God Is: Faithful

Psalm 89

Introduction

How many of you know what a Hi-fi is? It was the name used to describe record players. How many of you know what a record is? The record was described as Hi-fi which stands for High Fidelity. What it means is that the recording was being reproduced with high fidelity or high faithfulness to the original performance. Fulfilling what is promised is one way to describe faithfulness.

When I looked up the definition of faithfulness, I found that the Hebrew word used in the Bible is translated as “firmness, steadfastness, fidelity.” The Hebrew word is also sometimes used to describe an artist or one who has a steady hand and can reproduce an original faithfully. It is defined as certainty and dependability. The root of the Hebrew word is also the root of our word for “amen” and so conveys the idea that something is true, that we agree with it and it is good.

As anyone who has played a record player knows, there were some things like scratches on the record or a damaged needle which would produce a poor quality reproduction of the original sound. Sometimes it didn’t faithfully fulfill what it promised. Then listening was disappointing because it was no longer faithful to the original.

We experience broken promises or unfaithfulness in many ways in life. When people promise to meet us at a certain time and then don’t show up, their unfaithfulness is disappointing. When marriage vows are broken, that is a serious situation of unfaithfulness and is devastating. When God doesn’t do what He promises that is a disaster. Does God keep His promises? Is God faithful?

In order to think about this question, I would like to invite you to look at Psalm 89 where the word faithful appears more often than in any other single Psalm.

Promises

Promises To Israel

This Psalm speaks about the promises which God made to Israel. Please look with me at Psalm 89:19-37 where God’s promises are spoken of.

What is written here is a promise that David’s rule as king will be successful, that God will sustain and help him, that his kingdom will be extensive so that as Psalm 89:27 says he will be “the most exalted of the kings of the earth.” The most significant promise in this Psalm is the promise made in Psalm 89:29 which says, “I will establish his line forever, his throne as long as the heavens endure.” The promise comes directly from the mouth of God who spoke to David in II Samuel 7:5-16 - “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says:… the Lord himself will establish a house for you:… my love will never be taken away from him,… Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”

The strength of the promise is seen in Psalm 89:30-37 where God says that even if David’s sons sin, “I will not take my love from him, nor will I ever betray my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have sworn..his line will continue forever…”

That is a pretty powerful promise which had implications not only for David, but for the entire nation of Israel.

Promises To Us.

David is not the only one to whom God has made promises. What are the promises of God which are an encouragement to us and in which we rejoice? Some of you have books of God’s promises which outline all the things which God has said He would do. A few of God’s promises to us are:

Psalm 91:9,10 – “If you make the Most High your dwelling— even the Lord, who is my refuge— 10 then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.”

Matthew 6:26 – “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” And Matthew 6:30, “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

I John 4:18 – “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear…”

What a blessing to have these promises! We rest on them and we count on them and we rejoice in them and live by them.

Broken Promises

But, is God faithful to His promises?

To Israel

As we read on in Psalm 89 we discover a stark contrast to the wonderful promises which God has made to Israel. We find that at the point at which the Psalmist, Ethan the Ezrahite, was writing, God was anything but faithful to these promises.

Look at the words which speak of what the writer was experiencing in Psalm 89:38-45. The most devastating is verse 39 where he says, “you have renounced the covenant with your servant.” What is he saying? He is telling God – you don’t keep your promises! Those are pretty harsh words, a pretty direct accusation! Bible commentator Marvin Tate speaks about “the glaring contrast between the promised ideal and the present reality.”

What was going on? There are several historical situations which could correspond to these accusations. After the days of Solomon, the kingdom was divided between Jeroboam and Rehoboam. A son of David was still king, but not over the whole nation, rather over a divided kingdom. Later during the days when the Assyrians destroyed Israel and later still when Judah was exiled to Babylon there were other occasions when it seemed God was not keeping this promise. Scholars are not certain nor united on the exact historical context, but there are lots of possibilities when it looked like God’s promises were not being kept.

We look at these stories from a historical distance and perspective that takes a larger story into account, but we need to put ourselves into the position of the writer who is watching his whole world fall apart and watching as God’s people are being decimated by enemies and seeing it as a time when the promises of God are not being fulfilled. It was a terrible time and we need to give full weight to the disaster which the writer was experiencing.

It raises what Tate calls the “riddle of the inscrutability of God’s way of acting in history.” It is a time to ask, “Where are the promises of God? Is God faithful?” To the writer it looked as if He was not!

To Us

The writer of Psalm 89 is not the only one who has struggled with the fear which comes when our experiences tell us that God’s promises are not being kept and that God is not faithful.

When I read Psalm 91:9,10, which we looked at a few moments ago, I was reminded of a tornado that ripped through the area around Rushing River Ontario when we were camping there. On Sunday, we went to a worship service at a Lutheran camp a little way down the road and learned that during the tornado a tree had come down on a tent and killed an 11 year old boy. Where was God’s promise that “no harm will befall you?” If you have ever been in an accident, ever gotten an illness, ever experienced any disaster, ever experienced violence against yourself, you must have asked where God’s promise that “no harm will befall you” was! You must have questioned God’s faithfulness.

What about the poor and the naked? – Where is the promise in Matthew 6 for believers in certain parts of Africa?

Why are so many still plagued with fears when I John 4 promises that the love of God present with us will remove all our fears?

Sometimes it is our own fault, a result of our own faithlessness that brings events that look like God is not keeping His promises, but in those cases, it is our faithlessness and not Gods. But that is not always the case! When a missionary family dies in a car accident, when innocent children starve to death, we wonder, “where is God’s promise?”

When we think about these things then the question which the Psalmist raises with deep intensity becomes our question, “Is God faithful?” “Does He keep His promises?”

What Do We Do When God Seems Unfaithful?

How do we respond to broken promises? If someone promises to meet us and they are consistently late or frequently forget. How do we respond? We begin to doubt their words. We begin to act as if we don’t trust them by reminding them or giving them an earlier time so that we do not have to wait for them so long. Trust has been broken and we compensate.

If one marriage partner breaks a marriage vow by abuse or adultery, how does the other partner respond? Besides trust being broken, they would question their partner’s love. They would certainly ask, “do you still love me?” but would have a hard time believing the answer!

This Psalm is amazing in that it is quite up front about God’s broken promises. The Psalmist does exactly what we do when someone is unfaithful. He questions God’s love and faithfulness. Please take note of 89:49, “O Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David?” But is that all the Psalmist does? How does the writer handle this very difficult, real and personal question?

One writer who comments on this Psalm suggests that it is OK to stay in this difficult place of questioning God’s love and faithfulness. He rewrites the first verse, “I wish I could sing of the Lord’s great love forever…” implying, “but I can’t because of what I have experienced.”

In some ways he is right because there are some things we cannot and are not meant to understand. Not every Psalm ends with a happy ending. Psalm 88 does not resolve, but remains in a position of depression and questioning to the end. This same writer points to Elie Wiesel, the Jewish writer who survived the holocaust in Auschwitz and who wrote that “Man defines himself by what disturbs him and not by what reassures him.”

There is a time when all we can do is live in an uncomfortable silence with God, but I don’t think that is all that is in this Psalm. In this Psalm we see much more that moves towards recognizing that God is faithful and affirming and resting in His faithfulness.

Pray

One important response to the apparent unfaithfulness of God is prayer. That is what the Psalmist does in Psalm 89:46-51. Although in this prayer he questions God’s faithfulness, it is important to note that he does so in the presence of God. When we do that we are expressing faith in God in spite of what we do not understand. In the prayer he acknowledges his own human frailty when he says, “what man can live and not see death.” He acknowledges that from the human stand point, such experiences are hard. He says in verse 47, “Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility you have created men!” Marvin Tate writes, “He can only state that contradiction with a bleeding heart; he can only lift his hands to God in prayer and bring his affliction before Him and lay before Him the problems which his own thinking and reason are unable to master.”

Charles Spurgeon comments on these verses, “God’s actions may appear to us to be the reverse of his promises, and then our best course is to come before him in prayer and put the matter before him just as it strikes our apprehension. We are allowed to do this, for this holy and inspired man did so un-rebuked but we must do it humbly and in faith.” “He puts the matter plainly, and makes bold with the Lord, and the Lord loves to have his servants so do; it shows that they believe his engagements to be matters of fact.”

So if you are struggling to see God’s faithfulness and believe that He has broken His promises, talk to Him about it in all honesty, but with humility and trust.

Praise In Trust

Another reason I don’t believe that living in uncomfortable silence is all that happens in this Psalm is because the conclusion to the Psalm is a jarring contrast to what has just preceded. In Psalm 89:38-51 we have an honest description of the situation. We hear such questioning words as, “you have renounced your covenant” and “where is your former great love…” but after that honest complaint the Psalm ends with “Praise be to the Lord forever!” How do you express such a devastating complaint and then end by praising God? Does the writer have his head in the sand? Is he divided in mind so that he can hold both tragedy and hope together at the same time? How do you do that?????

Starting Point

You do it because of your starting point and the starting point for the Psalmist is what he has written in 89:1-18.

The content of this passage is a powerful affirmation that God is faithful. If our starting point and our life conviction is that God is faithful, then even when God appears not to be faithful, we will stand on that truth. The Psalm ends with praise, but not with resolution and that is faith! It is faith in the faithfulness of God which the Psalmist declares from the beginning of the Psalm.

I Will Sing

It is possible to do this when, even in times of confusion, our life is marked by praise. Notice that in verses 1,2, the Psalmist says, “I will sing…,” “with my mouth I will make…known…” and “I will declare…” When all things are going well, it is important to express the wonder of God’s goodness. It is important because as we declare it, it goes deep into our heart and strengthens our faith and celebrates God’s faithfulness in the public arena. Then, when it looks like God has forgotten His promises, we are able, by faith, to continue to praise God. It is important to do so because when we publicly give expression to praise it reminds us that this is and always has been our conviction and we will continue to live by it.

Standing On The Promises

It is possible by standing on the promises. In Psalm 89:3,4, the writer speaks of the promises which God has made. Even though later he questions whether God has kept those promises, his starting point is a statement of faith that He will continue to stand on the promises of God.

Who Is Like Him?

It is possible when we examine the bigger picture. Perhaps at this time, in regards to one promise of God it looks like God is not faithful, yet where else can we turn? Who else is there who is greater than God? This is the thrust of Psalm 89:5-8. Please take note of the main idea presented twice in these verses when the writer says, “Who is like you?” God is greater than all and if we live by faith in our great God, in times when we are tempted to doubt God’s faithfulness, we will be reminded that there is still no one who is greater than God.

Creation and History Declare

It is possible as we reflect on all that God has already done and all that He is. In Psalm 89:9-13 we read of God’s great power over nature and history. We are reminded of the time when God “crushed Rahab.” Rahab is a reference to the pagan female monster of chaos and became a way of referring to Egypt, the monster who almost swallowed up God’s people. But this Psalm reminds us about how God delivered Israel from that “monster.” For us as Christians, the recollection of God’s great work of salvation in Jesus is a reminder that although in some ways God seems to be unfaithful, yet in the most essential and critical matter of salvation, God has shown Himself not only faithful, but filled with an everlasting love. It is a motivation to faith.

When we examine the wonder of God’s power and love expressed in creation, as the Psalmist does in Psalm 89:11 when he says, “The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth.” we are reminded that God still is the greatest of all and the one before whom we have to resolve these issues of doubt. As we live a life of remembering what God has done, we can continue to live by faith in God even though we don’t understand it all.

Those Who Acclaim You

In the last part of this section of praise the writer returns to the starting point and that is that a life which is lived in faith and has learned to praise God will not be easily thrown off when God’s faithfulness is in question. In Psalm 89:15 we read, “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you…”

Spurgeon writes, “…we ought still to praise God for his mercies, since they most certainly remain the same, whether we can perceive them or not.”

That is why it is so important to live by faith and to frequently engage in praise to God. When the day comes that we cannot praise Him because all the evidence suggests that God has failed to be faithful, our life habit of praise will help us to continue in faith in spite of what our eyes and our body and even our mind are telling us. That will allow us to keep on with God.

God Is Faithful!

On this basis of faith the Psalmist was able to conclude with “Praise be to the Lord.” Even if that is all we know, we can do the same. But as Christians we know something more that helps us. What the Psalmist experienced was not the end of the story. The problem was that God’s promise to give David’s son the eternal throne was not being kept. Yet we know that this promise has been completely fulfilled. Jesus fulfills the promise of God made to David. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, the sign over His head in Latin, Greek and Hebrew was “King of the Jews” and He is King and has taken His eternal throne at the right side of the Father. He is the eternal son of David who is the eternal son of God. From our perspective, regarding the promise spoken of in Psalm 89:19-37, we know that God is faithful!

How often do we give up too soon? I remember several times when it looked like the Bombers were beaten and the game was over. People left the stands and started going home. Some of them were already outside the stadium when they will have heard a roar from the crowd in the stadium because of Milt’s miracle catch which put the Bombers in front and caused them to win the game. Now with the Bombers it doesn’t nearly always happen, but with God it does. Let us not be outside the stadium before the end of the game, but let us remain faithful until we understand that God is always faithful.

Conclusion

If you are questioning the faithfulness and love of God today because of the pain and confusion in your life, let this Psalm speak:

Let it be an expression of your confusion, doubt and pain.

Let it be a direction to express those doubts to God with all honesty in prayer.

Let it be an encouragement to keep on trusting God in spite of what things look like.

Let it be a strategy for survival in the face of God’s seeming faithlessness as you keep on trusting and praising.

Let it be a statement of faith that God is faithful.