In the Nick of Time
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
Psalm 107
Congratulations to those who took up my invitation to read 5 psalms a day during the month of July. I hope you found it a rewarding experience. I would encourage all of you to consider reading 5 psalms a day in August as we continue our series on “Summer Songs” based on the Book of Psalms. Those of you who did it in July will get even more out of doing it again in August, if you choose to do so. Today we are looking at Psalm 107, the first psalm in the fifth and final book the Psalms, it is a Community Thanksgiving for deliverance from many troubles. It praises the steadfast loyal love (Hebrew, hesed) the Lord has shown in delivering people who have cried to God in their distress. The redeemed are divided into four groups who face different kinds of adversity. There are those who were traveling through the desert and perishing from hunger and thirst (verses 4-9), those who were in prison for defying God’s word (verses 10-16), those who were sick because of their sinful living (verses 17-22), and those who voyaged safely on ships through a storm at sea (23-32). The psalm describes what God’s steadfast love is all about – compassion for people in need, including forgiveness, since the distress in two of the situations is the result of human sinfulness (verses 11, 17). Let’s continue reading with verse 23:
1–3 Oh, thank God—he’s so good!
His love never runs out.
All of you set free by God, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression,
Then rounded you up from all over the place,
from the four winds, from the seven seas.
4–9 Some of you wandered for years in the desert, (see verse 33)
looking but not finding a good place to live,
Half-starved and parched with thirst,
staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion.
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to God.
He got you out in the nick of time;
He put your feet on a wonderful road
that took you straight to a good place to live.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
He poured great draughts of water down parched throats;
the starved and hungry got plenty to eat.
10–16 Some of you were locked in a dark cell,
cruelly confined behind bars,
Punished for defying God’s Word,
for turning your back on the High God’s counsel—
A hard sentence, and your hearts so heavy,
and not a soul in sight to help.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He led you out of your dark, dark cell,
broke open the jail and led you out.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
He shattered the heavy jailhouse doors,
he snapped the prison bars like matchsticks!
17–22 Some of you were sick because you’d lived a bad life,
your bodies feeling the effects of your sin;
You couldn’t stand the sight of food,
so miserable you thought you’d be better off dead.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He spoke the word that healed you,
that pulled you back from the brink of death.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
Offer thanksgiving sacrifices,
tell the world what he’s done—sing it out!
23–32 Some of you set sail in big ships;
you put to sea to do business in faraway ports.
Out at sea you saw God in action,
saw his breathtaking ways with the ocean:
With a word he called up the wind—
an ocean storm, towering waves!
You shot high in the sky, then the bottom dropped out;
your hearts were stuck in your throats.
You were spun like a top, you reeled like a drunk,
you didn’t know which end was up.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He quieted the wind down to a whisper,
put a muzzle on all the big waves.
And you were so glad when the storm died down,
and he led you safely back to harbor.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
Lift high your praises when the people assemble,
shout Hallelujah when the elders meet!
33–41 God turned rivers into wasteland,
springs of water into sun-baked mud;
Luscious orchards became alkali flats
because of the evil of the people who lived there.
Then he changed wasteland into fresh pools of water,
arid earth into springs of water,
Brought in the hungry and settled them there;
they moved in—what a great place to live!
They sowed the fields, they planted vineyards,
they reaped a bountiful harvest.
He blessed them and they prospered greatly;
their herds of cattle never decreased.
But abuse and evil and trouble declined
as he heaped scorn on princes and sent them away.
He gave the poor a safe place to live,
treated their clans like well-cared-for sheep.
42–43 Good people see this and are glad;
bad people are speechless, stopped in their tracks.
If you are really wise, you’ll think this over—
it’s time you appreciated God’s deep love.[1]
Each stanza or section of the Psalm is shaped in a similar way: an account of adversity, a cry to the Lord, God’s deliverance in the nick of time, then a call to praise the Lord for his loyal love (hesed).
The whole psalm is an invitation to join in song with all those the Lord has redeemed praising God whose loyal love has saved them. The different groups of worshippers are those who have lived through their own story of salvation. The psalm teaches us to understand ourselves as the redeemed. We are the helpless and the sinners whose cry to God is answered by God’s deep love. We are the hungry and thirsty who have been fed.
We are the bound who have been freed.
We are the sinners who deserve death who have been given life.
We are those who have been fearful before the terrors of existence who have been given hope.
What sets God’s steadfast love (hesed) in motion each time is the cry of those in trouble. The four different situations described illustrate the essential weakness, sinfulness, and neediness of humanity. The psalm concludes (verse 43) by saying people who are wise and heed these things will realize there is never a time we are not in “trouble” (verses 2, 6, 13, 19, 28). Living in dependence upon God and crying out to God is not just an emergency measure, it is not the last act of a desperate man (nor the first act of Henry the Fifth); it is a way of life. Much of our culture emphasizes that our security lies in taking care of one’s self, planning, investing, managing – being as self sufficient as possible. There is a sense in which that is good; we want to be responsible people, but we don’t want our self-sufficiency to go so far as to exclude God from having any role in our life. The Bible teaches that God is real and dependable. We can cry out to God when we’re in trouble, and when God answers we are to lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving for help, deliverance, and steadfast love. The Psalm asserts that human life depends on God. The good news is God is reliable, trustworthy, and good (Psalm 107:1), and shares that goodness (verse 9) with us and all creation. God loves us with steadfast love that we believe is seen supremely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
When we turn to the New Testament we see that Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels as doing the same things God does in Psalm 107. Jesus feeds the hungry in the wilderness (Mark 6:30-44; 8:1-10), delivers those bound by demonic powers (Mark 1:21-28; 3:20-27; Luke 4:16-21), heals and forgives the sick (Mark 2:1-12), and even stills storms at sea (Matthew 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41). Our Vacation Bible School theme this year is “High Seas Expedition” and since we have this awesome set all around the front of the sanctuary, I’d like to focus on storms for a moment.
In the Gospel story the disciples are in a storm at sea like the people in Psalm 107. They’re anxious so they wake Jesus up and say with concern, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
These words come from a group that includes professional fishermen, who had spent their lives on that body of water.
They were experienced men who knew exactly how those storms came up.
These men were frightened enough to think this might be it.
So they wake Jesus up with words we often address to God:
“Do you not care?”
I wonder how many of us have said that to God in our moments of fear, anguish, anxiety or anger. “God, don’t you care? Jesus, don’t you care what is happening to me?” In times of danger, a natural human reaction is to wonder if there is a God, and if so, whether God is even aware of my problem.
We sometimes cry out to God as Psalm 44:23-24 does,
“Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever!
Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?”
Jesus is not the first character in the Bible to be sleeping on a boat while a storm is raging. Jonah 1:5-6 says, “Jonah, meanwhile had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’” Jonah’s captain and the disciples accuse Jonah and Jesus respectively with being indifferent to their plight; with not caring about whether they live or die. The difference is Jesus doesn’t have to call on his God in order to save the crew. Jesus can handle the job himself. Jesus wakes up, rebukes the wind, and says to the waves “Peace! Be still!” (literally, “Be muzzled and remain so”). The wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
Anyone who is familiar with the ocean or been at sea knows that when the storm stops, the sea usually doesn’t. The waves often continue for days and are great for surfing. This is a two-for-one miracle. Not only does the wind stop, the waves stop as well. Jesus then asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid?”
Why, of all people, are the disciples afraid? Jesus had just spent all day teaching from this very boat (Mark 4:1). The disciples listened to Jesus saying things, like, “Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you.” With a series of parables, Jesus spoke to the people, “but he explained everything in private to his disciples.”
The disciples were in an all-day class on faith taught by Jesus from the boat.
They stayed after school and got personal help from Jesus who explained more fully exactly what he meant. Then they went out that evening in the same boat and flunked the test on faith. When they woke Jesus up they called him, “Teacher,” but they hadn’t learned the lesson on faith in a classroom, they had to learn it in life, in a boat on stormy seas.
The disciples’ question, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” overlooks the obvious fact that Jesus is in the same boat as the disciples.
He is in the situation with them. Jesus doesn’t abandon us to the storms of life or leave us to our fate; he shares them with us. What Jesus doesn’t share in a storm is our sense of panic. Oftentimes we expect other people to share our panic or distress when we are upset or in a crisis. If they seem calm, relaxed or detached from the situation we face or from us- we may accuse them of not caring about us or our suffering (even though in a crisis we’re probably better off with people who can remain calm when we are having difficulty keeping ourselves together). Panic reactions can divide us from those who might help just as they can cause us to doubt God’s love and care for us. Jesus is present with us in our fear even if we don’t sense his presence or perceive that he cares for us. Sometimes more of a miracle than calming wind and water is how Jesus can speak to and calm the storms raging within us, telling us, “Peace! Be still!”
As we reflect on this Gospel story and Psalm 107 perhaps it helps to remember a couple of things. If Jesus is in your boat, he is a worthy object of faith and as long as we’re close to him, we’ll be all right no matter what else happens. Secondly, storms and adversity of different kinds come to everyone, but storms don’t last forever. God is interested in developing our faith and in our growing in faithfulness and thanksgiving. God knows we can learn a lot in the storms on the high seas of life.
Psalm 107 and the experience of the disciples with Jesus challenge us to have faith in God and Christ and to trust them more and to thank and praise them for their love toward us.
Storms can be faith-forming, developing, and growing times if we are faithful to the God who is faithful to us. The question for us today is, will we trust & have faith in Jesus – Jesus who is present with us even in our times of adversity, anxiety & fear. Elton Trueblood, wrote,
“Faith is not belief without proof, But trust without reservations.”
I like the song by Bonnie Raitt, Love in the Nick of Time, which speaks of a person finding love when they are no longer young. It reminds me a little of Psalm 107 because it is about adversity and love. It says in part,
“When did the choices get so hard, there’s so much more at stake
Life gets mighty precious
When there’s less of it to waste
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
Scared to run out of time
Just when I thought I’d had enough and all my tears were shed
No promise left unbroken, there were no painful words unsaid
You came along and showed me how to leave it all behind
You opened up my heart again and then much to my surprise
I found love, baby, love in in the nick of time
(Love in the nick of time) I found love, darlin’, love in the nick of time
I found love baby, love in the nick of time.”
Psalm 107 is also a song about finding love, God’s love that comes in the nick of time to redeem and deliver us in our storms and adversity.
Our response to God’s steadfast love, goodness, and deliverance is joyfully sharing our thankfulness, gratitude, and praise with other people. When you are excited, happy, and thankful – you need other people to celebrate with you.
On Friday night for the second week in a row our church softball team won a playoff game in our last at bat. As Tory Summey launched the ball to deep center field and the winning run crossed the plate – everyone looked for someone to high five or hug because God made us to celebrate with other people. This is precisely why Psalm 107 encourages and invites us to join all the redeemed and to : “Give thanks to the Lord” (verse 1, 8, 15, 21, 31).
Blessing:
Thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
[1]Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Ps 107:1-43