Psalm 107

What’s Happening?

Psalm Book 4 ends with Israel’s people scattered in exile, crying out to God to bring them back home. The last collection of Psalms, Book 5, celebrates and recounts God’s love and faithfulness to bring his people out of exile and back to their promised land. God gave Israel their homeland as a place to live with him and spread life across a world of death. But his people spread death instead. So after generations of patient warnings, God exiled them to the distant lands of death to show them their need for life. Psalm 107 recounts God’s love and rescue of those who call out to him for life in the middle of death (Psalm 107:1-3).  

The Psalm uses four poetic images to praise God for rescuing his people from exile. Their exile is depicted in four ways, each of which pulls on a familiar picture of death. The first is a wilderness of death, like the one Adam and Eve were exiled into, away from the Garden of life (Psalm 107:4-9). The second is a prison, a common way to talk about the grave (Psalm 107:10-16). The third is sickness, the result of the world of death infecting Israel’s land of life (Psalm 107:17-22). Fourth and last is the sea, a well-known picture of death and chaos, threatening to swallow the land (Psalm 107:23-32). By showing how all-encompassing the death of exile was, Israel can celebrate how thoroughly God has rescued them. 

Each poetic image follows the same four-part structure. First, it explains why Israel fell into exile. Whether their suffering is a result of their rebellion or they are victims of circumstance, all of Israel has been brought to a point of desperation. Second, in their desperation, they cry out to God, and he immediately rescues them. God’s undelayed response proves his undying love. Third, God provides life out of each form of death. He brings wanderers home, frees prisoners, heals the sick, and calms the sea. Fourth, and last, God’s people celebrate his undying love for them and his powerful rescue from death (Psalm 107:31-32). The repeated structure tells the same story again and again. In God’s love, he hands us over to the death we choose so that we might cry out for his love. 

The celebratory song ends by inviting the listener to consider how God’s undying love works through death (Psalm 107:42-43). God turned the fruitful, well-watered land of life in Israel into a wasteland of death (Psalm 107:33-34,39). He did this to show his people, who were meant to spread life, that they were spreading death instead. And as the four images reveal, the death of exile caused his people to cry out to him for life. So God brought them out of their wasteland of death back into his fruitful and abundant land of life (Psalm 107:35-38). This is an invitation to consider how undying God’s love is. Even when his people are handed over to death, God is working to bring them back to life. 

Where is the Gospel?

After Israel returned to their land of life, the lands of death invaded and ruled over them. The poetic images of death from Psalm 107 were manifested in the empire of Rome, the spiritual powers of Satan, the ever-present reality of death, and Israel’s own internal evil. But as in exile, God’s love worked through all this death to bring them back to life. 

In their death, God’s people cried out to him for rescue, and Jesus responded (Luke 2:25-38). Jesus came to end his people’s exile in all its various forms. He wandered the wilderness to find the lost and lead them to his land of life (John 4:4-42). He rescued people from the prison of the grave by raising them to life (John 11:38-44). Jesus healed people oppressed by demons and sickness (Luke 4:40-41). Even when his disciples were caught in a storm, he spoke to the tempest and calmed it, leading his frightened followers safely to shore (Mark 4:37-5:1). Jesus’ undying love brought flourishing to every form of death in our wasteland. 

But Jesus does not only tell us to trust in God’s undying love through exile; Jesus himself trusted in God’s undying love in his death. Like Israel in exile, Jesus was handed over to death. The violence of Rome, the schemes of Satan, the mouth of the grave, and the evil of his own people exiled Jesus from the land of life (Luke 22:1-6). As God entered Israel’s exile to rescue them, Jesus entered our exile of death to rescue us. There is no wilderness, prison, sickness, or chaotic sea you have entered that Jesus did not enter into himself. From the cross, Jesus cried out to God to rescue him (Luke 23:46). And in his resurrection, God proved that no form of death could kill his undying love for his Son. 

Now Jesus’ undying love is rescuing people from the wastelands of death and bringing them into his flourishing life. Through his rescued people, Jesus is turning the wilderness into a garden, prisons of death into empty graves, sickness into vibrant life, and chaotic waters into calm seas (Acts 9:32-41). One day, Jesus will remake all wastelands of death into his final homeland of life (Revelation 21:4-5). So no matter what wilderness, prison, illness, or sea you find yourself in today, know that when you call out to Jesus for rescue, his undying love will come without delay. 

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to see the God who rescues his people from every form of death. And may you see Jesus as the one who enters into our exile to bring us into his homeland.