God’s Name Upon a People
Last fall we got to work through the book of Leviticus together, and it was in that book that we got to see the Tabernacle in action for the very first time. If you recall, that Tabernacle with its outer court, inner holy Place, inner most holy place, served as dwelling place of God amongst his people. And it was essentially a transportable tent – and that fit where the Israelites were in that season, having been rescued out of Egypt and then wandering in the wilderness for the next forty years. Every time God signaled it was time to move, they could take down the Tabernacle, carry it with them, and then set it up again when God signaled it was time to rest in place for a while.
Now if we were to fast-forward a bit, from those first days of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, to a later time when Israel had finally entered the promised land, and taken up ownership of that land, we’d see that transportable, tent-like Tabernacle replaced by a Temple that’d mirror the Tabernacle with its outer court, inner holy place, inner most holy place, but would be far more permanent.
It’d take seven years to build, tens of thousands of laborers, it’d feature detailed, hand carved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, all overlaid with gold, and on the day of its dedication 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep (2 Chr. 7:4) would be sacrificed. And following the prayer, as 2 Chronicles 7 records,
“fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” (2 Chr. 7:1-3).
Can you just imagine this scene? The glory of the LORD filling the Temple – like right before your eyes. The glory of the one who reigns over all of life – his glory, right there! Everyone all around you – thousands of people – with their faces bowed to the ground. The Temple – it’s solid walls and strong foundation providing a new sense of, “We’ve arrived, we’re here, God’s here with us, and we’re here to stay.” That Temple provided a sense of permanence, a sense of stability.
That’s the Temple story…at least part of it.
Destruction Story
Psalm 74 gives us another part of the Temple story, of an event that’d occur a few hundreds of years later.
A story of fire — not fire come down from heaven, but fire coming from the hand of God’s enemies.
A story of consuming fire — not consuming the sacrifices in front of the Temple, but consuming the Temple itself.
A story where the reason the priests couldn’t enter into the Temple was not because God’s presence was there, but because the Temple itself no longer stood.
A story of Israelite faces bowed not in glad-hearted worship, but mourning.
A story not to the tune of “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” But to the tune of “O God, why do you cast us off forever?”
It’s a different sounding story, right? A story of darkness, shattered stone, smoldering Cedar, axes, hatchets, and hammers swung by an enemy. A story with a lingering smell not of burnt sacrifices, but of the burnt down dwelling place of God.
Psalm 74:3-7,
“Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins (some translations have it, “everlasting ruins, or irreparable ruins”); the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary! 4 Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place; they set up their own signs for signs. 5 They were like those who swing axes in a forest of trees. 6 And all its carved wood they broke down with hatchets and hammers. 7 They set your sanctuary on fire; they profaned the dwelling place of your name, bringing it down to the ground.”
What happens to the engraving of a palm tree overladen with gold when met by an enemies’ hammer?
How do hand images of open flowers appear when hacked to pieces and thrown to the ground?
What does a hand-carved Cherubim look like when covered in ashes?
It’s like the faces of a people who wonder if their God has forgotten them. Verse 1,
“O God, why do you cast us off forever?”
The Psalmist’s Reaction
Now, you’re the Psalmist in all this. You’ve seen the glorious Temple of God reduced to rubble, what might you say? What questions might you ask? What might you wonder? Where might your mind go?
Duration
For the Psalmist, he’s got one main driving question. It’s this, how long will the destructoin last? How long will this Temple, and this people, sit in ruins?
See it in verse 1,
“O God, why do you cast us off forever?”
Also, verse 10,
“How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?
Is the enemy to revile your name forever?”
He’s asking because, as we see in verse 9, “there is no longer any prophet.” Look left, look right, there’s no one left to give a word from God to the people. No one left to tell them what’s ahead. No one left to proclaim a message of hope for the future. It’s just them, and, as he says in verse 9,
“There is none among us who knows how long.”
So that’s his main, driving question, “How long?” And what we’re going to see running alongside his question, parallel to it, are three things he knows about the God to whom he’s directing his question. Three things he either explicitly says or at least implies. These three will kind of add reasoning and support to his question. They’ll kind of explain why that question, of all questions, is on the forefront of his mind.
Here’s the three things he knows about his God: He’s Powerful, he’s made promises, and he’s devoted the praise of his own name. First, he’s powerful.
He’s Powerful
Beginning with verse 12,
“Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.”
This is a sharp turn from the discouraging words of verses 1-11. It’s as if he’s picking his eyes up here, above the rubble of his life, into the reality of God. It’s not an escape from reality, it’s a turn toward a greater reality. It’s as if he’s saying, God show me what’s real, here. And what’s real, is that his God is powerful.
He says, “Yet God my King is from of old.” See, in contrast to the kings of enemy armies, which are here today and gone tomorrow and lost in the pages of history, The Psalmist’s King, God Himself, is from of old – eternity past.
He says he’s “working salvation in the midst of the earth.” In contrast to the enemy armies “who’ve roared in the midst of God’s meeting place (v4), God, his king, is, “working salvation in the midst of the earth.” (v12). His dominion, you see, is on a much grander scale. His reign is of a far longer tenure.
Moving into verses 13-15, things get a bit tricky. It’s still about God’s power, but what exactly he’s saying about it is initially a bit unclear.
13 “You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.”
The interpretation I find most convincing is that the Psalmist here is making use of a well-known, ancient near east myth, for the purposes of showing how much more powerful God is compared to the so-called gods of the nations around him. Perhaps specifically the so-called gods of the nation who’ve conquered them are likely bragging about how much greater their god must be compared to Yahweh.
So the psalmist grabs ahold of their well-known myth about their god Baal and his struggle with the god Yam – ruler of the sea and the sea monsters associated with him. Baal was battling against Yam (who’s in the sea with his sea monster crew) and they’re battling against one another to see which would get to be king over the cosmos. And it was a struggle, a sparring match between those two forces.
The psalmist, making use of that myth, transposes it over the story of Yahweh who has no rivals, who is the only God over all, who speaks and all creation listens. He transposes this myth over the story of Yahweh and connects it to Yahweh and his defeat of Pharaoh in the Exodus, implying Pharaoh was that mighty sea monster on the water, that heavy-hitting Leviathan, and God was the one who crushed his head and gave him as food to the creatures of the wilderness. In the words of one commentator, the psalmist is pointing out that, “what Baal claimed to do in the realm of myth, God did in the realm of history.” What Baal did in the realm of make-believe, our God did in actual time and space.
I’m convinced by that interpretation for two reasons. One is that symbolism is already being used in this very Psalm. So just as God’s people are his “sheep” (v. 1) and his “dove” (v. 19), and God’s enemies are “wild beasts” (v.19), so Pharaoh and his army are the sea monsters and Leviathan (13-14).
Second, using the specific concept of a sea monster to symbolize Pharaoh is elsewhere in the Bible.
Ezekiel 32:2-4,
“Son of man, raise a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt and say to him: ‘You consider yourself a lion of the nations, but you are like a dragon in the seas; you burst forth in your rivers, trouble the waters with your feet, and foul their rivers. Thus says the Lord God: I will throw my net over you with a host of many peoples, and they will haul you up in my dragnet. And I will cast you on the ground; on the open field I will fling you, and will cause all the birds of the heavens to settle on you, and I will gorge the beasts of the whole earth with you.’”
It’s graphic, but do you see how it mirrors our Psalm?
Ezekiel 32 — Pharaoh is the dragon in the sea. Psalm 74 — Pharaoh is the sea monster, Leviathan.
Ezekiel 32 — God will gorge the beasts of the earth with him. Psalm 74 — God will give him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
And that would make, verse 13, God “dividing the sea by his might” to be his splitting the Red Sea, and allowing his people to walk across on dry ground. His “You (breaking) the heads of the sea monsters” (v. 13-14), to be his closing of the Red Sea back over Pharaoh and his army as they tried to walk through it in pursuit of God’s people. Verse 15, “You split open springs and brooks” likely referring to God giving his people water from a rock in their desert. Lastly, still verse 15, “You dried up ever-flowing streams” likely referring to God drawing back the waters at the Jordan so his people could cross into Canaan.
Perhaps you followed that. If you got lost the big takeaway here is God’s power. We might even say, God’s surpassing power as displayed in historical events.
The next part, verses 16-17, is a bit easier. Still focused on God’s power but now reveling in it as displayed in the creation story:
“Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. 17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.”
We could summarize this whole bit, verses 12-17, by saying God’s power spans over all locations, over all times, and over all nations.
So God is powerful. But, we might ask, what’s his power got to do with this particular people. After all, if his power is just up there, kind of disconnected, it’s not really much cause for hope for them, is it? But what if his power was somehow connected to this people, employed on their behalf, exerted for their good? That would be something, right? Enter a second piece here, God’s promises.
God’s Promises
Verse 20,
“Have regard for the covenant.”
The psalmist knows that God is not disconnected from this people. But rather God has, of his own will, enjoined himself to this people via a covenant he himself initiated. Now, clearly his covenant with Moses had been broken by this time due to the continual sins of this people, but God’s covenant with Abraham, and Abraham’s descendants, not dependent upon the peoples’ behavior. It was that covenant in which God promised to give to Abraham children as many as the stars of the sky. Promised to make him into a great nation – blessed by him to be a blessing to others. Promised to give him a land that his people could call their own. I think the psalmist is citing this covenant because that land he promised to give them is now burning, desecrated, and inhabited by enemies.
This covenant section toward the end of the Psalm connects to earlier in the Psalm where he says, verse 2,
“Remember your congregation, [the people with whom you made the covenant] which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage!”
So he’s saying, remember the promises you made to us, O Lord, do not let those promises fade away.
Praise of His Own Name
So we got God is Powerful and God has made promises to this people.
The third and final place we’re going to turn now, the thing that is the cause of the most tension in this Psalm, God’s devotion to the praise of his own name. The deepest point of tension in this Psalm rests right there – God’s devotion to the praise of his own name and the fact that, right now, God’s name is being profaned.
See how the Psalmist focuses in on it, speaking to God he says,
“4 Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place;”
“7 They set your sanctuary on fire; they profaned the dwelling place of your name, bringing it down to the ground.”
It’s the dwelling place of your name that’s burnt down to the ground. It’s the building with your name on it that’s been broken into pieces.
“10 How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?”
“18 Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs, and a foolish people reviles your name.”
“22 Arise, O God, defend your cause; remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day!”
“23 Do not forget the clamor of your foes, the uproar of those who rise against you, which goes up continually!”
So why is God’s name being profaned? I mean it’s this people who’ve been defeated, right? It’s this people who were conquered. But the fact of the matter, and what the psalmist is getting at here, is that God has put his name upon this people. And so the plight of this people has an effect upon his name in the world. This peoples’ destruction leads to God’s name being derided. They’re ruination results in God’s name being reviled. They’re despair brings scoffing upon God’s name. Because, again, God has put his name upon this people. So, whatever happens to that people reflects back upon his name.
It’s a principle most evident in the comparison between verse 1 and verse 10.
“O God, why do you cast us off forever?” (v1)
“Is the enemy to revile your name forever?” (v10)
God, if we are to be cast off forever, it will result in your name being reviled forever.
And that’s a problem because he knows God is wholly devoted to the Praise of his own name.
Nothing is more fundamental to God than the love he has for the praise of his own name. Nothing. Nothing more valuable to God, no higher priority to God, than the praise of his name. Nothing he is more determined to defend, and uphold, and protect than the praise of his name.
Now, is the God who said, Isaiah 48:11, “how should my name be profaned?” going to now just sit back, hand in the fold of garment, and let his name be profaned?
Is the God who, Ezekiel 20:14, held back his wrath against his people “for the sake of [his] name, [lest it] be profaned in the sight of the nations” now going to pour out unending wrath upon his people in the sight of the nation who is profaning his name?
Is the God who, Psalm 106:8, saved his people out of Egypt “for his name’s sake” now going to cast his people off forever to the detriment of his name’s sake?
The psalmist knows that God is wholly, rightly, and jealously, passionately devoted to the praise of his name, and he knows that God has thoroughly and irrevocably wrapped his name around the descendants of Abraham.
The Christian Name
Now, do you know the label Christian means “little Christ.” It’s a label bestowed upon God’s new covenant people. The people who are (Rom. 4:16) of the faith of Abraham, and therefore, are Abraham's offspring. People who (Gal. 3:7) by faith are the sons of Abraham. A people who, by faith in Jesus, have God’s name — that very name he is so wholly, rightly, and jealously, passionately devoted to — they have that very name wrapped round them.
Now, any given Christian, on any given day, might encounter a situation that causes them to feel like God has cast them off. Maybe you, sitting right here, might be feeling like God has forgotten you. He’s unconcerned about the enemy’s attack of you. He’s watching you crumble and doing nothing about it.
Do you realize if you’re a Christian, he never sees you apart from his name upon you? He never sees you disconnected or separated from his name? He has fully wrapped his name around you, and that name will ever be fully wrapped round you. The God whose name is jealous will not forsake his own name, ever. And because he won’t forsake his own name, neither will he forsake you, a bearer of it. Feel the security, my brothers and sisters, of knowing, deep in your bones, God’s name is upon you.
He doesn’t throw away his name, he doesn’t forsake his name. He doesn’t suffer his name to be derided forever. If you have his name upon you, just as sure as God will have his name held high, so as sure that the final word on your life will be one of victory! If you have his name upon you, you’re bullet proof and bound for glory!
One point of application before we close: endeavor to see God’s name upon you, and upon other believers, more and more. That God’s name would unfold like a banner over you before your very own eyes, and over the Christians around you, so you could not even look at yourself, or another believer, and not think, God’s name — the very name he is wholly, rightly, and jealously, passionately devoted to — dwells here.
It should change the way you think about yourself. Change the way you deal with other believers. Change the way you live in this world. Change the way you think about seasons of discouragement. Friends, God is devoted to the praise of his name. Amen?
The Table
Now, each Sunday when we come together, we eventually land here, at the Table. It’s at this table we who wear Jesus’ name remember that Jesus came to live and to die and to rise again for you and for me.
So if you’re here today and you’ve trusted in Jesus, you’ve put your faith in Jesus, you wear his name by grace through faith, then we invite you to take and eat. If you’ve not put your trust in Jesus, if you don’t wear his name, we ask that you’d let the elements pass, but we pray you would, in this moment, pray by faith, “Lord, put your name upon my life and my eternity.”