I hate losing.
I’m a competitor. And I win a lot. I’ve coached undefeated volleyball teams and when my family does game nights, their main goal is to keep me from winning.
I’m not a win-at-any-cost player or coach. But I really, really dislike losing.
Unfortunately, I don’t always win. None of us do. And there are times when losing stacks up on top of losing. There are times when defeat is so complete and so crushing it’s hard to bear. This is especially difficult when you’ve had a reputation for being a winner.
This is the state of the church in America recently. After years of favored status in our country, we are now on the outside. We’re losing people. We’re losing politically, having made disastrous political alliances. We’re losing our reputation. We’re losing culturally. We’re losing our place as the assumed faith of our nation. And when we look forward, the future looks bleak for Christianity in America.
The people of God faced a similar (but far worse) catastrophe when the Babylonians defeated the southern kingdom of Judah, destroying the temple, sacking Jerusalem, killing off most of the monarchy, and hauling the best and brightest off to Babylon to serve the empire. The people were devastated. Family members had been slaughtered. Their religion was in tatters. Their national identity was shattered. It was a complete and utter disaster. They were LOSERS. Yes, in all caps. You couldn’t lose any worse than they had lost. After years as undefeated champions, they didn’t have a single W in the win column.
Psalm 79 is a whiny, complaining psalm coming out of this period of sustained losing. As such it gives voice to all of us who have fallen from winners to losers, including us personally and as the church in America. It articulates what many Christians feel and can thereby help us work through our feelings before God in prayer.
It begins with the destruction of the temple.
O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple,
they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble (Ps. 79:1).
In many regards, to lose the temple was to lose Yahweh.
I would weep if the building my church meets in were burned down by vandals, profanity scrawled on what few walls remained. But we’d collect insurance money and rebuild, probably making improvements along the way. The temple and its role within Hebrew worship and national identity was vastly different.
There was only one temple in Judah like there is only one Buckingham Palace in England. If the palace were destroyed, something of the British monarchy would be lost. Some buildings are simply irreplaceable.
Also battles in the ancient Near East were seen as not just human struggles, but as struggles between the gods. Judah losing to Babylon equaled Yahweh losing to Marduk. The burning of Yahweh’s temple could be seen as Yahweh being burned on an altar to Marduk. The gods of the ancient Near East didn’t survive these kinds of losses. It’s absolutely amazing that Yahweh not only survives, but grows in reputation after such a devastating blow.
But it’s not just Yahweh who is defeated, it’s the people of God themselves whose lifeless bodies littered the land.
They have left the dead bodies of your servants
as food for the birds of the sky,
the flesh of your own people for the animals of the wild.
They have poured out blood like water
all around Jerusalem,
and there is no one to bury the dead (Ps. 79:2-3)
Having begun with a finger pointing at the nations, followed by repeated “they” jabs at what the nations done, Asaph continues his us/them diatribe. And the us is “your servants.” We are “your own people.” We belong to God and they are our destroyers. The us/them divide can hardly be wider.
And who can blame Asaph for laying it out like this? When the people you know and love have been murdered, you don’t take it well. You shouldn’t take it well.
It was so devastating, the land wasn’t watered by rain. It was watered with blood. So many have died “there is no one to bury the dead.”
I can only imagine the depth of such pain.
But insults are added to injury.
We are objects of contempt to our neighbors,
of scorn and derision to those around us (Ps. 79:4).
Not only did God’s people have to suffer death and destruction and impoverishment, they had the neighboring nations to deal with as well. The Babylonians were the hammer that smashed God’s people. But on the sidelines watching it all were nations Israel and Judah had named as allies. Not only didn’t they lift a hand to help, these neighbors heckled and mocked after it was all over.
This is a poor comparison, but whenever I lose badly, my ego is a little sore. So if someone starts mocking me, there is potential for me to explode. And that’s precisely what Asaph does.
How long, LORD? Will you be angry forever?
How long will your jealousy burn like fire?
Pour out your wrath on the nations
that do not acknowledge you,
on the kingdoms
that do not call on your name;
for they have devoured Jacob
and devastated his homeland (Ps. 79:5-7).
The people of God can’t do anything. They’ve been crushed. So Asaph turns toward God and says, “Hey! Why are you still mad at us? Aren’t you done with that yet? Or are you just going to keep piling on fuel to the fire of your anger with us?”
This is the first acknowledgement of the sins of God’s people. But it’s less of a confession than an accusation. “Are you still going on about that old stuff? Why aren’t you doing anything about the things they’re doing right now?”
The psalmist is incredulous. He points at his tormentors and is apoplectic.
“These people don’t even give you the time of day. To them, you’re nothing, Yahweh! They disrespect you and they eat your people. So why are you beating us down instead of them?”
Do not hold against us the sins of past generations;
may your mercy come quickly to meet us,
for we are in desperate need.
Help us, God our Savior,
for the glory of your name;
deliver us and forgive our sins
for your name’s sake.
Why should the nations say,
“Where is their God?” (Ps. 79:8-10)
Again, we get an acknowledgment of past sin. Confession is accompanied by a request for forgiveness.
There is no long litany of sins. In fact, not a single sin is named. There is no racking of the soul, no sifting of motivations going on here, no morbid confessional.
Catholics are well-known for their sense of guilt. But even more than them, evangelicals with a Neo-Puritan leaning are masters of self-flagellation. But there is no “I am a worm” language here. (That barely exists in the confessional Psalms 32 and 51.)
Confession of sin should be freeing not harrowing. It relies on the mercy of God more than on personal piety.
This isn’t to say confession is unnecessary. It is. It’s a part of turning away from the destructive behavior of sin and toward the life of God. It just doesn’t need to be the fearsome thing many have made it into.
And what we see here is less interest in personal reputation than on God’s reputation. Forgiveness and help are tied to the “glory of your name” and are done “for your name’s sake.”
God’s name, which the Third Commandment seeks to protect, is God’s reputation, identity, and authority all wrapped up in a single word. When we pray in Jesus’s name, we do so by his authority. Here, the psalmist primarily has Yahweh’s reputation in mind.
Not only do the surrounding nations not acknowledge Yahweh, but the continued suffering of his people seems to act as proof of his impotence and lack of concern.
The languishing of the people of God seems to point to either his lack of love or his lack of power or both. The only way for him to fix his reputation is to take care of us, so the logic goes. Therefore, he better get busy and do so right away.
Before our eyes, make known among the nations
that you avenge the outpoured blood of your servants.
May the groans of the prisoners come before you;
with your strong arm preserve those condemned to die.
Pay back into the laps of our neighbors seven times
the contempt they have hurled at you, Lord (Ps. 79:10-12).
What Asaph really wants is revenge and he wants God to be the enforcer.
Echoing the reprisal of any who might kill Cain (Gen. 4:15), Asaph requests a sevenfold return on investment. Paid in blood. There is no lex talionis here where retribution doesn’t exceed the crime: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. No, it’s magnified. “If we’ve been crushed, then crush them so much more that the whole world gasps in response. And we want to see it with our own eyes.”
It’s an angry request. Hurt bleeds from the raw wound of grief.
When going through grief recently, I was shocked by the ball of anger I carried around with me. Even though my work requires me to counsel people through grief, it took my own grief to remind me of how angry bereavement can make us.
Anger is the emotional response to a loss of control. And nothing is more out of our control than death. And when you add up all of the things that have spun out of Asaph’s control, you can imagine the depth of his grief and the vastness of his anger.
This is problematic for many of us, especially those of us raised in homes where it was not OK to express anger. And I admit I find Asaph’s response unsavory.
Here’s the issue: Just as we must walk through confession to get to the other side of our sins, we must walk through anger to get to the other side of our grief. The scenery may be unsightly, but it’s territory we must traverse.
And then we get to the other side.
Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture,
will praise you forever;
from generation to generation
we will proclaim your praise (Ps. 79:13).
We find ourselves cared for like sheep in a well-kept and safe pasture. And our praise will go on and on and on. Where generations past had multiplied sin, future generations will multiply praise.
First, we grieve. Next, we confess. Then, we get on with restoration. This is how, as we pray along with Psalm 79, we move from the hurt to the healing.
We have done a lot of losing lately. Thankfully, we’ve got prayers like Psalm 79 to get us through.