Give
ear, O Shepherd of Israel,
thou
that leadest Joseph like a flock;
thou
that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.
Before
Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh
stir
up thy strength, and come and save us.
Turn
us again, O God,
and
cause thy face to shine;
and
we shall be saved.
O Lord God
of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry
against
the prayer of thy people?
Thou
feedest them with the bread of tears;
and
givest them tears to drink in great measure.
Thou
makest us a strife unto our neighbours:
and
our enemies laugh among themselves.
Turn
us again, O God of hosts,
and
cause thy face to shine;
and
we shall be saved.
Thou
hast brought a vine out of Egypt:
thou
hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.
Thou
preparedst room before it,
and
didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.
The
hills were covered with the shadow of it,
and
the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.
She
sent out her boughs unto the sea,
and
her branches unto the river.
Why
hast thou then broken down her hedges,
so
that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?
The
boar out of the wood doth waste it,
and
the wild beast of the field doth devour it.
Return,
we beseech thee, O God of hosts:
look
down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine;
And
the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted,
and
the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.
It
is burned with fire, it is cut down:
they
perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.
Let
thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand,
upon
the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.
So
will not we go back from thee:
quicken
us, and we will call upon thy name.
Turn
us again, O Lord God of hosts,
cause
thy face to shine;
and
we shall be saved.
Many calamities and
struggles befell the people of Israel during their long history. They began as a wondering people, called out
by God through His covenant with Abraham somewhere around 2000 BC; after
several generations of trial and prosperity, they were called out again from
400 years of Egyptian slavery through God’s covenant with Moses; another 400
years or so of rising and falling before their surrounding enemies during the
times of Judges, culminating with the establishment of the monarchy in Saul,
David, and Solomon around 1000 BC. After
the meteoric rise of Israel’s fortunes under David and Solomon, the kingdom
fell into civil war, and centuries marked by attack and oppression and betrayal. There were times of repentance, times of hard
heartedness, times of enslavement, times of restoration, times of foreign
occupation, times of liberating revolt, and by the time of Christ’s Advent, the
nation was a vassal of Rome, with political intrigue and corruption in every
corner of secular and religious affairs.
In the time of Christ, the nation was split into Sadducees and
Pharisees, Zealots who sought to oust Rome from palace and temple, Essenes who
camped in the desert to preserve themselves from earthly corruption, and shades
of associations in between. Within a
generation after Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Israel was
destroyed by Rome for insurrection, and scattered across the empire, surviving
in small enclaves in cities everywhere, until 1948 when an act of the United
Nations re-established them in their ancestral lands. Today, the nation of Israel is a semi-religious,
semi-secular nation state, surrounded by enemies who desire their total annihilation,
with few allies beyond the United States.
For 4000 years, the people of Israel have watched their fortunes rise
and fall, in various states of faith and repentance before the same God who
inspired David to write the Psalm above.
I think this is worth reflecting
upon, given our own nation’s peculiar founding.
Settled by the religiously and secularly oppressed of Europe, travelers
arrived on these shores with an aim toward freedom, and specifically the
freedom of conscience before God. Their
religious opinions varied greatly, but the vast majority were Christians, committed
in greater and lesser degree to the Word of God given originally to the Jews,
and carried on by the Church in their fulfillment through Jesus’ Word given to His
Apostles. To be sure, these settlers
where not paragons of purity, but their hearts yearned for freedom to worship
God as they understood Him, to follow His Word as they perceived it, to give
space to each person to live virtuous and free, and to carve out through their
labors a life of their choosing. Our
nation’s Founding Fathers set their cause before God and built our nation upon
these principles, knowing that Divine Providence was predicated upon faith and
virtue. The next couple centuries would
see this nation rent by foreign and civil wars, industrial revolutions, by
growth in land and influence and population, and as a stalwart defense against
the rising tides of tyrannical regimes in two world wars. Today she languishes under the oppression of
disease, economic calamity, and the machinations of enemies both outside and
within. Too many of her people have
forgotten the Divine Providence which established and preserved her, and have
turned to other gods to lead them into oblivion. Even if we marked our beginnings with the
arrival of our early settlers in the 1600’s, our nation’s length of days is
less than one tenth that of the people of Israel, yet we can see in our own
short history a similar rising and falling of our fortunes with the rising and
falling of our faithfulness toward God and our virtue toward one another.
And yet today, the Word of
the Lord calls to Jew and Christian alike, just as it calls to every nation,
tribe, and tongue of men, saying, Turn
us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall
be saved. Our God knows better than
we, though He has left us over 4000 years of recorded history to see His truth
for ourselves, that life and prosperity and hope reside only in Him. He knows that our generations rise and fall
with their relationship to Him, because He alone is the Creator, Sustainer, and
Redeemer of the world. And as the Psalmist
has implored, God has set His almighty hand upon the son of man whom thou
madest strong for thyself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled all the
Law and the Prophets, and established His Everlasting Gospel for the salvation
of every soul and every people who put their trust in Him.
If we would see days of
peace and restoration, where the divine virtues of faith, hope, and love abound
among us and sweeten both our national discourse and community fellowship,
strengthening us to withstand the ever rising tides of tyranny and despotism
across the globe and in our own land, we must be turned again to the Lord of
Hosts. Our fate as individuals and as a
nation lay today, as they have for every people from the foundation of the world,
in the pierced hands of our incarnate, crucified, and risen Savior. In faith may we pray again in faith and
repentance, teaching our children so to do, that we may see times of refreshing
from the Lord which bless His people in every age:
Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,
thou
that leadest Joseph like a flock;
thou
that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.
Before
Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh
stir
up thy strength, and come and save us.
Turn
us again, O God,
and
cause thy face to shine;
and
we shall be saved.
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