The God Who Restores

Evidence suggests that the historical backdrop of this psalm is the Assyrian invasion in 722 BC that led to the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. First, the tribes mentioned in the first two verses occupied territory in the northern kingdom. Second, the Greek translation of the Old Testament included a superscription: “Concerning the Assyrian.”

About two hundred years before the Assyrian invasion, the United Kingdom of Israel was divided: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The northern kingdom dove headfirst into all kinds of wickedness. God sent prophets like Amos and Hosea to call them back, but Israel blew them off. That’s what led to their fall. While Assyria had her own evil motivations, ultimately the Assyrian exile was God’s judgment against the sin of Israel.

You can almost imagine the psalmist perched at the northern edge of Judah, looking out at smoke rising in the distance over the lands of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh.

That’s the historical situation. However, this isn’t in the Bible just for us to become acquainted with history; it has profound relevance for God’s people today. Psalm 80 answers the question, How do you pray when you realize you (or people close to you) are far away from God?

We love that God restores his people. That’s really good news. But the restoration we need isn’t always the kind we want. Psalm 80 is not a restoration that conjures up images of green pastures and still waters. Psalm 80 is a restoration that hurts. It hurts because sometimes we get hooked on things that are killing us.

What do we do when we realize we’ve drifted from God? This psalm directs our attention to three places.

The Shepherd: Who God Is - Psalm 80:1-3

1 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth. 2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us! 3 Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!

In verses 1-2 the psalmist thinks about God’s title as Shepherd and the promises God had made about his people.

Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh are Rachel’s tribes. Rachel was married to Jacob. At first she can’t get pregnant, then the Lord opens her womb and she has Joseph, the one famous for his fancy coat. God is gracious, and Rachel gets pregnant again, and Joseph gets a baby brother (Gen 35), but he loses his mom in the process. With her last breath, Rachel names her youngest son “Ben-oni” (later called Benjamin). Joseph had two sons who were considered so special to their grandpa that they were adopted and treated as his own sons (Gen 48:4-5).

In Jacob’s dying hour he pronounces a blessing on these tribes. Fast-forward eleven hundred years, and Rachel’s tribes are being carried off in judgment. To the naked eye, it looks like the Shepherd of Israel has no more interest in leading Joseph like a flock. It looks as if God’s promise has failed. But notice two primary pictures of God: as gardener (vv. 8-17) and as Shepherd (vv. 1-2).

When the people of Israel speak of God as Shepherd, they’re speaking of God’s attentiveness, care, and provision for his people. These two statements—the Lord is God (Exod 3:14-15) and the Lord is Shepherd (Ps 23:1)—were massive pillars of faith in the Old Testament. How many Israelites across the centuries sang, “The Lord is my shepherd; I have what I need” (Ps 23:1)? Believers still quote this often in times of grief and loss. God as Shepherd wasn’t just a theological formulation but a soul-steadying reminder of God’s intention toward his people. This psalm is pointing up and out from the very start, directing our eyes to the central claim of the Old Testament but also of the New Testament.

Jesus comes on the scene, and what does he say in John 10?

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, since he is not the shepherd and doesn’t own the sheep, leaves them and runs away when he sees a wolf coming. The wolf then snatches and scatters them. This happens because he is a hired hand and doesn’t care about the sheep.

I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me. (John 10:11-14)

Then he does just that: he lays down his life for the sheep by dying on the cross in our place.

The central prayer of this psalm is repeated in verses 3, 7, and 19: “Restore us, God; make your face shine on us, so that we may be saved.” In the fullness of time, the way God did this is Jesus. Jesus restores us (reconciles us) to God. John 1 speaks of the entrance of Jesus into human history in terms of God’s glory shining on us: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

God’s glory shines most brightly on the cross. There God’s love and justice are on full display, as Christ becomes our substitute and bears the punishment we deserve, and he rises to give new life to all who trust in him. All the restoration work God is doing in the world is that kind. God is making people right with him through Jesus. If you have run to Jesus Christ in faith—what a privilege this is!—you can pray in the knowledge that God is sovereign and he is your Shepherd.

Psalm 80 displays such beautiful faith and trust. This psalmist is confident in God. This psalmist looks at the billowing smoke to the north, which testifies to Assyria’s military power, and he prays something audacious: shine and we are saved (vv. 3,7,19).

The psalm moves from who God is to where we are.

The Struggle: Where We Are

Psalm 80:4-7

4 O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? 5 You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure. 6 You make us an object of contention for our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. 7 Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved!

Here again he starts with God and describes him as the “Lord God of Armies” (v. 4). It’s sometimes translated Lord of Hosts, and it refers to God’s absolute rule over all forces in the world and in heavenly places.

We see this truth in many places in Scripture. Psalm 135:5-6 says, “For I know that the Lord is great; our Lord is greater than all gods. The Lord does whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the depths.” And Daniel 4:35 affirms, “All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing, and he does what he wants with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. There is no one who can block his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’”

The books I was reading as a young adult twenty years ago didn’t prefer to think of God in Psalm 135/Daniel 4 kinds of ways. I read books that told me God didn’t know Adam and Eve were going to sin in the garden. He rolled the dice. He took a chance. It didn’t go the way he expected. Dr. Bruce Ware of Southern Seminary wrote a great little book that helped me out of that: Their God Is Too Small. Ware takes the reader into the Scriptures to see that the God of the Bible is not worried or confused or wringing his hands. He is large and in charge. So we can trust him, even with things we don’t understand. Christian friend, your view of God will shape the size of your prayers.

This psalmist knows something of the power of God, the one “enthroned between the cherubim” (v. 1). The physical place on earth where God’s blazing holiness was most concentrated was between the cherubim, their golden wings extended over the mercy seat. This is a picture of God’s glorious holiness. And the psalmist asks a question in verse 4. We might expect it to say, “How long will you be angry with your people’s transgressions?” Instead it says, “How long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?”

In the Old Testament hypocrisy reached such heights that the people of God would say “the temple of the Lord” three times in a row (Jer 7:4) as if it were a spell that warded off evil, as if nominal adherence to religious forms guaranteed that God would bless them. So they offered sacrifices. They attended this or that Old Testament church event. Welcome to the Christian fortress where we live, where everyone “knows” God, where everybody has walked an aisle and prayed a prayer. Friends, often where nominalism thrives, the aspect of God’s character that gets left aside is holiness.

Here is the truth about God’s justice and his judgment: He is a God who does not tolerate evil, who doesn’t wink at our rebellion, who doesn’t let us define right and wrong, who won’t be your copilot, who doesn’t invite us to haggle over the terms of repentance. This is the biblical God. There are no other God options. We take him on his terms or we perish.

You can be born and live your whole life and die telling yourself you knew God when in fact there was no evidence of his lordship in your life. In Matthew 7 Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that hell will be full of people who think doing spiritual, churchy activities can be a substitute for following Jesus as Lord. Oh, how we need to reckon with this truth as the church of Jesus Christ! There’s nothing more dangerous than playing religious games. The ultimate reason Israel is eating bread soaked in tears (v. 5) isn’t because Assyria had a bigger army. It’s because Israel didn’t take God seriously.

In verse 5 Israel finally breaks. But even there God’s chosen people are not weeping because of their sin against God, having tested his patience for a thousand years. No, they weep because it stinks to be in exile. How true that can be for us as well. We’re often more concerned about our hardships than our sins. Israel’s sorrow was merely worldly grief (2 Cor 7:10), not grief leading to repentance. It was the sorrow of a person who thought he could outrun the reaper; then the consequences of his actions caught him.

Oh, for a comeback of true repentance before our God, where we confess our sin individually, where we corporately lament the many failures of the visible church of Jesus Christ: Instead of displaying contentment in Christ, we have the same insatiable appetite for worldly wealth that our neighbors are defined by. Instead of taking risks of faith and obedience, we cling to the safety of what’s familiar. Instead of holding fast to the word of life in a crooked and perverse generation, we are the crooked and the perverse. Church, we have one job:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits. (1 Pet 2:9-12)

We are to be light bearers. Sadly, we can be the kind of church that dabbles in the things of God. And we can become so insensitive that we quench the Spirit and he leaves, and amid all the entertainment, we don’t even notice he’s gone.

What words do we say to God when this is where we are? Here’s what we say: “Restore us, God of Armies; make your face shine on us, so that we may be saved” (v. 7).

Church, please hear me. Apostasy isn’t hard. It’s really easy. Ask Ephraim. Ask Manesseh. Ask Judah. Ask Demas. Ask Laodicea. Because of this, every Sunday is a gospel renewal ceremony for us. Every Sunday is a reminder that, while we are thankful for many things, we serve no God but Jesus Christ. We proclaim no message but Christ and him crucified. We commit to no purpose but that of praising, reflecting, and spreading the knowledge of Christ’s glory to the ends of the earth.

The Solution: What We Need

Psalm 80:8-19

8 You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. 9 You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. 10 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. 11 It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River. 12 Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? 13 The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it. 14 Turn again, O God of hosts! Look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, 15 the stock that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.

16 They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your face!

17 But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself! 18 Then we shall not turn back from you; give us life, and we will call upon your name! 19 Restore us, O Lord God of hosts! Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

We need God to do something about our wayward hearts. Hope comes as we remember God’s story. The psalmist says to God, “I know what you’re up to.” This psalmist travels back hundreds of years to God’s mighty act of redemption, and he tells the story under the metaphor of God planting a garden. He’s walking us across eight hundred years of history. Verse 8 is the middle of the fifteenth century BC, the exodus. God digs up a vine from Egypt. Verse 9 fast-forwards forty years when the walls of Jericho fall. God clears a place in the promised land. Verses 10-11 fast-forward another four hundred years to the height of the united kingdom in Israel. David is on his throne and Israel’s vine is flourishing, running from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River, flourishing in God’s place under his rule and blessing. Verse 12 stops the music with an allusion to the Assyrian invasion in 722 BC.

He knows the story, and he knows that God told his people even before they went into exile that exile wouldn’t be the end of the story. There would be a return. God would send Messiah. God’s hand would be with the man at his right hand, the Son of Man whom he would make strong (v. 17). That Son of Man would be the true vine. He would embody Israel. He would take her place in a story gone sideways. He would obey where they disobeyed. He would fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah 40:11: “He protects his flock like a shepherd; he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them in the fold of his garment. He gently leads those that are nursing.”

Isaiah 40 was like an Old Testament sneak peek at Romans 8, a reminder to God’s sin-addicted people that he wasn’t finished with them. He would gather his people, and nothing would separate them from the love of their covenant Lord. To gather sin addicts to himself and begin his mission of restoration, Jesus went to the cross. “As for me, if I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).

Here in Psalm 80:17, God taps the man at his right hand, the son of man; God makes him strong and he completes his task. The effect in verse 18 is that people call on his name.

This psalmist knows both how sinful a nation they are and how strong a Redeemer God is. He’s saying, “God, listen; Shepherd of Israel, lead us like a flock!” Or to borrow from Psalm 68, “Lead captivity captive!” (see Ps 68:18 KJV). We can say the same thing as we plead for the deep restoration we need from God. We say to him we are weak. Our resume is pitiful. Temptation is powerful. The pleasures of sin are so enticing. The comforts of this world make us so spiritually sleepy. Then this chorus comes barreling in: Restore us, Lord, God of Armies. Shine and we’re home! You shine and we are delivered!

Church, always remember: We’re not changed by looking in but by looking up. Where he shines, his people are saved. Here’s the good news; if you have trusted in Jesus, you will find this to be true: God will never give up on the work he began in you. The restoration we need isn’t always the restoration we want.

If you’ve trusted Jesus, you can’t sin and enjoy it the way you used to. And, because God is determined to get you home, he will pull out all the stops. Sometimes God’s presence feels more like burning than blessing. He may bring heat to your life if it means you will be more fully his. When we cling to things that are killing us, God won’t always whisper gentle warnings. He might not knock on the door; he might blast it off its hinges and tear you out of the grip of your idols.

Look at this awesome God of restoration in Psalm 80. Look at the verbs he has with him. He leads. He sits enthroned. He rallies his power. He comes to save us. He restores, shines, digs up, drives out, plants, clears. He makes vines spread and flourish. He cuts and burns away whatever is hindering us. Maybe we didn’t realize it fully, but those are things we asked God to do when we asked him to save us.

Our final assurance is not something we produce in ourselves. Our final assurance is that God’s face shines on us in the gospel: “The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace,” and he preserves our faith to the end (Lemmel, “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus”).