Psalm 80:1-8
Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,
you who lead Joseph like a flock.
You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth.
Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh,
stir up your might
and come to save us!
Restore us, O God;
let your face shine, that we may be saved!
O Lord God of hosts,
how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?
You have fed them with the bread of tears
and given them tears to drink in full measure.
You make us an object of contention for our neighbors,
and our enemies laugh among themselves.
Restore us, O God of hosts;
let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, Psalm, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The psalm for Sunday, December 3 2023, is Psalm 80, verses one through seven, give Eero shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are in throne upon the chair of him shine forth, before Efrem and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your mind and come to save us. Restore us, oh, God, let your face shine that we may be saved. Oh, Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers, you have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure, you make us an object of contention for our neighbors, and our enemies, laugh among themselves, restore us, oh God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved. Here ends the reading. This is an interesting Psalm for Christians to be able to pray, because it gives us an approach to God that is a little odd. It begins by asking God to listen, you know, we think God always listens to our prayers. Why in the world? Would we start out by saying give here Oh, Shepherd of Israel. That's just like, listen, Oh, God. Why would we ask God to listen? Well, one of the reasons is that what they say later on, as they say, Oh Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers. So you can talk about God hearing our prayers in sort of two ways. There's one way where God promises always to hear our prayer. But I think what they're doing is they're saying, God, hear our prayer and act, do what we tell you to. Now, for them, the problem is, is a big deal. What they're going through is what you can see it says, You have made us an object of contention for our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. This, this for ancient Israel would have been a series of likely military defeats, disasters, problems, all sorts of bad things that are going on in the nation of Israel, during the time of one of their kings. Because we remember, you always need to remember, God's promises to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament were different than God's promises to the church. God had promised that if they followed him, things would go well for them, that they would be safe, they would find rest, they would have food, they would be wealthy, and God would protect them from their enemies. That's very different from the promise that God gives to His Church is that we do not have the promise of wealth and happiness and and a peaceful life. But they did. And so when enemies would attack them come from outside, they would go up, and they would say, Oh, God, come on, like, come through on your promises. You said you would save us, you chose us. And so they're crying out? How long will you be angry with your people's prayers. So that's why God, they start out with this prayer, give here, listen. And it finally says, stir up your mind and come to save us. Now, if you look at the book of Judges, you've got all sorts of things where where this would happen, where the people would sin, they would forget God worship false idols, and then an army would come in. And those who the Roman remnant who remained faithful, they would cry out under this oppression because even the faithful ones would suffer under the oppression caused by the unfaithful people who worship false gods. So they would cry out, restore us, oh, God, let your face shine that we may be saved. And sometimes it took a really long time for that to happen, for God to raise up a judge to take over and protect his people. And so they could pray, you fed them with the bread of tears and give them tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us was the prayer, oh God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved. And so the Old Testament prayer was God raise up a leader for us to save us from our enemies so that we can drive them from our land and live at peace and self government once again. In the church, we have a different question. We also look around and we see in our own lives. Sometimes our own sin sometimes the problems around us these things they lead us into pain. But I think it's especially true when Christians face persecution. I can imagine people who are they see their churches torn down by governments that are officially hostile to Christianity. They see people who are killed for converting from their old religion to the True One of the Christian church. We see people getting hurt all the time rejected cast out, and we go, Wait a second God, aren't you the God of all creation? Aren't you the God who promised to come and save and make us rain with Christ for all eternity? How long? Are you going to going to wait? Why are you allowing all these things to happen? Stir up your mind and come to save us. But for the Christian, we know that this is something that God has already done. He sent his war leader, his great Judge Jesus Christ, who entered into death itself and destroyed the power of death, and rose to new life and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. And for us, we just have to wait until God decides to come back and raise us all from the dead and give us eternal life. And so we cry out, stir up your mind and come to save us. Come Lord Jesus, raise us from the dead and give us life and bring about the final kingdom. But until then, we often end up being fed with the bread of tears and tears to drink and full measure as we wait for that day. So this prayer becomes about the end, restore us of God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved. But we have the promise that it will happen, that even when our time here is over, Jesus will come and we will live forever with Him. That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai