Praise Yahweh, Our Loyal God (Psalm 106) Series

If you've ever been to a large amusement park, or zoo, or national/state park, you know that one of the most helpful things you can find there is a giant map with a little dot somewhere on it that says, "You are here." It's easy to get lost in the bigness of what you're experiencing, and get overwhelmed. When we lived in California, a regular feature of the nightly news was breathless searches for hikers who had gone up into the nearby mountains, and failed to come home. There was no giant sign for them, and if you go up far enough, there's no cell phone coverage. And the question was always, would the search teams find them before they ran out of water and died.

Without a sign saying, "You are here," it can be easy to get lost, and it can be easy to not find a way out.

Now, there's another reason why people sometimes find great comfort in those giant maps with the dots. Some of us are extreme Type A people. When we visit anywhere, we have a clear plan, and clear goals. We know exactly how every step of our journey is going to go. At a zoo, for example, we might spend 25 minutes in the reptile section, and 15 in the ape, and 3 in the bug. And if we are that type A person who always, somehow, seems to be the one guiding a larger family, or group, we stop at the giant map for a different reason. We point to the dot, and announce to everyone, "We are here." We don't do that because we are lost. We know, at every moment, where we are. We do that because we derive great comfort from have clear goals, and making sure that everyone with us shares those clear goals. We are orienting our group to our location, so that everyone is on the same page, and we can work together as a group to do the exhibits in the right order, at the right pace. We want to make sure that no one gets stuck in the wrong place for too long. We want to keep things moving.

Our psalm for this morning is basically a giant sign, with a convenient dot on the map, saying, "You are here." And the psalmist isn't lost. The psalmist is a Type A person, who knows exactly where everyone is, and knows where they need to go next. if you understand Type A people, you'll understand the psalm.

Now, the map in question today isn't a map of the geography of Israel, or of the wider Middle East. The map, is the seemingly endless looping pattern of God's history with his people. There is a cycle, a hamster wheel, that defines how God relates to his people, and how his people relate to God.

The cycle-- the hamster wheel-- goes like this:

(1) God rescues his people from their enemies, and blesses them.

(2) His people respond by sinning in creative, big, ever-changing ways.

(3) God responds, eventually, by getting angry, and bringing judgment on his own people.

(4) His people respond, eventually, by crying out to God, and asking God to help.

(1, 5) And God then helps: God rescues his people from their enemies, and blesses them.

Any guesses on what happens next?

His people respond by sinning in creative, big, ever-changing ways. And so on.

If you read the book of Judges, you find this cycle-- this hamster wheel-- play out over and over. But the catch in Judges, is that this cycle, this looping, is more like a toilet being flushed, than it is a hamster wheel. Things spin around, but in that spinning, the total situation gets lower, and lower. So if you can picture a toilet being flushed, and something slowly circling as it ultimately goes out the bottom of a toilet, then you can successfully picture the book of Judges.

In our psalm today, the psalmist retells the story of God and his people. It squeezes the entirety of Exodus

through 2 Kings into one chapter. And it does for a reason. This isn't a college class, or History 101. This is a story told, so that the psalmist can point out to a map, and say, "We are here." And the interesting thing about this, is that when the psalmist points to the map, he's not just talking to his Israelite brothers and sisters. He's telling God, "This is where we all are at, and this is where the hamster wheel needs to spin next." It's really important to the psalmist that everyone around him, and God, understand where things are at.

Let's start the psalm by cheating way ahead to verse 47.

(47) Save us, Yahweh our God,