Psalms 74:11

GOD AS SILENT AND INACTIVE

‘Why withdrawest Thou Thy hand?’

Psalms 74:11

I. This is a great complaint, but it is a complaint of faith.—Hardly a gleam of light is to be found throughout. The Psalmist sits in the midst of national desolation and pours out his soul to God, in passionate appeal for His help, and protest against His silence and inactivity. This is not the song of an atheist, but the wail of a believer. He has a past experience of God’s power and a present conviction thereof. The signs of that power are in day and night, in summer and winter. The one place from which He seems to be absent is the place of His people’s distress. The ground of the Psalmist’s plea is not the distress of these people finally. It is rather that the enemy reproaches the name of Jehovah and blasphemes it. In that central complaint the name Jehovah, which is ever suggestive of the essential Helper, emerges, and there only in the psalm. The master consciousness of the moment is that of God the Mighty One, but there is that deeper knowledge of Him as the Helper of the needy.

II. Again we are thankful that such a psalm has a place here, for it is so true to much human experience.—When the heart is hot and restless and it seems as though God had forsaken His own, he is a wise man who turns to Him in a song, even though the song be only a complaint.

Illustrations

(1) ‘ “Have respect unto the covenant.” Here is the master-key—heaven’s gate must open to this. His covenant He will not break, nor alter the thing that hath gone forth out of His lips. The Lord had promised to bless the seed of Abraham, and make them a blessing; here they plead that ancient word, even as we also may plead the covenant made with the Lord Jesus for all believers. What a grand word it is!’

(2) ‘Let us go back on the past. Has God purchased us to cast us aside? Was He our king of old, and will He not work for our salvation still? Did He divide the sea, and break Rabab in pieces, to stultify all His work by deserting us? Aye, and there is no plea so potent as to remind God of His covenant, sealed with the blood of the Cross. “Even if we are utterly undeserving and evil, have respect unto the ‘I Wills’ of Thy covenant.” ’