Arguing with God in the Dark Text: Psalm 77:4-9
Introduction: The Sanity of the Saints
We live in an age that is terrified of the dark. I am not speaking of a simple fear of what might be in a closet or under a bed. Our entire culture is built on the frantic avoidance of silence, suffering, and interior trouble. We have endless entertainments to distract us, endless medications to numb us, and endless platitudes to reassure us. The moment a Christian experiences a season of spiritual dryness, when God seems distant and prayer feels like shouting into a pillow, the world, and sadly, much of the church, offers two equally unhelpful solutions. The first is a syrupy therapeuticism that says your feelings are ultimate reality and God just wants you to be happy. The second is a brittle stoicism that tells you to buck up, stop complaining, and pretend everything is fine. Both are lies.
The book of Psalms is God's inspired prayer book, and it is given to us, in part, to teach us how to be honest men in a dishonest world. It gives us a vocabulary for every conceivable human experience, from ecstatic praise on the mountaintop to the blackest despair in the valley. The Psalms teach us that true faith is not the absence of trouble, but rather the presence of God in the midst of it. And they teach us how to talk to God, how to argue with God, when He feels a million miles away. This is not the petulant quarreling of a spoiled child, but the covenantal wrestling of a son with his father.
Our text today from Psalm 77 is a master class in this kind of holy desperation. The psalmist, Asaph, is in the crucible. He is sleepless, agitated, and his mind is a whirlwind of terrifying questions. He is not just having a bad day; he is undergoing a severe trial of his faith. And in his anguish, he does not turn away from God. He turns toward God, but he does so with his fists, metaphorically, beating on the door of heaven. He is asking the hard questions, the questions we are all tempted to ask when the lights go out. And because God included this prayer in His Holy Word, He is inviting us to learn from it. He is showing us that the path of faith sometimes leads directly through the valley of the shadow, and that it is still the path of faith, even when you cannot see your hand in front of your face.
The Text
You have held my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I give thought to the days of old,
The years of long ago.
I remember my music in the night;
I am musing with my heart,
And my spirit is searching:
Will the Lord reject evermore?
And will He not be favorable again?
Has His lovingkindness ceased forever?
Has His word ended from generation to generation?
Has God forgotten to be gracious,
Or has He in anger shut up His compassion? Selah.
(Psalm 77:4-9 LSB)
Sleepless Agitation (v. 4)
The psalmist begins by describing his physical and emotional state. It is a portrait of extreme distress.
"You have held my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak." (Psalm 77:4)
Notice the agency. "You have held my eyelids open." He does not say, "I have insomnia." He does not attribute his condition to a bad meal or to generic anxiety. He sees the hand of God in it. This is crucial. A pagan sees his suffering as meaningless, the result of blind chance or fate. A Christian, even in the darkest night, knows that his circumstances are being governed by his sovereign Father. This does not make the pain less, in fact, it can intensify the confusion, but it keeps the whole affair within the realm of meaning. God is doing this to me. Why?
His trouble is so profound that it chokes him: "I am so troubled that I cannot speak." This is not a comfortable, chatty sorrow. This is a deep, guttural agitation of the soul that paralyzes the tongue. He is in that awful place where the grief is too big for words. The pressure is immense. And yet, the psalm itself is his speech. This is a common feature in the psalms of lament. The psalmist says he is silent, yet he is praying. This is the silence of a man who cannot make small talk, who cannot offer up pious platitudes, but who can groan before his God. The Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, and this is what that looks like on the ground.
The Turn to History (v. 5-6)
Unable to find relief in his present circumstances, the psalmist forces his mind backward in time.
"I give thought to the days of old, The years of long ago. I remember my music in the night; I am musing with my heart, And my spirit is searching:" (Psalm 77:5-6 LSB)
This is the first right move in the dark. When you cannot see God in the present, you must remember Him from the past. The psalmist deliberately turns his mind to "the days of old." This is not wistful nostalgia for the good old days. This is an act of theological memory. He is remembering God's mighty acts of salvation, both in the history of his people, Israel, and in his own personal history. He remembers his "music in the night," those times when God's presence was so sweet and palpable that it made him sing, even in times of trial.
He is fighting his feelings with facts. His feelings are telling him that God is gone and all is lost. The facts of history, both corporate and personal, tell a different story. So he sets these two things at war within his own soul. "I am musing with my heart, and my spirit is searching." He is engaged in a deep, internal debate. He is cross-examining his own despair. This is not passive suffering; it is an active, diligent search for an answer. He is not content to wallow. He is wrestling. And this wrestling, this searching, gives birth to a series of the most pointed and painful questions in all the Psalter.
The Torrent of Questions (v. 7-9)
Here the psalmist unleashes the full force of his spiritual crisis. He is questioning the very character of God.
"Will the Lord reject evermore? And will He not be favorable again? Has His lovingkindness ceased forever? Has His word ended from generation to generation? Has God forgotten to be gracious, Or has He in anger shut up His compassion? Selah." (Psalm 77:7-9 LSB)
We must distinguish sharply between questions and doubts. A question seeks an answer. A doubt is content to remain suspended in disbelief, feeding on itself. The psalmist is asking questions, not expressing doubts. These are real, honest, covenantal questions. He is taking the promises of God and laying them alongside his present experience of God, and he is asking why they do not seem to match up.
Look at what he questions. First, God's faithfulness: "Will the Lord reject evermore?" This flies in the face of God's covenant promise to never forsake His people. Second, His favor: "will He not be favorable again?" This challenges God's fatherly goodness. Third, His lovingkindness: "Has His lovingkindness ceased forever?" The word is hesed, God's covenant loyalty, His steadfast love. This is the bedrock of Israel's relationship with God. To question this is to question everything. Fourth, His Word: "Has His word ended...?" Have the promises expired? Has the covenant been nullified? Fifth, His grace: "Has God forgotten to be gracious?" Is it possible for the omniscient God to have a memory lapse concerning the central attribute of His own character? And finally, His compassion: "has He in anger shut up His compassion?" Has His anger, which is supposed to be for a moment, permanently triumphed over His mercy, which is supposed to endure forever?
These are not the questions of an atheist. An atheist has no basis for asking them. An atheist has no right to expect lovingkindness or grace from a meaningless universe. These are the questions of a believer. They are born from a deep-seated belief that God is gracious, that His hesed does endure forever, and that His promises are true. The psalmist's agony comes from the apparent contradiction between the God he knows by faith and the God he is experiencing in his trouble. He is not abandoning his theology; he is pleading it. He is arguing with God on the basis of God's own character.
Selah: Pause and Weigh This
And then we have that one word: "Selah." We are not entirely certain what it means, but the best understanding is that it is a liturgical or musical notation, calling for a pause. Stop. Be quiet. Let the weight of what was just said sink in. Think about this.
Imagine this psalm being sung in the Temple. The music swells with this frantic, desperate questioning, and then, suddenly, silence. The entire congregation is left to hang there, suspended with the psalmist over the abyss. Will God answer? Has He forgotten? Has His love failed?
This pause is the turning point of the psalm. It forces the worshipper, and it forces us, to confront the horror of a world where these questions are answered with "yes." What if God does reject forever? What if His lovingkindness has ceased? What if He has forgotten to be gracious? If the answer is yes, then we are of all men most miserable. We are cosmic orphans in a cold, dead universe. There is no hope, no meaning, no salvation.
The Selah forces us to stare into that abyss, and in so doing, it drives us back to the only possible answer. The rest of the psalm, which we will consider another time, is Asaph's answer. He begins to recount the mighty deeds of the Lord, the parting of the Red Sea, the salvation of His people. He answers his own questions by remembering God's character as it was revealed in His mighty acts. He preaches to his own soul.
The Cross as the Final Answer
But we have a greater answer than even Asaph did. We have the final and ultimate answer to every one of these agonizing questions. That answer is not a proposition, but a person. The answer is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the location of the answer is His cross.
"Will the Lord reject evermore?" On the cross, Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He was rejected so that all who are in Him would never be. He was cast off forever, for a time, so that we might be brought near forever.
"Has His lovingkindness ceased forever?" God demonstrated His own love, His own hesed, toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The cross is the ultimate, unbreakable display of the steadfast love of God.
"Has His word ended?" In Christ, all the promises of God are "Yes" and "Amen." Jesus is the fulfillment of every covenant promise. God's Word has not ended; it became flesh and dwelt among us.
"Has God forgotten to be gracious?" "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" The cross is the permanent, eternal monument to the fact that God has not forgotten to be gracious. Grace is the very heart of His plan.
"Has He in anger shut up His compassion?" At Calvary, the full, unmitigated wrath of God against sin was poured out upon His own Son. God's anger was not shut up; it was exhausted. And because it was exhausted on Christ, what is left for us, for all who take refuge in Him, is nothing but His everlasting, boundless compassion.
So when you are in the dark, when your eyelids are held open and you cannot speak, you must do as the psalmist did. You must remember. You must ask the hard questions. You must argue from the covenant. But you must always, always end your argument at the foot of the cross. For there, every one of your frantic questions is met with the quiet, bleeding, and triumphant answer of God.