A man was the sole su

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rvivor of a shipwreck. He was able to make a raft from some of the ship’s cargo and drifted to a deserted island. There he constructed a makeshift shelter and lived on what little food he had been able to salvage from the wreckage. Time after time he tried in vain to attract the attention of a passing ship. Finally, he saw a ship approaching more closely and hurriedly lit a signal fire. To his dismay, the ship passed by and was quickly fading from sight.

Accidentally, the flam es from my back jhthe signal fire set the thatched roof of his shelter on fire. The man watched helplessly as all of his provisions burned to ashes. All was lost, he thought. He didn’t see how his life could last much longer. But then he noticed that the ship which had passed by him had turned around and was approaching the island again. To his relief, he was seen by the crew and rescued.

Once on board, he went to the captain to express his thanks. He asked, “What caused you to turn around after you had already gone by me?” The captain answered, “We saw the smoke you made by setting your shelter on fire.” The very thing that seemed to seal his doom was the means of his delivery.

A lot of people view their problems like that marooned man. They see no point or purpose in them. Their problems drive them to despair and hopelessness. Sometimes people blame God and grow bitter because He allows trials to come into their lives. And yet it is often those very trials that God has designed as the means for the person’s salvation or growth in grace. The problems bring us to the end of our own resources so that we are forced to call upon God for help.

The fallen human race has a basic problem: we think that we are self-sufficient. We are not, of course, but we think we are. In order for God to communicate His love to us, He has to bring us to an awareness of our need to depend totally upon Him.

We all appreciate love the most when we are most aware of our need for the person who loves us. While the analogy does not correspond completely, we can see this to some degree in a marriage. A husband (or wife) who is independent and self-sufficient will not appreciate the love that his (or her) spouse offers as much as the one who realizes his (or her) own needs and how the spouse meets those needs. The analogy breaks down in that it would be unhealthy to be totally dependent on a spouse.

But when it comes to God, we are in fact totally dependent on Him. All things hold together in Christ (Col. 1:17). I take that to mean that if Christ let go, all matter would disintegrate. He is the author and giver of life. We are dependent upon Him for our next breath or heartbeat. That is the fact of the matter. But we do not experientially believe it. And so God designs problems to come into our lives so that we reach the end of ourselves, call out to Him for deliverance, and thereby experience and appreciate His great love.

To receive help from God, you must come to the end of yourself and cry out to Him for His undeserved favor.

That is the message of Psalm 107. It was probably written after Judah had gone into captivity and exile in Babylon and then later returned to the land of Palestine. In Psalm 106:47 there is the cry, “Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations.” In Psalm 107:2-3, that request has been answered. The psalmist wants to teach his readers how God uses trials (like the exile) to drive us to trust Him.

The main body of the psalm consists of four poetic portraits of people in difficult circumstances. In each case the people were overwhelmed with a problem they could not solve; they cried out to God in prayer; He answered their prayer with His provision; and then there is an exhortation to praise God for what he has done. Some commentators see each of the four portraits as poetic ways of referring to the experiences of the exile. Perhaps his readers were wondering why God had allowed such trials. But as you meditate on the psalm, you begin to see that each group pictures fallen humanity from a slightly different angle. We are the wanderers, the prisoners, the sick, and the overwhelmed.

The psalm is structured like a sermon. There is an introduction (vv. 1-3) which states his theme of God’s loyal love and redemption from the enemy. Then he describes the four groups:

Group 1: Wanderers (4-9)

Group 2: Prisoners (10-16)

Group 3: Sick (due to sin) (17-22)

Group 4: Overwhelmed by circumstances (sailors) (23-32)

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