Psalm 89: Perspective on His Promise

 Okay, friends, if you would find a copy of God's Word, open your bulletin, or better yet, have a Bible open to Psalm 89. There are Bible. Bulls underneath every chair. And so if you want to grab a copy of God's word, we'd encourage you to open it up with us.

Someone asked me, uh, last week, why did we skip Psalm 86? And the answer is. Because we've preached it sometime in the summers between 2015 and 2024, and we are picking up this, this year. We're just going from the Psalms all the way straight through that we haven't yet preached. And so we come today to Psalm 89 and we'll continue through Psalm 94 before, uh, we return back to our series in Ephesians in the fall.

This is a long psalm and so I'm going to, uh, uh, uh, let you be seated. As I read it, it's 52 verses. But one of the things that's striking about this Psalm is it's in the form of a chiasm. A chiasm. That's a word that most of you haven't heard since sophomore English. It's a word that means that it's a large poem where the top beginning section and the ending section are on the same theme.

Then the next two sections are on the same theme, and it brings you to the very middle of the Psalm, which is the heart of the heart of the heart of what Ethan, the Ezra wants you to know. And so would you give your attention to God's word? As I read from Psalm 89, verses one to 52, this is the word of the Lord.

It is given to you in love, and it is meant to change you by the spirit, so please give your attention to it.

A mascul of Ethan, the Ezra Height. I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever. With my mouth, I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. For I said, steadfast love will be built up forever. In the heavens, you will establish your faithfulness. You have said I have made a covenant with my chosen one.

I have sworn to David, my servant. I will establish your offspring forever and build your throne for all generations. Let the heavens praise your wonders, oh God, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones for who in the skies can be compared to the Lord. Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, A God greatly to be feared in the council of the Holy Ones and awesome above all.

Who are around him. Oh Lord, God of hosts. Who as mighty as you are, oh Lord. With your faithfulness all around you, you rule the raging of the sea. When its waves rise, you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass. You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. The heavens are yours. The earth also is yours, the world and all that is in it.

You have founded them, the north and the south. You have created them. Tabor and Herman Joyously. Praise your name. You have a mighty arm. Strong is your hand high, your right hand. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Steadfast love and faithfulness go before you. Blessed are the people who know the festival Shout, who Walk, oh Lord, in the light of your face.

Who exalt in your name all the day and in your righteousness are exalted for you are the glory of their strength. And by your favor. Our horn is exalted for our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the holy one of Israel.

Of old you spoke in a vision to your godly one and said, I have granted help to one who is mighty. I have exalted one chosen from the people I have found. David, my servant. With my holy oil, I have anointed him so that my hand shall be established with him. My arm shall also strengthen him. The enemy shall not outwit him.

The wicked shall not humble him. I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him. My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him and in my name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers, he shall cry to me. You are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation, and I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

My steadfast love, I will keep him forever and my covenant will stand firm for him. I will establish his offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens. If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules. If they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love.

Or be false to my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips once for all I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne. As long as the sun before me like the moon, it shall be established forever. A faithful witness in the sky.

But now you have cast off and rejected. You are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant. You have defiled his crown and the dust you have breached all his walls. You have laid his stronghold in ruin all who passes. By plunder him, he has become the scorn of his neighbors.

You have exalted the right hand of his foes. You have made all his enemies rejoice. You have turned back the edge of his sword and you have made him stand, not made him stand in battle. You have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground. You have cut short the days of his youth. You have covered him with shame.

How long, oh Lord. Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn Like fire. Remember how short my time is for what vanity you have created. All the children of man. What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of shield? Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness, you swore to David?

Remember, oh Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations with which your enemies mock oh Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed. Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen And amen. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but God's word, friends stands forever.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be God. This week I was, uh, on the internet and a article popped up and the article was about how researchers have determined that the amount of the entire spectrum of light that the human eye can see is only 0.0035% of all the light that there actually is. Now to put that in perspective, if you were to take a cross country road trip from one end of the United States all the way across the continental United States, the entire road trip were the spectrum of light.

You would only be able to see a football field and a half of that journey.

And what struck me about that article is that if we can only see 0.0035% of the spectrum of light,

how much less we can see of God's ordained plans that are beyond what we actually are able to see.

Psalm 89 is a song for people like us, people who wanna see the whole journey, but we are stuck seeing just a sliver of it. Now, Psalm 89 is written by a man you see at the top of the psalm. His name is Ethan Ezra, and with Human, the one that Nathan talked about last week, who wrote Psalm 88 and Chole, and a man named Darda.

Those were the sons of Mahal. One Kings chapter four and one Chronicles 15 tell us that there were four of the wisest men in the world to whom Solomon was compared. These were the four guys who knew everything. People came to them, they were Levites, they were the sages. They came to these four. Ethan was one of those four.

And when, uh, Moses' writing, um, or the author rather of one Kings is writing of Solomon, he says, Solomon is even wiser than Ethan. The Ezra High. And so this guy is no slouch. And surely if Ethan could see more than the average person, then he would be able to tell us to be a prophet, to say, Hey, this is the truth of what God says.

And yet even Ethan cries out, Lord, where are you? If you made a promise to us and it seems like you've abandoned it.

Psalm 89 is honest about the limits of even the wisest sight. Psalm 89 comes to the very end of book three, and it's placed there. At the very end of book three because it encapsulates the entirety of Book three. Book three of the Psalms is from Psalm 73 to Psalm 89. Psalm 73 has that famous line, who have I in heaven?

But you, the Earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but you are the strength of my life and my portion forever. It starts out with this incredible confidence, but it's called the Dark Book. Psalm, uh, book three of the Psalms because slowly and surely you go further and further and further and further down into the travails of what it means to live in a fallen world.

Until you get to where we got last week in Psalm 88, where it ends darkness is my only compan.

And so Psalm 89 is a chiasm. That is that it's the front end and the back end. The top and the bottom of the psalm speak to the same theme. It's like a sandwich. Children, you got the bread verses one to four, and then verses 46 through 52. That's the bread. And if you have your bulletin and you have a pen, draw a line between verse four and verse five.

You heard me pause as I read it because those are the breaks in the psalm. And then the next section goes from verse five down to verse 18, and it goes from verse 35 down, uh, 38 down through 45. And so if you have a pen, you can draw a line between verse 17 and 18

and then draw a line between verse 45 and 46. And right in the middle. Right in the middle. You heard me read it is God's Covenant to David. So I wanna walk through the Psalm together because Ethan, the EZ Israelite has put together something that you and I need to hear today. First, he teaches us that faithful worship happens when you see him the Lord, and when you don't.

Faithful worship when you see him and when you don't. First he starts out with this incredible sense of sight. He can see it. He can see the journey, he can see the distance, and he writes with joy. Look at how he opens. In verses one to four, I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever with my mouth.

I will make known all of your faithfulness to all generations. Listen, you hear the, you hear his joy. He can see that God is good. And he, he just bursts into worship. And he's not just talking about generic faith, he's talking about real life giving joy. And some of you have experienced that recently, haven't you?

Some of you have prayed for things and you've seen them answered. It, and you have this incredible sense of joy about what God can do. You know the gospel is true. You've seen your children mature in the faith. You've seen repentance happen within your family. You've seen maybe even your own marriage as you've come closer to your husband or to your wife.

You've seen the beauty of a season when God is good, and I want you to know that that's real. That's worship. But then I want you to jump down to verses 46 through 52. 46 through 52, and notice the way he speaks of his sadness. How long, oh Lord, will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire?

Remember how short my time is for what vanity you have created. All the children of man. This is a man who is incredibly heartbroken and sad. Some of you look at your children, your grandchildren who have cancer, and say, Lord, how long will you wait? Some of you look at a marriage that just seems like it is beyond the pale of healing, and you say, Lord, when will you help my spouse, Lord, to do the things I want?

And maybe in fact, he's waiting for you to walk in repentance too. Listen, it's not hard for us to find the areas of our life where we, like Ethan, are crying out, Lord, how long? How long? Because just sometimes we can see the goodness of the Lord and we have great joy. But sometimes Ethan teaches us that we are blind and we are periods of, in periods of profound sadness.

Do you hear his ache the same God, the same promise. But Ethan can't see at all. He's in the dark. He's not singing. He's crying out, God, where are you? You promised it. I don't see it. Are you even there? And here's what is honest and comforting about the gospel because just like joy and delight and praise is a form of worship.

So is. Crying out to God in your sadness and in your despair. You know what? That's real. And friends, that's worship. Two. Ethan brings his blindness, his confusion, his sadness, his anger, all of his questions, and Ethan invites you to do the same. The Bible's paradox is that joy and sorrow can be mixed together.

Most of us, if you grew up in the church like I did, you, you come to worship, you know, you feel like all the people are on stage, you're smiling, you feel like they're singing you and leading you into joy. And there's like this cognitive dissonance. You're like, Hey, I want a place. I can come and rest because I don't feel like smiling this morning.

And I want you to know that that's okay. And there's not a section for the frowns and the smilers. We're all mixed together. Joy and sadness are mixed together as people who experience it in God's covenant community. And it is true that we experience the world says you have to separate them out. You have to only be sad or you have to only be joyful.

But it is the only, only the Christian please hear me. It is only the Christian who can be both at the same time. In fact, it is only the Christian who can be able to admit that he is both deeply joyful and also tremendously sad at the very same time. And that is not a contradiction. Because he knows the promise is true and that Jesus is coming again to make everything new.

But he also knows that in a fallen world, things are profoundly sad.

Pastor Mark sent me. Um, uh, uh, the reminder of, do you remember An Inside Out when Joy discovers that she can hold onto sadness too. It's a great part of that movie where ri the, the, the young girl that you know that, that, that joy and anger and they're all representing her emotions and joy. Ha she holds these things together too, and then it clicks for her.

Ah, I can be real, I can experience both at the same time. CS Lewis one time said, I, I wish it was as though. Joy and delight were just something out there that I could just obtain, that I can just grab. He writes In Surprised by joy, I had hoped that at the heart of reality, it might be of such a kind that we can best symbolize it as a place, and CS Lewis says instead, I found it to be a person.

Christian, if your deepest joy is inside this world, do you know what that means? It can be taken from you, but if your deepest joy is found somewhere outside of the world, no matter what your circumstances are, no matter how they change, no matter how dark your life gets, your deepest joy, it cannot be taken away because it doesn't belong to this world.

And what is real biblical joy? It is not comfort. It is not circumstantial preference. Real biblical joy, if we are gonna define it, is when you receive that for which your heart most deeply longs, and that for which you most deeply seek after that's biblical joy. And if you place the deepest joy. In something that is outside of this world, namely in what the Lord Jesus has done for you, then it can never be taken from you, no matter how dark things get.

And as a pastor, it's a privilege to know your stories. And I could go row by row through here and you could do the same for those of you who know me well and talk about the dark seasons of our life, even some of the ones that we're living, living in right now. But I want you to know that faithful worship happens when you see.

And when you don't, and Ethan, the EZ Israelite wants you to know in verses one to four and in verses 46 through 52, that it is in our joy and in our sadness that we worship. Secondly,

we are told not only are we able to worship in joy and sadness. But second, he shows us the tension of our faith in times of confidence and in times of pain. Verses five through 18 is coupled with verses 38 through 45. Are you with me? Now? We're beyond the bread. Now we're into the, what is this? The mustard.

We're in the middle. The tension of faith, in the confidence and in the pain. Ethan's heart moves from the outside of worship where he's singing. In the light and crying in the dark, and he moves right into the thick of things, the tension of faith, and this is where most of us live. Look at verses five to six.

He says that the heavens, praise your wonders, oh God. And your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord when he says heavenly beings. There it is. God before the arrayed might of all the angels in heaven, every spiritual force, and he sits enthroned as king over them.

He is sovereign over all of them, and Ethan knows this. It's just this, this shout of confidence. And then when you get down in verse 38. He speaks of his own despair. You have breached all his walls. Verse 40, all who passed by plunder him. You have cut short the days of his. Youth. Listen, Ethan goes from the heights of confidence where he says that your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones.

These are the deepest Old Testament themes of God's sovereignty down into the depths of despair. He's not mincing words. He's not tiptoeing. He's saying You are the one who promised David a throne forever. But now it looks like you've taken it all away. The kingdom is in ruins. Where are you notice? 12 times he calls God to account.

You have cast off and rejected. You are full of wrath. You are renounced, you have renounced, you have defiled, you have breached, you have laid the stronghold of ruins. You, you, you, you,

and in the heights of your confidence in all that God has done. I want you to know that it's okay. Also, he can handle it for you to cry out to him and say, where are you?

Because faith looks like confessing both your confidence and your despair. And we will mature as a church as we understand that you don't have to pace a smile on your face to pretend to be walking in faithfulness. You have to be crying out to him. 'cause you don't cry out to one you don't believe in.

And even in your despair you say, Lord, where are you? And I want you to notice. That when you worship faithfully, it may look like joy. It may look like sadness. And when you feel the tension, that tension may feel like incredible confidence. It may also feel like deep despair. Ethan, the wisest of the old sages in the East says it's okay.

And lastly, look at the reason why Ethan can argue like this, because he takes us to the heart of the heart of the heart, and he says. It is because of the covenant of David. He says beginning, uh, there in verse 19 of old, you spoke in a vision to your godly ones and said, I have granted help to the one who is mighty.

I have exalted one chosen from the people I have found, David, my servant. You can trust God's promise in the midst of waiting because God's covenant to David stands.

This is the core of Israel's hope, that God himself made a covenant with David. He said that David, there will always be a man to stand on my throne. But here is Ethan who perhaps remembers the time of Solomon and David, and now all the words that he uses. When he says, you, you, you, you, you, all those words, all those verbs are verbs of exile.

And now Ethan stands in the Babylonian captivity looking back and says, God, you made a promise. Where are you? And he gives us the key to how we ought to pray to in our despair. God, you've promised God, you've promised be true to your character. Be true to your hope. Be true to your name and your renowned deliver on your promises because we wait and hope for the Lord.

When? When Lauren and I were married. We had to choose a wedding verse, and we had the whole congregation say, we wait in hope for the Lord. Psalm 33, 20 through 22. Because he is our help on our shield and Him our hearts rejoice because we trust in your holy name. May your steadfast love rest upon us. Oh Lord, even as we hope in you, and I know I've said this before, but waiting is the lost art of the Christian life.

'cause we are not patient people and we live in a world of incredible moral dissonance where we can have everything in our fingertips, in our phones, we can look up any fact we want to through ai. But it is waiting that forms us into the moral people. God longs for us to be shaping us into his image. And it is the theme that reverberates all throughout scripture, no eye has seen or ear has heard, no one has perceived.

Isaiah says in Isaiah 64. A God like ours who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. So how are you doing in the waiting Trinity,

how are you doing? Are you waiting in joy? Seasons of great delight. Are you waiting in despair? Are you waiting in seasons of great confidence in what God has promised to do and will still do when he returns? Or are you waiting in seasons of dear sadness, e in the Ezra height? Oh, he in says to you, it's okay where you are and you have this beautiful psalm in this castic structure to remind us that God is faithful to his covenant.

As I told the children, God's. Covenants Never What expire? Do you know that? Do you live like that or have you shifted your confidence ever so subtly onto something else? Listen, Psalm 89 is given to you as a good medicine. It is given to you to teach you how to pray in your heights of joy and in the depths of sadness, and it is a gift to you.

Would you pray it? And would you know that God has made a covenant to David and he will certainly fulfill it? He says In two Samuel chapter seven, your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever. And in the psalm, the Hebrew word for steadfast love is the Hebrew word ssid.

It is a loyal, always and forever, never forgetting kind of steadfast love. To illustrate this, I was thinking about when I was in college, my son Andrew, was about to go off to college and I was thinking about my own college dorm in my freshman year, and it seemed like every other dorm at Texas a and m and Moses Hall had one movie poster.

1995, the movie came out involved Blue Face Paint on a guy's face. Anybody know what that movie was? Braveheart. And the poster had William Wallace at the Battle of Sterling Bridge. Do you remember this scene? And after he gives this great speech, all the men are spread out and they see the English coming.

And William, William Wallace is, you know, they're, they're boasting in their array might these, these Scottish men. And they see the English coming, they're fed up with their taunts, and they start with the calvary first. And the calvary starts coming. And William Wallace stands before the men, and he goes Steady.

And he sees the horses coming. They jump over the ravine, they're coming, they lower their jou, jousts, and all the men just want to break. And he goes, hold, hold,

hold. And then just as they get within 10 yards, he says Now and they lower and they raise up the spears. Listen, that is what the Christian life is like. And you know this, when you face temptation, it is like, hold, hold, hold you clinging to the promise of God because every other promise in the world, friends will expire.

There's only one promise that will not expire, and that is God's promise to his people. And CS Lewis was right and Ethan didn't get to see it, but you get to see it. That God's promise is not contained. Joy is not contained in some location or some place. Lewis says, and surprised by Joy, page 2 32, if you wanna read it, it is a person and we get the joy this morning of being able to see it.

Because how do we hold in faith? We recount the promises of God. Verses 19 through 29, you recount them. You go back to the sinner, you pray it, you write it. You remind your children of your friends, your own heart. Deuteronomy six, four, you know the Shama, you tell the story of the gospel to your children.

You bring them to AM discipleship. You stay after worship and you learn from Pastor Mark right over here in this section, and you begin to build into the rhythm of your family what it means to make the Gospel central. Not because it's something weird, you talk about for five minutes before dinner, but because it.

It's integrated into the whole of your life so that it becomes the worldview through which your children know that when they're faced with temptation and danger and famine or soar and away from you, one day they will be able to say, hold, hold, hold. And Jesus will come to them and say, now, and he will draw dear to them in beautiful ways.

We remind ourselves of his character. Ethan says, I will not remove my steadfast love, he says, the Lord says, I will not lie to David. You've said this. We recount the promises that God has made to us, and we are transformed by the renewing of our mind. That's what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 12 verse one.

It is not just in your emotions, it's also what you think. You have to know God's word to know his promises. You read them, you write them. You recount them. You remind yourself of God's character. And despite all of this, the New Testament shows us how there are two groups of people in this room who will respond even this morning to the good news of God's covenant promise.

Because in Acts chapter 13 that Amanda read earlier today, there are 52 verses in Psalm 89. In interestingly, there are 52 verses in Psalm, I mean in Acts 13. And when Paul and Barnabas are recounting before the Jews and some of the Gentiles, the story of God's faithfulness throughout redemptive history.

He quotes from Psalm 89, verse 20. I have found David, a man after my own heart. I have found David. That's the quote. And after they leave that day, the, the city begs him to stay and he says, no, come back next week. And they come back the next week and the whole city gathers to hear the word of the Lord in Acts chapter 13.

But the Jews who see the crowds are filled with jealousy. They contradict Paul. They stir up the power brokers. Why? Because their hope is in a promise of political freedom. Their hope was not a hope beyond this world. They wanted their Messiah to come and deliver them from Rome, and the gospel turns the powers of the world upside down so that your joy, deepest joy, the thing for which your heart most heartly longs in which you seek after is not found in the comforts of the world.

It is found in the only one who can truly comfort your heart because he has made it new. The Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul says to the Jews, you're judging yourselves unworthy of eternal life. But to the Gentiles, they with joy, received the Holy Spirit. And why the difference? 'cause the Gentiles received a joy that isn't rooted in their circumstances or their physical deliverance.

It was rooted in the promise of God that they believed on the spot. So as we close, where is your joy rooted? Do you have faith in God's promises? Even when you stand still and you're waiting in the dark? Joy is not found in a place, it's found in a person. And every description from Psalm 89 verses 21 through 29, points to Jesus.

He is the anointed one. The true son of David. He is a faithful son. Reread the psalm today, this week through the lens of seeing it talk to you of Jesus and the sadness. See Jesus praying that on your behalf as he goes to the cross for you. He is the king who's thrown last forever. He is the one who was cast off on the cross, so you could be brought in.

He's the one that's pushed out an exile beyond the city. So that you might be brought in. He is the one whose resurrection proves that God's promise remains unbroken, even the darkest of night. And Jesus says to his disciples in John 16, I'm about to be taken from you. And you'll be very sad. But soon, soon you'll have joy at the resurrection.

And Jesus has the audacity and the truth to say, and no one can take it from you.

So as we come to the table this morning, friends, if you're stuck in the dark and you're full of questions, if you're singing in the light, or if you're sighing in the night, if you're in the tension, wherever you are, come to this table because Psalm 89 invites you to the center of God. Promise. Jesus says, this is my body broken for you.

This is my blood shed for you. So he gets his arms around you and he welcomes you to this table and says, whatever experience you're having right now, my promise is true because Jesus is the one who said, come. Not because you're strong, but because I am. Come not because you see everything clearly, but because I see you come, not because you've kept the promise, but because I have kept the promise and I will always, always, always hold on to you.

Let's pray. Father, would you remind us that your son clings to us? And would you remind us as you have through the words of E and the Ezra Height, that though we experience seasons of great joy and gladness and we worship you in the midst of those that is good and right. And when we worship you in the midst of tremendous despair and sadness, oh Lord, yet we worship you.

And that is still true worship. Help us to come to your table wherever we are with joy this morning, resting in your covenant promises. And as we give our tithes and offerings this morning, Lord, we yield the whole of our life to you with greatness, gladness, gratitude, because you are the one who is great.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen. 

Sermon transcipt is computer generated.