You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples.
Asaph begins Psalm 77 sleepless, asking whether God has abandoned His people for good. Then his tone turns: in verse 14 the man who was counting his own miseries names God by what God does.
The Shift From "My" to "Your"
The turn is visible in the psalm's own vocabulary. One writer traces it through the possessive pronouns in each half:
F. B. HoleIn verses 2 to 6, it was all "my" — my this, that and the other. In verses 10 to 20, it is all "Your" — "Your years … Your wonders … Your work … Your doings … Your way … Your strength … Your arm … Your arrows … Your thunder … Your path … Your footsteps." What deliverance, what blessing, what strength there is in looking at God's things, after the weakness and humiliation of looking at our own.
The same writer turns the contrast into two questions, quoting verse 13 in an older wording:
F. B. HoleSuppose we fix the eye of our hearts, not on the seen things, not on the failings of others and on the peculiar things they say and do, but on the God who marches through the circumstances, who works His sovereign will, who has revealed Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ… we should be transformed! There could not be a greater contrast than between the spirit of these early verses of the psalm and the spirit of verse 13… borrowing the language of Romans 7, he was previously saying, "Who is so wretched a man as I am?" Now he says, "Who is so great a God as our God?"
Where This Truth Is Learned
Asaph does not reason his way to this. The verse before points to a place: the sanctuary, the holy place where Israel worshipped God. That is where the answer comes:
Hamilton SmithWhen perplexed by the prosperity of the wicked, the soul found the answer to its difficulties in the sanctuary (Ps. 73:17). So, when puzzled by God's apparent silence while His people are in trial, he again finds an answer to his exercises in the sanctuary. There he learns that God has a settled way that governs His acts; that God is great and does wonders. In accordance with His way God makes known His strength among the peoples to redeem His own.
The Tense of the Verse
Asaph goes on to recall God's works of long ago, so the wonders include old ones. But the verse itself is not in the past tense:
F. B. HoleHe quite recognised that God had worked great wonders in the past, as the following verses of the psalm show. Still, in saying, "You are the God who works wonders," he laid the stress on the present, and that is the great test of faith. It is comparatively easy to believe that God has done great wonders in the past, and that He will do them in the future. To genuine faith God is a present reality: He is a God who is doing wonders today.
If God is still working wonders, what are they? One answer is what He does inside His people:
F. B. HoleWhat wonders does He not do in the hearts and minds of His saints? — lifting them out of themselves, in their littleness and feebleness, into the greatness and strength and love which is found in Himself. It is by faith that His people are enabled to endure, and out of weakness are made strong, for Hebrews 11 tells us this plainly. Still it is God who does it, and faith on our side simply lays hold on His strength.
Strength Made Known Among the Peoples
The second half of the verse looks outward. God does not keep His power to Himself or to Israel alone. He makes it known where the nations can see it, and He does it to rescue:
F. W. GrantHis own perfection must hide Him. Yet He is not outside the knowledge of men everywhere, for "You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples." And in Israel especially — through His relationship to them — He makes Himself known, and known in the grace which this declares: "You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph."
Commentators also read the verse forward, to a declaration not yet complete. One notes that redemption's full reach is still ahead for Israel, and reads the two names in the next verse as a pair:
L M GrantJacob is mentioned to indicate their unworthiness of the blessing, while Joseph indicates the place of blessing to which God will elevate His people.
Summary
- Trouble — Asaph's darkness came from staring at himself. The first half of the psalm is crowded with "my," and it produced only the cry of a wretched man.
- Sanctuary — he did not argue his way out. He learned God's settled way in the sanctuary, as in Psalm 73.
- Wonders — there he finds that God's greatness is not a memory. The verse is present tense, and present-tense faith is the real test.
- Strength — what God works, He also announces. He makes His might known among the nations instead of hiding it.
- Redemption — wonders and strength serve one end: an arm stretched out to redeem His people. For us, that redemption reaches into weak hearts and makes them strong.