Posted at Reformation Scotland:
Times of relative peace for God’s people are always eventually broken by the hostility of evil forces and people who, one way or another, would prefer no trace of God’s presence and promises to exist. God’s people, until Jesus came, were more or less identified with the people of Israel. Now that Jesus has come, God’s people are defined in spiritual rather than ethnic terms (Philippians 3:3), yet as Christians we still owe ethnic Israel our respect and gratitude (Romans 3:2) and our love (Romans 11:28). When the wicked forces of barbarism attack, as happened on 7 October 2023, we recognise the ages-old struggle of evil against the word and work of God and we react with horror against the brutality and savagery inflicted on Jewish people simply for being Jews. We denounce the increasing incidence of appalling anti-Semitic attitudes and actual violence, even in the UK, as seen in the recent deadly attack at a Manchester synagogue. Many of the Psalms memorialise previous similar incidents in history and provide a framework for us to bear witness to the atrocity while appealing to God for help, both in the sense of bringing justice and deliverance from evil and also help to become more devoted to God and godliness. In the following updated extract from his commentary on the Psalms, the Covenanter David Dickson (who knew that Christians can also be the subjects of barbaric and unreasoned persecution) takes us through Psalm 74, a psalm of lamentation and appeal arising in the aftermath of enemy attack.There are three parts to Psalm 74. The first is the pitiful lamentation presented to God because of the destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple by the Chaldeans (v.1–11). Next is the strengthening of the faith and hope of God’s people, that God would send a deliverance (v.12–18). In the third, there are various petitions for the relief of His people, the restitution of His own work, and the suppression of His enemies (v.19–23).
Lamenting towards God
The psalm opens in v.1–2 with lamentation and prayer for relief in general. In all judgements, inflicted by whatsoever instruments, the Lord’s people must look first to God. Even when wrath, and fear of utter wrath, stare them in the face, they must make their appeal to God, however angry He seems to be.
The Lord does not want His people to yield to oppressive thoughts of being “cast off”. Instead, He allows us to question everything that might hint at this, and to debate that point with him, and not to endure it. We are permitted to say, “Why hast thou cast us off for ever?”
Although by our sins we have provoked the Lord to fall upon us, as if we were His enemies, yet we must not quit the least connection we have with Him, not even the external covenant. Instead we must make use of it for supporting of our faith in Him. Here, they call themselves “the sheep of thy pasture,” reminding Him that He has taken on the care of them, as a shepherd over his flock. Whatever the Lord does to His people, they must pray to Him, and make use of all the ties that bind Him and them. “Remember thy congregation,” they pray, “which thou hast purchased” by price and conquest, and “of old,” from a long time ago. He has measured them out, and they are His inheritance, not to dispose of or put away (“the rod of thine inheritance”). They remind Him that He has granted them deliverances out of terrible trouble before (“which thou hast redeemed”), and that He had taken up residence among them in His public ordinances (“this Mount Sion, wherein thou hast dwelt”).