What does it mean that God is a God of wonders?
Psalm 77 is the record of a man in trouble who talks himself into despair, then remembers who God is — and the turning point of the whole psalm is this confession about wonders. The question it raises is not whether God once did astonishing things, but whether He is still doing them, and where a troubled person can go to see them.
The Turn from "My" to "Your"
Asaph does not reach this statement by clever reasoning. He reaches it by changing what he looks at, and one commentator traces the shift by simply counting the pronouns.
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 sums up the two halves of the psalm as two competing questions — and the second one wins:
F. B. HoleFormerly his own misery weighed him down to the earth, for we might sum up all he says in the first part of the psalm as really saying, "Who is so miserable a man as I am?" The point he reaches in the second part is just this, "Who is so great a God as our God?" What a magnificent change!
A God Who Does Wonders Now
The tense matters. Asaph does not say God did wonders; he says God does them.
F. B. HoleHe fully recognised that God had done great wonders in the past, as the later verses of the psalm show. Still, in saying, "You are the God that does 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.
The Kind of Wonders He Works
Asaph's mind ran to the exodus, when God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt. But the wonders being worked now are quieter and closer to home.
F. B. HoleAsaph also fixed his eye on the wonders God did long ago, when He redeemed Israel out of Egypt and led them like a flock through the wilderness and into the promised land. We know this, and have the benefit of that knowledge, just as Asaph did; but we also know what wonders He works today. What wonders does He not accomplish 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 found in Himself.
Where His Way Can Be Traced
The same psalm says God's path runs through deep water and leaves no footprints. That is a warning against trying to decode His wonders from the outside.
An Outline of Sound WordsIt is not by searching the complicated actions of God's dealings with men in the events of time that we shall learn anything of His ways. We might as well try to trace the course of a ship in the ocean by its wake the day after it has passed. The wake is seen for a very short time, and then it is gone for ever. Yet there is a place where we may learn something of God's ways, for in the same psalm we read, "O God, Your way is in the sanctuary." Moses learned God's ways in His presence, in communion, and that is where we may learn.
(Older translations render verse 13 "Your way is in the sanctuary," where the ESV has "Your way, O God, is holy.") Another writer draws the same practical conclusion for a puzzled believer: "A little true prayer, and waiting on God in the holiest, is infinitely better than any attempt at explaining His way." The Christian's Friend
Wonders Made Known Among the Peoples
The verse pairs the wonders with a public display of strength. Commentators read that strength as reaching past creation into redemption.
L M GrantOnly in God's presence, in the calm of the sanctuary, shall we truly learn God's way, and realize that none could possibly be so great a God as our God, the God who does wonders. If this could be said in the Old Testament, how much more in the New! Creation and its resulting blessings are marvellous indeed, but redemption by the blood of Christ and its blessings are far more wonderful still.
Wonder That Ends in Worship
If God's wonders are measured by redemption, then one event outranks everything else He has made — and the right response to it is not analysis.
G. V. WigramDo not tell me of the wonders of creation. I will tell you of something surpassingly wonderful: God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Can there be any wonder like that? And because of it a poor creature like me is made able to lift up my head in His glory, able to worship there. Wonder cannot be separated from worship. Adoration and wonder linked together.
Summary
- Trouble — Asaph starts the psalm crushed, asking in effect "Who is so miserable a man as I am?" The wonders only come into view when that question is replaced.
- Turn — The cure is a change of pronoun: from my misery to Your wonders, Your strength, Your arm.
- Tense — Believing God did wonders and will do wonders is easy; faith's real test is that He "is doing wonders today."
- Sanctuary — His path in the sea leaves no footprints, so stop tracing His dealings from outside and learn His way in His presence.
- Worship — The greatest wonder is not creation but the cross, where the sinless One was made sin for us — and wonder there turns straight into adoration.