Jeff Garrison
Mayberry & Bluemont Churches
Psalm 80
August 17, 2025
At the beginning of worship:
Ernest Hemingway, when recovering from wounds received during World War I, noticed those who could patiently wait were strengthened during their recovery. Others, those who were impatient, struggled. From his experiences, Hemingway developed his basic story line. He placed good people into difficult situations and forced them to wait and then through the story enabled his readers to see his character’s true strength or weakness unfold.
Hemingway’s characters often find themselves waiting. The Spanish republican lying in wait for his end in For Whom the Bells Toll. The matador anticipating the deadly bull in Death in the Afternoon. The old man spending all night fighting a giant fish, which in the end will only be eaten by a shark, in The Old Man and the Sea. And the threat of charging beast as big game hunters work the brush in his African short stories.[1]
When we are patient and willing to wait on God, we show character and resolve. But too often, we want to jump the gun. We want to get things started and prematurely set out to accomplish something, only to fail because we haven’t waited for the Lord to lead us.
We have such great potential. The advances of science and technology continue to amaze us. And it makes us as members of humanity feel powerful. But in the end, we don’t have that much power. We’re weak and frail. We should bow before the power of a God who comes and willing dies for us. We should spend time in prayer and meditate upon the Scriptures in preparation for what is next.
As in the Psalm we’ll explore today, we need to call upon and trust God to answer. We demonstrate our character by our willingness to trust in the Lord. Can we take our burdens to God? Can we rely on God to do something—accepting that God knows best—or do we try to go it alone and experience more disappointment and failures?
Before the reading of Scripture:
We’ll explore Psalm 80 this morning. This is somewhat of a unique Psalm as it appears to have come from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. These are the ten “lost tribes” of Israel, who disappeared after Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom in seven centuries before Christ. The writing of most of the Old Testament came through the eyes of the Southern Kingdom, who maintained a semblance of independence until the Babylonian exile.
The Psalmist here expresses the desperation of his people. They are in danger and only God can help. Yet, it appears as if God has disappeared.[2] Let’s listen:
Read Psalm 80
The Psalmist calls on God to save. Desperate, he cries out three times repeating the same phrase. “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” He’s so desperate he’ll risk looking at the face of the Almighty. We’re not supposed to do that. It’s dangerous; it can be fatal for God is so holy and we’re not. But the conditions are such the Psalmist sees no other way out of his situation. He hit bottom. He’ll will risk it! There’s no other hope.
His willingness to call upon God to show his face demonstrates the intimate relationship possible between God and his children. To call upon God to show his face requires a relationship with the Almighty—one where the human party trusts God enough to risk it all.
It’s also a plea for God to see our desperate condition. If you remember from last week, when we looked at Psalm 33, while God exists outside of creation, God remains concerned about what happens on earth.[3] Here, things are so desperate, the Psalmist fears God has turned away and calls God to again look at what’s happening.
In his plea, the Psalmist uses two motifs to describe God.[4] “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel.” God is seen as a shepherd who leads his sheep through the wilderness. This image arises from Exodus, when God took care of his people as a shepherd might care for his sheep. This is the image from David’s famous Psalm, “the Lord is my shepherd,” a God who leads his people by the still waters and to fields of green grass, the God who protects us in the shadow of death.[5] In times of peril, it’s comforting to know God as our shepherd.
The second motif used to describe God is that of one who tends grapes, in other words a farmer. This description implies a more settled state. No longer are the Hebrew people wandering in the wilderness. They’re settled in the Promised Land. God has planted them as a vine. And as the vine grows, God nurtures the struggling plant with water and fertilizer, by pruning and building walls to protect his vineyard from wild animals and thieves. The Psalmist and the Hebrew people know God’s activity from how God cared for them, both in the wilderness and at their new home in the Promised Land.
But all that was in the past. For the Psalmist and those reciting this psalm in worship, God is absent. They know and recall all of God’s deeds of the past, of how God led their ancestors out of Egypt and settled them into Palestine. However, continuing with the view of the vine, they complain to God that the walls have been broken down and their fruit poached by those wandering by and ravaged by the animals of the forest.
There struggles are kind of like my ongoing battle to keep the deer and beetles from eating my grapevines or the groundhog eating my cucumber vines. Only their struggle is worse. They call on God to once again look down from heaven and see their plight and save them from their enemies.
The Psalmist concludes with a vow: if God gives life, they promise to never turn their backs on God. We wonder if this is a type of a deathbed conversion promise, you know, the type we keep only during the dangerous hours. These types of prayers are more like bargaining with God— “God if you get me out of this mess, I’ll be good”. It’s the type of prayer I might have prayed while battling waves and wind in a kayak far offshore. I’ve called out for help this past June when a gale overtook me during my paddle around Drummond Island in Lake Huron.[6]
We’ve all been where the Psalmist is at. There are times God is distant. Mystics call it “the dark night of the soul.” In these situations, what do we do? We continue to pray.; we continue to bring our concerns to God. We continue to trust, for as Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, where can we go? Only you have the words that lead to life.”[7]
The request for God to fulfill these two motifs—the shepherd and farmer—is achieved in Jesus Christ. In the gospel of John, Jesus says: “I am the good shepherd.” The author of Hebrews calls Jesus the great shepherd of the sheep.[8] Jesus fulfills the call for God to be the shepherd of his people.
Likewise, Jesus is also likened to a farmer and is referred to in Luke’s gospel as the “Lord of the Harvest.” But this analogy is even more intimate than the Psalmist imaged, for Jesus tells us that he is the vine and we’re the branches.[9] Baptism grafts us onto the vine of Jesus Christ, he is with us, and we are with him.
The Hebrew people probably gathered at the temple in times of peril and recited Psalm 80. Maybe they felt threatened by an enemy on their borders. Or it could be pestilence and disease spreading through the countryside, or drought and the fear of its corresponding hunger. Whatever the situation, they gather, hopeless, and seek God’s help. Asking God to show his face means they trust God to see their concerns and to provide relief.
In time, God answers their prayers by coming in person, in the life of Jesus Christ. They called upon God and God answers in a surprising way, coming to earth as an infant, growing up and living among his people, and then dying for their sins—and for our sins.
Of course, God didn’t answer their prayers right away. They had to wait. They waited for generations. Decades and centuries floated by. Unlike those of us who live in the 21st Century and expect immediate results, they had no concept of instant gratification. They prayed, they waited, they hoped, and they remained faithful to their God. Sometimes, we must do the same. Amen.
[1] Idea from M. Craig Barnes, Sacred Thirst: Meeting God in the Desert of our Longings (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 112. Examples from Hemingway’s writing are from my readings.
[2] For background on the Psalm, see Artur Weiser, The Psalms: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962) 545-551; James L. Mays, Psalms: Interpretation, A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville KY: John Knox Press, 1994), 262-265; and Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 284-287.
[3] See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2025/08/10/psalm-33-trusting-in-a-merciful-god/
[4] The idea of two motifs from Claus Westermann, The Living Psalms (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 34.
[5] Psalm 23.
[6] I did pray for help, but I didn’t get to the point of bargaining with God by promising such things. After all, I’m in God’s hands and if God so desires, I’ll be saved. See: https://fromarockyhillside.com/2025/07/24/completing-my-trip-around-drummond-island/
[7] John 6:68.
[8] John 10:11, Hebrews 13:20.
[9] Luke 10:2 (also Matthew 9:38), John 15:5.
I find great solace in trusting God knows best.
Yes! There is a peace which comes from trusting a gracious God.
Sometimes we just need to see some signals 😀
I agree, signals helps us hold on.
I think many of us tend to be “fixers” and that’s why we struggle to wait for God to work. But I can attest that God does answer prayers if we persist and have patience. There was a situation in my family that I never gave up on and God answered our prayers after ten years. Nothing is impossible that is within His will for us.
I, too, find myself wanting to fix things. But sometimes we think too highly of ourselves and our ability to fix things, which leads to idolatry. And then, there are things only God can fix!