Anticipation for the Son | Psalm 80
Brad O’Dell | December 15, 2024
If you have your Bibles with you, go ahead and turn to Psalm 80. That’s where we’re going to be this morning for another one of our Advent sermons.
I’ll apologize at the outset; I’m going through about my fifteenth round of a cold for the season, so the good news is I think there are only a couple more bugs left and I should be done with them before January. So I’m looking forward to the new year in that regard.
Psalm 80 is where we’re going to be this morning. As we know, we’re in the middle of the Advent season, this time every year where we look forward to celebrating Jesus’ incarnation and when he was born as a baby, and we celebrate all of its attendant wonders, these big themes—hope, peace, joy, love, light, right? These are all common themes of the Advent season that we celebrate every year.
We see them emphasized in almost all of the traditions of the holidays. We prioritize at this time of year evergreen trees and foliage, because the stark green at this time of year represents life, when all else is kind of barren and dull. We put twinkling, beautiful lights up, both inside our homes and outside our homes, because we celebrate the coming of light at what is for us one of the darkest times of year, with the shortest days that we have during the year.
Hope, peace, joy, love—these are the major themes and the “feel” of all of the best Christmas movies and songs. Though, of course, many of those Christmas movies and songs have been divorced from their theological and historical background, the themes remain in them. Their goodness, I think, is still widely cherished and recognized, and we celebrate those every year.
Every year we have this wonderful season of love and joy and light, because these are the things that Jesus brought when he came to earth.
But I know there’s a tension in this season, and I think it’s something that all of us have likely felt or experienced in some way, whether we give voice to it or not. It’s this sense that our experience of this season rarely lives up to its grand and beautiful promises. We find, of course, these moments of joy and peace, but we also find that they are often fleeting. Sometimes they’re weak, sometimes they’re mixed with stresses and griefs of various sorts. There’s plenty of light and love and laughter, and we love all those moments. We experience those things in a number of ways, but we always kind of find ourselves wanting more at the end of the season. We have such big hopes that we bring into the season every year, and at the end of it all we do sometimes ask ourselves, “Is that it?”
It’s kind of like having a delicious meal after a prolonged period of hunger, but there isn’t really enough food to actually satisfy your hunger, and what you’re left with is just wanting a little bit more.
Of course, we know that for some of us, in some years and in some situations, the season doesn’t even have these temporary mixed goodnesses that are prominent. Sometimes the season actually just brings more pain and grief and sadness, experiences of darkness, feeling overwhelmed, being let down, maybe, than it does these other things.
Those experiences I think actually give presence or voice to another common but often forgotten theme of the Advent season, and that is this anticipation aspect of Christ’s coming. Advent is a word that means “arrival,” but there are also these pre-arrival experiences of the people of God as they yearned for and they sought and they desperately waited for this promised deliverance that wasn’t yet present, and it was often difficult to see as they looked forward. Their experience was one of waiting on the Lord in faith while, in the words of Isaiah 9, the people sat in darkness.
This morning, as we try to learn from Psalm 80, where we’re going to be this morning, we are going to see what God has for us as we try to celebrate all the wonderful things of this season that have come because Christ is born, but we’re also going to try to deal with some of these experiences and what we might call hope unfulfilled or expectations that are unmet. So please read with me in Psalm 80, and we’ll take it from there. The psalmist says:
“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!
“You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches.
It sent out its branches to the sea
and its shoots to the River.
Why then have you broken down its walls,
so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
The boar from the forest ravages it,
and all that move in the field feed on it.
“Turn again, O God of hosts!
Look down from heaven, and see;
have regard for this vine,
the stock that your right hand planted,
and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.
They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down;
may they perish at the rebuke of your face!
But let your hand be on the man of your right hand,
the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!
Then we shall not turn back from you;
give us life, and we will call upon your name!
“Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!
Let your face shine, that we may be saved!”
This is God’s word.
Psalm 80 is a psalm that’s in a category of what we might call a lament psalm, a psalm where the author’s laying out a difficult situation or complaint with God and is asking God to deliver him from the situation. The situation in view here, for this psalm, is likely when the northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria or was falling to Assyria. This happened in 722 B.C. We see that in the tribes that are listed there in verse 2, that list of tribes is associated with the northern nation of Israel, but also, in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, there’s a fuller title to this psalm, and it has there “A psalm for the Assyrian” or “of the Assyrian,” so it seems to situate it there in that situation as well.
That’s likely the situation that necessitated the psalmist writing this prayer, but also, all psalms have oftentimes two contexts that should be at least considered. One is what we’ve just talked about, the context in which the psalm was originally written. Sometimes we have access to that, but most of the time we actually don’t know what precipitated the writing of a psalm. We do have another context, though, that’s associated with where the psalm is organized in the book of Psalms or the psalter (that’s a word you’ll hear me use in this sermon).
In Psalm 80, what we’ve just read is actually in the third book of the psalter. This was a collection of psalms, a book that was likely made during the time of the Babylonian exile or shortly after. That’s when all of Israel was now conquered by the Babylonian empire and they were displaced from the land, and they were displaced from the land for about seventy years. So Book 3 is a collection of psalms that really shaped the prayers of the people of Israel in this really dark time. They are calling out, really, for a new exodus event, so serious is this. They’re in exile in a foreign land. They were perpetually unclean, which meant that they were regularly not in right relationship with God, and they were removed from the presence of God at the temple.
So you see the seriousness of the situation that the psalmist is in. You’ll see, I think, that there’s a main petition here. It is salvation from the situation. You can notice the repetition there in verse 3 and 7 and at the end of the psalm, this phrase: “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”
What the psalmist is doing is he’s actually using the language of the Aaronic or the priestly blessing from Numbers 25. It’s a benediction that you’ve probably heard if you’ve been around church for many years. We read it in our church sometimes. It goes like this: “The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
The psalmist laments that Israel seems to have lost the favor of the Lord, and he describes it as God’s face not shining on them. So he asks for the restoration of God’s good favor and blessing, knowing that it is in this that they will find their salvation from this terrible situation.
However, the psalm doesn’t just, I think, ask for deliverance from these difficulties, as prominent as those are. It does seem to have a fuller salvation in view that the psalmist is desiring, one that would actually alter the people’s character, so an inward salvation, not just an external salvation. It would alter the people’s character such that they would be faithful to the Lord in a way that they hadn’t previously been so.
Look there at the end of the psalm, Psalm 80:18, which is where I think this comes out. When this salvation comes, the psalmist says, “then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life, and we will call upon your name.”
We might say that the psalmist here is crying out not only for salvation from their enemies, but really, salvation from themselves and their tendency to turn away from the Lord, their tendency to follow the ways of the foreign nations more than they would follow the ways of God, their tendency to have hard hearts that would bring God’s judgment upon them. He’s saying, “Lord, if you save us then there will be a salvation such that we will no longer turn back from you. We will be people who are known for calling on your name.” We might say he envisions a salvation of the heart.
Well, God moves through this “son of man” that’s briefly mentioned in verse 17, the son of man who’s acquainted with the man of God’s right hand, also listed there in verse 17. These would be consistent with the other Old Testament promises of God’s coming salvation.
So, this mention of the son of man or Son of God, this is what situates this psalm in this series, “Songs of the Son,” where we’re looking at, what does Jesus bring? What happens when promised Son comes into the world? That’s what we’ve been focusing on in this sermon series.
We’ve covered it a bit in the previous weeks, but these Jewish Messianic expectations, this promised son of God’s right hand or this coming son of man character, these are all one and the same character. It is the Messiah, or the Christ in Greek, which of course would be Jesus, the Christ. Jesus, the true Israel, David’s son, son of man (that is, born of a woman) but also Son of God, the second member of the Trinity from all eternity, and it is only when that person comes—it’s when Jesus comes—that this hoped-for salvation that the psalmists and the all the prophets of Israel yearned for finally comes.
It gets voice in a simple statement, Matthew 1:21. The angel appears to Joseph, and he’s talking about the child that is to come, and he says, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.”
Why the name Jesus? Because it is two Hebrew words put together that simply mean “Yahweh saves.” That’s what the name Jesus is. So the name of Jesus is essentially “Yawheh’s salvation.” That’s why it says, “He shall save his people from their sins.”
I wonder if there are some here this morning who, as we read through this psalm asking for restoration, there are some here who are saying, “That’s me. I feel like I’m looking for some restoration finally in life.” Maybe your losses are stacking up. Maybe your situation is growing pretty desperate.
Maybe you’re starting to realize that you don’t even primarily need deliverance or salvation from your circumstances, as serious as those might be and as much help as you might need in those, but also you’re starting to realize, “I need to be saved from myself.” You keep choosing your way instead of God’s way; you know it. You have great intentions in one moment, but then the next moment you seem to throw them all away. You know and you’re starting to experience your heart. It’s fickle. Something’s gone wrong. Something’s gone awry. You’ve gotten off track and you don’t even know where the correct track is. You know you aren’t following the Lord’s purposes for your life, and you really know that something needs to change.
This Christmas season, let me just implore you, turn to Jesus for salvation and healing. What I don’t want to happen is what can so easily happen at this time of year. We can fall into the trap of thinking that, “I can just fix myself in the new year, and I’ll just put a positive spin on it, and a new circumstance will come along or new people will come into my life, or I’ll just somehow become a different person.”
No, that’s likely not true. The answer of Scripture is to turn to Jesus. He’s the Savior. As the apostle Peter says, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Jesus is the Savior. He’s the promised Savior. Make this Christmas season the season you actually turn to him for salvation.
Now, as we look at Psalm 80, I want us to see something here that I think deepens the anxiety or the angst of the psalmist and also the people of God as they prayed this prayer over many years, especially during the exile. It’s not just that they’ve come upon hard times or a difficult situation, but it’s this very significant aspect: it’s that God seems to be absent and disengaged when he’s needed most. It’s this perceived reality that I think challenges the very foundation of the psalmist’s worldview and faith. You can hear him wrestling with it all through the psalm.
Look at all this language in the psalm that represents God as absent or unaware or unconcerned. If you look at verse 1, it starts this way. It says, “Give ear.” “Stir up yourself.” “Come.” It’s as if God is not even listening, and they’re trying to say, “Hey, could you pay attention for a second? Could you give ear? Could you stir yourself up? Why are you sitting there not doing anything? Stir yourself up; come! Why are you so far away?” That’s what you almost hear from the psalmist.
You see it again in verse 14. He says, “Turn again…look down…see…have regard for us.” Right? “Would you just turn around and look? Could you pay attention? Could you give a care, Lord?”
We see here in the psalmist’s view that there’s this perceived absence of God when there shouldn’t be. There’s a silence of God when it doesn’t seem right. There’s a hiddenness of God. These are all words to explain this common experience.
What we find if we read Scripture much is that this is a pretty common and major experience for the people of God, especially in the Old Testament.
Now, I want to point out something. Notice I said that there is a perceived absence of God from the perspective of the person, not an actual absence. Scripture’s very clear that God sees and knows all, he is present everywhere at all times, he always has a special regard and love for his people that cannot be shaken. But we see also in this psalm and other places in Scripture that there are these experiences for the people of God where it really does seem like these things about God aren’t true, at least from our perspective. I wonder if you’ve had seasons in your life where that’s how it seemed God was with you.
We see this expressed a number of different ways in the psalter. Here’s a short list.
“Lord, why do you stand far off?”
“Lord, why do you sleep?”
“How long, O Lord? Are you going to hide yourself forever?”
“Lord, where is your steadfast love of old?”
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Those words were on the lips of an Old Testament believer before Jesus took them on his own lips on the cross.
It’s these types of experiences that the psalmist and the people of God have here, this feeling of forsakenness by God in their time of need.
You see this also in the analogies that the psalmist uses here, and you see it in how God is portrayed, especially in those analogies. If you look at verse 1, he talks to God as a shepherd: “Give ear, O shepherd of Israel,” but like we said from verse 1, God seems to be an absent shepherd. He’s not there; he’s not around. It’s like he just left his flock and he doesn’t quite care what happens to them anymore. That’s how it’s presented.
In verses 8 and 14 we get this analogy of a vine. It’s the vine that God took and planted, speaking of the nation of Israel, but then what happens? It’s like he walks away and he just lets whatever’s going to happen happen, and he’s this neglectful vinedresser.
Elsewhere in the psalm it speaks of him as a father, but of course the idea is that he’s a father who’s uninvolved, and the psalmist is asking him to get involved.
Absent shepherd, neglectful vinedresser, uninvolved father. Those are really striking presentations of God that the psalmist seems to put in here.
Now, I want to be clear, we could go read Isaiah 5, and if you’re taking notes, write Isaiah 5 down and go read it alongside this psalm. It’s a pretty short passage where God uses this vine analogy of Israel himself, and he explains his actions in the history of Israel. We could even just read the history of Israel anywhere in the Old Testament and know that they are the ones who abandon God in just about every way they could; God did not abandon them. God is just for judging the people for their sins.
But I think what’s interesting in this psalm, or strange even, is that the psalmist doesn’t include any outright recognition of a known sin that would precipitate God’s behaving this way or this experience that they’re having. Maybe there are some small indications, but typically there’s an outright confession of sin or a section where sin is confessed and they’re asking for God’s steadfast love and forgiveness. We just don’t have that here.
We see that, actually, there’s confusion in this psalm. He doesn’t know why. You see that in Psalm 80:12, where he says, “Why have you broken down the wall of this vine so that people can pass along?” He’s confused. I think it’s this experience, just not knowing why, that deepens the experience of disorientation and the psalmist’s feeling of abandonment.
What I want to draw attention to in this psalm, from all this, is the fact that the psalmist doesn’t find any quick answer from God or any solution to wrap up the psalm with to where it has a nice, positive ending. A lot of psalms do, and it’s really sweet to see how God answers. This one doesn’t. Instead, the believers who prayed this psalm are just left waiting. They’re waiting on the Lord in faith while his ways remain hidden and his presence remains veiled from them.
I think this long waiting on the Lord is part of what it meant to be the people of God in the Old Testament. You see it expressed in Psalm 130. The psalmist says,
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.”
As a watchman waited anxiously at the wall through the night for light to dawn so that his enemies would no longer be hidden by darkness, so these believers waited long through the years for the light of salvation to dawn in the coming of a promised son.
So, what’s so wonderful is that for us, at Christmas, we now have this season that’s a celebration of joy and love because that light, that hoped-for salvation, has come. Isaiah 9:2 and 6: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shone. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.”
Over these long years, right, God seemed to have forgotten his promises. He seemed to be neglectful. There’s no king on the throne for hundreds of years, there’s no son who brought salvation, though many prophecies had come saying he would. God seemed to be quiet. He was hidden. He was absent.
But when Jesus comes, this prophecy of Isaiah gets fulfilled, this wonderful prophecy that says, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear and son, and they shall call his name” what? “Immanuel, which means God with us.”
You see, God is finally here! He’s not absent. He’s with us in his Son, Jesus. His salvation has come; light has dawned. It’s beautiful.
So, with the angels we get to declare every single year at this time, with those angels, “good news of great joy that will be for all people. For unto us is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” We get to say with the prophet Isaiah, “Behold, this is our God.” We have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord! We’ve waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. Or, in the words of the beautiful Christmas hymn,
“Long lay the world
In sin and error pining,
Till he appeared,
And the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope,
The weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks
A new and glorious morn.”
You see, the wonder of Christmas is that never again do we need to doubt that God sees, that he knows, that he cares, that he’s for us, that he’s with us. Indeed, for those of us who believe in Jesus and follow him, he says, “Behold, I am with you even to the end of the age. I will never leave you or forsake you.” That’s what we get to celebrate this time of year.
It’s good for us every year to enter into the joy of Jesus’ coming, what has come with the Son, and to recall really how truly wondrous and beautiful it is.
But I want to recognize, as we dwell on these things, that these experiences of feeling like we are waiting on the Lord and that his ways are inexplicit are really something that we all still experience in some ways, right? Though the healer has come, we still experience brokenness in various ways in this life, do we not?
I wonder how many here today would say, “I’m waiting. I’m waiting on the Lord.” Maybe it’s to answer a prayer that you’ve prayed for a long, long time. Maybe it’s to deliver you from a situation that you just don’t know what to do with. Maybe you’re waiting on the Lord to finally give you victory over a sin that’s retained a grip on your heart that you never knew it could.
See, like the Old Testament believers, maybe it’s this: you know the promises of God, that he loves you, he’s with you, his salvation in Christ is sure, he sees you as his beloved child, a holy inheritance in glory is yours, and you’ve prayed to him, and you’re seeking to put your trust in him in every way you can, as best as you can; yet from everything you can perceive, God hasn’t answered. He hasn’t moved to help. Not yet. It could be that God even feels disengaged, absent, neglectful; he seems far away. It seems like he’s hidden himself from you in the time when you needed it most.
I think what can make these experiences so hard is oftentimes we really just don’t know why. As those who live between these two advents of Christ, between his first and second coming, these times of disorientation are still things that we experience in our walk with the Lord. Because Jesus has come, salvation is here, but full deliverance and full righteousness still remains on the horizon for us. Light has dawned, and that’s a wondrous thing. Light has dawned, and there is so much joy and peace from it. But we know that light is not yet at the noonday in its full splendor. So, these experiences of darkness or brokenness and confusion and grief remain.
I guess as I studied this this week and prayed through it, the burden of my message today is that this Advent season is not a time to ignore those experiences and those emotions if they’re there for you in this season. It’s not a time to minimize them, it’s not a time to act like they’re not there. It’s definitely not a time to medicate them in various ways. Though Advent is the season for celebrating and prioritizing these beautiful themes—hope, joy, peace, love, light—and it’s a wonderful season for singing the songs of triumph with your brothers and sisters in Christ week after week, it’s also a season for reflection. It’s a season for laying out your hurts, your pains, your needs, your desires before the Lord. It’s the season for looking forward to a hoped-for deliverance or release when Jesus comes again.
As the people of Jesus, we are still a waiting people, just like the people of the Old Testament, in a lot of ways. Here’s a short selection of Scriptures from the New Testament. As creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God, so we wait eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. “We wait with patience,” Romans 8:25, “for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ.” We wait for our blessed hope, we wait for the hope of righteousness. As Jesus himself said, we are to be like men who are waiting for their master to come home form the wedding feast, right? We’re still a waiting people.
However—this is very important—our waiting is different from that of the Old Testament believers. Our waiting is different than the psalmist’s here. You see, we are not those who wait in darkness, but we are those who wait with the light of dawn on our face, knowing that surely and soon the sun will be at its full. That is a totally different experience, is it not? We are a people who wait, we’re a people who yearn, we’re a people who even groan, as that Scripture said, but we do so with hope and joy and love, knowing that as surely as Jesus has come and brought salvation, he surely will come again and bring salvation to its fullness, and he will complete our salvation. Amen?
I’ll use the words of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4. Though we might experience affliction in this life, we know that we will not be crushed. Though we might be perplexed often, we know we will not be driven to despair. Though there may be persecution, we know that we are never forsaken. And though we might get struck down, we know we will not be destroyed. We never lose heart, knowing that “this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.”
The Son has come, and he is coming again. When he comes again, he’s coming in full victory.
As a fourth century pastor said,
“We preach not one advent only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the former. In his former advent he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger; in his second, he covers himself with light as with a garment. In his first coming he endured the cross, despising the shame; in his second, he comes attended by a host of angels, receiving glory. We rest not upon his first advent only but look also for his second.”
I’d like to close with some of Jesus’ final words at the end of Revelation. He says, “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and descendent of David, the bright morning star. Surely I am coming soon.” I’d like you to say these final words with me: “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, our hearts ache, they yearn for that day when our faith will be made sight, when the sickness that wracks our bodies will be finally done away with, when the mourning and grief that we’re experiencing will be done away and every tear will be dried from our eyes, when the sin that plagues our life and hearts and discourages us so will be fully done away with and we’ll be made new fully in righteousness. Lord, as we experience the brokenness of creation, still, and that fleshes out in our lives in various ways, let this be a season where we find fresh hope and peace and joy in you even as we lay these things out before you.
Lord, there are hurting hearts here this morning, there are confused minds, there are people who in their walk with you might say, “I’m disorieinted.” I ask that in the singing we do together, the preaching of the word, the time at the table, and the fellowship of our brothers and sisters in Christ, that this morning would be a bit of a release from those things; that there would be a comfort, that there would be a peace, that you would minister to hearts and souls now, and that this season would be a time where the eyes of their hearts are turned to you, and that they would really find help and healing in their time of need. Be not far from us, Lord. Come near and minister to us as we seek to follow you and glorify you in our lives. It’s in your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.