Cry Out:
For He has answered!

“Display Your Glory!”

Psalm 80:1-7

†  I.H.S. †

May the grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ prepare you for the second coming, knowing God will answer His people!

• Advent Cries

Psalm 80 this morning starts with a powerful prayer, a loud cry out to God for Him to “Display Your Radiant Glory!”

It is a very appropriate cry, a very appropriate thing to beg for, as we look at the 2^nd coming—just as it was very appropriate as the people of God waited for the Messiah to come and be born of a virgin.

It doesn’t stand alone, throughout the Old Testament the people of God learned the hard way that they needed God, consider these other cries,

Ps 60:1 — You have rejected us, O God, and broken our defenses. You have been angry with us; now restore us to your favor.

Ps 80:19 — Turn us again to yourself, O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies.

Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.

Ps 85:4 — Now restore us again, O God of our salvation. Put aside your anger against us once more.

La 5:21 — Restore us, O LORD, and bring us back to you again! Give us back the joys we once had!

Part of Advent are these cries, for like the people of God awaiting what would be the birth of Jesus, we look around us and see a great need, one so great that we need to see the full power of God’s love unleashed on the world..

• Anger and Bread and Drink of Tears

There are times where the insight of how bad things are, well, let’s just say the world is in denial about how bad it is. Israel was as well, blaming others for the consequences of their sin.

God had a way to deal with those who denied their sin!

Here is how the psalm describes it,

⁴  O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies, how long will you be angry with our prayers? ⁵  You have fed us with sorrow and made us drink tears by the bucketful.
Psalm 80:4-5 (NLT2)

The Hebrew here is bread of tears, and to drink the equivalent of a gallon and a half of the tears that comes when you are sobbing uncontrollably.

If only there was an option to suffering God’s wrath in a way that produced tears in that quantity! But Israel needed to get to where they not only could cry out—but they would cry out.

Does this mean that God causes our struggles, those times of tears?

No, but the consequences of the sins that causes those sins, God doesn’t prevent…that we might learn to turn to Him for help.

But He never forgets His love for us.

• Ephraim, Benjamin, Manasseh – gen 48:16

I want to go back to the cry again, but this time, let’s hear the entire cry,

O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph’s descendants like a flock. O God, enthroned above the cherubim, display your radiant glory ²  to Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh. Show us your mighty power. Come to rescue us! ³  Turn us again to yourself, O God. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.

It is interesting to me that hear, instead of using Jacob and or Israel to describe the people of God, the Psalmist focuses on Joseph and his brother Benjamin, and then Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. These are the offspring of Rachel, the children of the wife that was dearest, so dear that Joseph’s sons were given equal shares with the brothers of Joseph.

The picture, by using their name is the love and devotion that God has for His favorite people – and it is to them God compares all of His people as they cry out. Why?

Because they would have the confidence that dad would answer, or to use the word for this first Sunday of Advent – the hope of the cry being answered.

A hope that isn’t maybe, a hope that based on a Father’s love!

• Between the Wings – another feast

I commented a moment ago that there should be a better feast provided by God. There is actually a reference to the sacrifice of Christ, the body broken and the blood shed for our sake.

When it talks about God enthroned above the enthroned above the cherubim, it is a reference to the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle/temple. It is the same place Moses wrote of….

Ex 25:22 — I will meet with you there and talk to you from above the atonement cover between the gold cherubim that hover over the Ark of the Covenant. From there I will give you my commands for the people of Israel.

On either side of the Ark were the carved cherubim – whose wings covered the mercy seat – where the blood for atoning for sin was poured out once a year….to cover the sin…

God’s spirit would hover there, ministering to the people of God…. Which is why cross is there, and why the body and blood is here… to remind us why we have hope, that every cry – for us to see God’s glory, His glorious love