Redeemed for a City (Psalm 107:4-9)

The doctrine of providence has been part of the church’s doctrinal convictions. The Heidelberg Catechism asks in Question 27. What do you understand by the providence of God? Answer. The almighty, everywhere-present power of God, whereby, as it were by his hand, He still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.’

The Larger Catechism defines providence in this way: ‘Question 18. What are the works of providence? Answer. God’s works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures; ordering them, and all their actions, to his own glory.

What is providence? It is God’s activity in time and space concerning all his creatures. It includes this life and the next, heaven and hell. Maybe we think it is fatalistic to thing that way, but the alternative is chaos. Either God is in charge, or he is not. God fixed the day of my birth, and he has fixed the day of my death, and all days in between.

Obviously, some providences are confusing for us: ‘God’s providences often seem to contradict his purposes, even when they are serving them’ (Matthew Henry). Some providences are disliked by us, although as Thomas Watson observed, ‘It is a sin as much to quarrel with God’s providence as to deny his providence.’ Some providences are surprising because ‘we turn to God when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them’ (Charles C. West). After all, providence has all the time in the world.

Where in the Bible would be a helpful place to study providence? Obviously, there is the Book of Job, where after disaster comes light. Or the Book of Ecclesiastes, with its negative assessments of life. Or the Book of Esther which does not even mention the name of God. Or Romans 8, with its grand assurance that God works all things together for good as far as his people are concerned. Maybe Psalm 107 is a good place, especially when we read its closing verse: ‘Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.’

Recognising the Context (vv. 1-3)

It looks to me that the psalm is a reflection on the link between human situations and divine providence and suggests that, at least for the redeemed, God is aware of and at work in the events that happen to them, events that initially pointed to disaster coming on them, but which eventually turned out to be full of blessing.

No one knows who the author of this psalm was, and there is no point trying to find out. But what we can say about him is that he knew about life, or at least about the various experiences that some people can have. As mentioned, in his psalm, he provides four pictures of where people find themselves. The situations that he describes were not only dilemmas for those who experienced them, they were also occasions when the Lord came to their rescue. He redeemed them from their circumstances.

What kind of person needed to be redeemed? A person who needed to be redeemed had found himself in a situation in which he had been punished for a wrong action, or had become poor by some circumstance, or had become powerless because of oppression. The redeemer had to deal with the payment required, or restore what had been lost, or deliver from an oppressed state.

Roaming (vv. 4-5)

The first group of people in the psalm are described as living in a desert. In the desert, they are lost but searching for help; hungry but deprived. Theirs is not the experience of a moment but it is continual, day after day. While it can be a real experience in a literal sense for travellers, the picture is a very graphic one of the consequences of sin. Such find that their life is marked by insecurity, inadequacy, and dissatisfaction, all the consequences of sin. Life is nothing but a desert, dry and inhospitable.

How are sinners described in the Bible? They are said to rootless, hopeless and lost. The past history of the world does not supply very much for the future to build on – taking a history class in school is to discover the degree of sin that there has been in the world, although the actions are described by other kinds of terminology. The future or the hope that people have is often uncertain and unlikely. Things looked great when the Berlin Wall came down, for example, but think of what has happened since then to disappoint people? If you ask people what they make of life in one word, what would they say? The Bible gives us one word for it – the word, lost, a word that was used by Jesus when he said that he had come to seek and to save that which was lost. And we are familiar with his stories, indeed the story, about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

Rescue (v. 6)

Their sense of desperation leads them to call on the Lord. They may not have a sense of sinfulness, but they are aware that something is wrong with their lives, and that their life situation can only be sorted out by a higher power. Maybe they pray tentatively, not sure that God is there. Maybe they pray because they recall hearing someone say that they should try prayer when they are in trouble. Whatever the reason, they call to the God of heaven for his help.

The response of God to their cry was to deliver them. We will think about the deliverance shortly, but here we are reminded of the ability of God to answer such prayers. After all, he is the omnipotent God, the Almighty. We are also reminded of the eagerness of the Lord to answer such prayers. After all, he is the Creator, the One who has brought everyone into existence, who is interested in those that he has made. One of the psalms tells us that God looks down from heaven to see if any are seeking after him, but the answer of that psalmist is that no-one is. However, I wonder if many such cries went up to God today from confused, perplexed, disappointed, frustrated, saddened hearts. If they call to him, the Lord will hear.

Road (v. 7)

The psalmist mentions four details in this verse. They are (1) God leads, (2) God leads in a straight way, (3) he leads them to a city, and (4) in that city they can live. It is possible to see this description as covering the whole Christian life, of pilgrims travelling to the Celestial City, but I don’t think that is what is described here by the author. Instead the city is where the needs of the desperate are met. So I would suggest that here we have a description of the journey from the wastes of sin to the city of grace.

Think of it in this way. God, in answering their cry for help, comes to deliver them by the work of the Holy Spirit leading them to Jesus. The route that the Holy Spirit takes them along is the gospel message. He provides them with information, such as is described in John 3:16 about the gift of God’s love and the need for faith in Christ. As they assess the gospel, the Holy Spirit encourages them to take a straight way to Jesus, such as is illustrated in the words of John 6:37: ‘Him that comes to me, I will never, no never, cast out.’ It is a straight road, is it not, even a short road, because how far away is the Saviour from sinners?

What happens when they come to Jesus by faith? First, they receive great blessings connected to salvation, blessings such as what is contained in the privileges of justification and adoption by God. They are amazing blessings when we think about them. Justification, which is a legal term, deals with our acceptance with God, with the God who we had been estranged from by our wilful departure from him, the God who is the Judge and before whom we are accountable for our sins. The heavenly Father sent his Son to make it possible for sinners to be at peace with God through faith in his Son. This Jesus did by his life and death. He lived and died to meet the demands that were made of us by God. His perfect life is reckoned to our account as our standing before God and his atoning death on the cross paid the penalty that was demanded of us by God’s justice.

Adoption is an even higher privilege than justification because it brings us into the family of God. J. I. Packer tells us in his book Knowing God that we can easily tell what a person thinks about the gospel by asking them to explain what it means to belong to the family of God. In this family relationship we have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God, as our catechism tells us. We can pray to the Father, knowing that he will answer our prayers, and we can look forward to receiving an incredible inheritance with all of God’s people in the future when Jesus returns, and the new heavens and new earth appear.

Second, they realise that they have joined a community, a community of people who have exactly the same needs as themselves. That community is the city of God, the church, and it is the place that they will dwell in for as long as they are here. But not only do they discover that every citizen has needs; they also discover that they have gifts to use in the service of the city, and that the area of the city where they are works well when each of the needy uses what he is given to practice the gift that he is for the ensuring the quality of the city’s life.

Result

What is life in the city of God like? We hear a lot today about city life, of what cities can give to the lonely and dissatisfied, although often it is superficial. The psalmist says that the residents of God’s city are still marked by longing and hunger, but he also says that those needs are met to such an extent that the residents are satisfied all the time. He also points out that in the city all the needs are met personally by the Lord himself – it is he who satisfies, and it is he who fills, his people.

What do people long for? One answer is security, another answer is stability, and another answer is strategy. They want safety, certainty and direction. The church of Jesus is secure, not in the sense that there are no enemies, but they cannot defeat it, even if they can affect it to some extent. The church of Jesus is a stable building, resting on immoveable foundations, with each stone fitted in place. And the Lord of the church has his own strategy for the building’s future, and the words for that are that he will give grace and glory.

What do people want to be filled with? They want inner peace, ongoing joy, sense of being loved. I suppose we could say that what they want to be filled with is covered by the list of items mentioned by Paul as the fruit of the Spirit. There are Bible verses that indicate believers can be filled with such blessings. These are the good things that the King of the city continually supplies.

The outcome is that the residents of the city are encouraged to become a communal choir testifying to the wonderful blessings that the King of Zion provides for his people. The fact is, and they recognise it, that all he does is wonderful and amazing, and they are astonished that he is able to keep it up century after century after century. They are a grateful community as well as a dependent community.

Lessons

What lessons can we take from this part of the psalm as it describes the journey of life that some people take?

First, we see some of the effects of the catastrophe of sin. It has made people isolated and detached from God, far away from the kingdom of God.

Second, this part of the psalm reminds us that the converted can come from anywhere, that those who are lost can start thinking about God and calling on him as he draws them to himself. This can happen in the most surprising of places and with the most surprising of people.

Third, the amazing fact is that Calvary is a straight road from where sinners are and it is a short distance from where sinners are, and they can go there and meet the Saviour who died for sinners. Indeed, they go there because he draws them. Some can be as close as the penitent thief was literally whereas others may be like Simon of Cyrene only passing by and yet both types are compelled to think of Jesus and then find him.

Fourth, once a person becomes a member of the city of God he will see that it is well furnished, full of many blessings for sinners, blessings that are eternal like justification and adoption, and that it is also a community that will last forever in a perfect world.