Psalm 74:2

Psalm 74:2

Remember us Lord

God does not need to be told to remember an event from the past, He never forgets! Therefore, this verse is not an attempt to jog the memory of an ageing deity, it is a plea for the Lord to help His people to make sense of a dire situation. The events of previous ages do not add up if this is the final chapter of the story. 

Why had the Lord God gone to such trouble to purchase His people out of Egypt, journey with them to the Promised Land and help them to secure that land from the indigenous peoples, if they were then to be taken away from it? 

Why had He called them the people of His inheritance when it was now abundantly clear that they had been rejected by Him and become the slaves of a foreign empire? 

Why had their God made such a fuss about dwelling on Mount Zion and then allowed the Temple to be destroyed and the worshippers to be carried away? 

In truth, the Israelites should have known all of the answers to these profound questions, the Lord had made a covenant with them, and they had failed to keep their side of it! So, I suppose we could say that they had a bit of a cheek in suggesting that He had somehow failed them! Asaph captures the mood in these verses, and it is not difficult to see that the Israelites are really trying to bargain here. “If You went to all of that trouble in the past, Lord, surely You will help us now. You delivered us from slavery once, can You not do it again?” 

Like Israel, we have a God who sees through our arguments and our pleadings and who is gracious enough to recognise our plight, even if it is caused by our own foolishness. He will never completely forsake His chosen people. Hallelujah! 

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