout and lowly people who still looked for God's redemption. They knew that salvation could not, and would not, come without great cost -- not just to themselves, but also to God. The prophet Isaiah had hinted about this in the 53rd chapter of his book of the Bible, which these people had no doubt read.
Listen to these words: “…He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed, all we like sheep have gone astray, and we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the sins of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter…by a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people…Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain…through him the will of the Lord shall prosper, out of his anguish he shall see light…” (verses 5-11)
These people who lived in the time of Jesus’ birth had experienced in their own history. They read the prophecies of Isaiah. So with honest hearts, they confessed that they didn't have the power to bring salvation and deliverance. This power had to come from God and had to be released to people who were seeking God's transformation in their lives. They needed to ask God for it! They needed to seek his face, his presence, his light, in their daily lives. So must we! Why? So that we may be saved.
We turn to God because He is the only source of our renewal and hope. And there is something more that God wants us to do. Verses 17 and 18 of Psalm 80 ask God, “Let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.” “The one who is at God’s right hand” has been interpreted two ways: (1) one would be the obvious, His Son, Jesus Christ. But another interpretation by Bible scholars says “the one who is at God’s right hand” is his chosen people. When the psalm was written, that would have been Israel. But today, WE are God’s chosen people.
We have been chosen to share this miracle story of Christ’s birth. We have been chosen to share the grace and mercy that has been shared with us. We have been chosen to be God’s light in a world of darkness and sin. We have been chosen to tell our neighbors and our family members how they, too, can be saved, how they, too, can be restored, how they, too, can see the Light out of their anguish. Christ is the light of all lights. Christians are to be the light by which the world is made bright with hope, peace, joy, and love. Jesus says to us, “You are the light of the world.” And so let us say to Him, “Restore us, O God. Restore us, we who have lost our sense of wonder and naiveté. Restore our withered hearts and our innocence. Restore us to your love and share it with others through us. Restore our lives to their unsoiled perfection and intention. Restore us to yourself, O God. Let your face shine, that we may be saved.” Please pray with me: O God, the maker of new things, sometimes we feel so old and worn out, our souls weary from the fight. We need your presence and strength to restore us. Please restore us and make your grace alive in us. And please restore not just us, but all those who call on your mighty name so that the world may see you in us and come to know your saving grace. Amen.
