Psalm 89. I’ll begin with verse 1. This is a maskil. It’s a type of psalm; a maskil of Ethan the Ezrahite. “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.'”
The hour has gotten late. I think I’ll put off the reading of the rest of it till later in the message. As I mentioned, the superscript tells us this is a psalm of Ethan the Ezrahite. We read of him, by the way, in 1 Chronicles 15. He was a Levite that was appointed by David the king to be one of the chief musicians in temple worship. He’s also a prophet. He speaks for the Lord, sometimes predicting the future, as we’ll see here—something like Asaph, who led in music and also was a prophet, a writer of the Psalms. So is Ethan the Ezrahite.
Some people have questioned that. We’ll just look at this just quickly here. Some people have questioned how that can be because there are some signals later in the psalm that seem to indicate that this psalm was written reflecting on the trauma of the exile when Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem, sacked it, and took away captives. You’ll see some of that in verses 44 and 45, if you look down there, where Ethan says, “You have made his splendor to cease,” that is the king. “You’ve 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.” Well, clearly the Davidic king is in view there, and it seems to reflect Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Jerusalem in 597 BC. Then the deporting of Jehoiachin, the king there, was the end of the Davidic line, with the king carried off to Babylon. And it seemed then that the Davidic kingship had come to an end.
Well, that seems to be reflected here. Again, verses 50 and 51 seem to reflect the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. It seems rather recent. Verse 50: “Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insult of all the many nations, with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.” Well, all of this happened centuries after Ethan—more than four centuries after Ethan. And yet the psalm tells us that it’s a psalm or a maskil of Ethan.
Three Options
So how do we put that together? Well, as far as I can tell, we have three options.
Number one: Ethan, speaking as a prophet, is looking ahead and seeing these things. Now that has plenty of precedent both in the Psalms and in the prophets where the writer will look ahead to events that have been shown him by inspiration of God, sometimes in visionary experience, and often those future events are spoken of in the past tense. In elementary Hebrew, when you take it in seminary, they introduce you to what’s called a prophetic perfect. The perfect tense is the past tense, and yet in prophetic scenarios, when he’s speaking of something to come in the future, they speak of it in the past, sometimes seeming to indicate the certainty of the event. But it’s what he has seen in prophetic vision, and so it’s a prophetic perfect, all right? “My people have been brought into exile. Israel has fallen.” That kind of language is in the prophets and even in the Psalms. David said, “They’ve cast lots for my clothes,” and things like that. It’s spoken of in the past tense as though it has already happened, clearly looking ahead to the future. And that, I think, is the most obvious answer here: the prophecy of Ethan in those verses.
Now there are a couple of other options. Some have suggested that maybe this is another Ethan, who is a descendant of that Ethan that we know of in 1 Chronicles 15. And so sometimes in the Psalms, you’ll see “Psalm by Asaph” or “by Korah,” by the sons of Korah. Maybe this is a son of Ethan in that guild of music in the Old Testament worship. That’s a possibility. And another suggestion is it’s just another Ethan altogether that we don’t know about. I think it makes better sense of this psalm, and we’ll see this as we go through, to see this as the Ethan that we know about and a prophetic pronouncement by him of what is going to come. And that fits well then into what we’ll see as we work our way through.
On the occasion of the psalm, Ethan is struggling with a terrible theological problem, the implications of which call into question everything that he believes. The problem is God had promised a kingship to David. He promised—we’ll see this as we go on—promised that David’s son will rule on the throne forever. But now, given the events that we see described in verses 44 and following, it seems that promise has fallen to the ground. That’s the occasion of the psalm. And so we find this is partially a lament psalm.
As a way of broad overview of the psalm, Psalm 89 is the climax of Book 3 of the Psalter. You remember we have five books of the Psalms. Remember, just for review, the Psalms did not come together all at once in a book form. These Psalms were written over the centuries, beginning with David—actually beginning with Moses before that; we have one of his in Psalm 90—and then eventually brought into collections. We have five different collections of those Psalms brought into the Book of Psalms as we know it. So if you like, you can think of the Psalter as a five-volume work. Well, this is the climax now of Book 3 of the Psalter, Psalms 73 to 89. Many of you will see that in your Bibles published over the top of Psalm 90, the beginning of Book 4 of the Psalms. More on that a little bit later as well.
The structure of this psalm then is very simple. It’s kind of a mixed psalm, various forms of the psalm. In verses 1 to 37, we have a hymn, a praise hymn, praising God for his covenant with David and his promise to keep that covenant. So we have a hymn of praise in verses 1 to 37. And then verses 38 to 51, we have a lament. So we have a lament psalm here as well. Here he’s complaining, lamenting that God has rejected that covenant, and he pleads with God. The petition that he makes in this lament is to ask God to remember the covenant that he had made with David. And then it concludes with verse 52, which is a doxology. And by the way, that is one of the marks of the end of the books of the Psalms. Each of the books, at the seams of the five books, we find some praise, a doxology that is given, and that’s what we have here in verse 52. It is the climax of this psalm, but it is also then the climax of Book 3, which is marked largely by lament. And Psalm 89 is perhaps the climax of that lament.
Introduction to the Theme
All right then, verses 1 to 4, we have his introduction. And here he states his theme that he’ll carry through the entire psalm. Look at verses one and two: “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.'”
Well, here we have a theme then, and this theme, very simply, is that expression that we’ve seen often in the Psalter: the steadfast love of the Lord. That’s highlighted in each of the opening verses, 1 and 2, and we find it five more times through the psalm. Verse 1: “I’ll sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever.” Verse 2: “I said, ‘Steadfast love will be built up forever.'” You’ll find it again in the last part of verse 14: “Steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.” Verse 24: “My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him.” Verse 28: “My steadfast love I will keep for him forever.” Again in verse 33 and again in verse 49: “the steadfast love of the Lord.”
So it’s that word that we’ve seen so often in this Psalter, steadfast love. Some of you have done some reading on your own; you even know the Hebrew word here, chesed. Steadfast love of the Lord. It’s a simple one word in Hebrew. We don’t have an exact equivalent in English, and so we translate it usually with two words. Sometimes it’s translated favor or kindness, but often with two words. In the older versions, it was translated God’s tender mercies, or his loving mercies, or his loving kindness. In our version, usually in this kind of context at least, it’s translated the steadfast love of the Lord.
And actually, there are several ideas caught up with this word steadfast love, and all of them are relevant to what Ethan is lamenting, praising God for, and then lamenting about in this psalm. Several ideas in the word steadfast love: One is the idea of affection—favor, concern, love. So it’s the idea of God favoring and loving and having affection for someone, and sometimes it’s translated God’s love. But it also has the connotations of a superior pledging his help to an inferior. You find this not only in context with God and humans, but also between humans where a superior will pledge his faithfulness, pledge his help, pledge his favor to one who’s in an inferior position. And that’s the idea here as well. So you find it translated kindness—God pledging his kindness, his favor. It’s not only his affection, but it’s a pledged favor. “I’ll stick with this.” And so then there’s a third connotation of the word, and that’s this idea of commitment: that God is committed to this. There’s a permanency to his love. You can always count on it. And so we have the word steadfast love. With us, in English, we just add that adjective, “steadfast love,” to catch all of those connotations.
All right, so we have God’s steadfast love, and then we also have another word here, and that is faithfulness. Verse 1: “I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.” You find that again in verse 2. You find it again in verse 5, verse 18, verse 24, verse 33, verse 49. You find it over and again: faithfulness. And the idea of the word faithfulness simply means trustworthy; it’s reliable. It comes from a word that means steadfast or firm and sure. So God is steadfast. He’s reliable. He’s trustworthy or faithful. We see that in verse 1: “I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.” You can trust him forever. And then verse 2b: “In the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.” Now if God’s faithfulness is established in the heavens, he’s speaking of its transcendence. There’s never an interference from anything earthly or temporal. His faithfulness is firm and it’s steady.
Now often these two words, steadfast love and faithfulness—those two expressions are often paired. We have it in verse 1 and then in verse 2, paired together. We also have it in verse 14: “Steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.” Verse 24: “My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him.” And in fact, notice verses 1 and 2 seem to equate the ideas of steadfast love and faithfulness. Notice verse 1; notice the parallel: “I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever,” and then the parallel line, “With my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.” Verse 2, we have it again: “For I said, ‘Steadfast love will be built up forever,'” and then the parallel line, “In the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.”
So, steadfast love and faithfulness. Now in a way, it’s redundant to have both of those expressions. They’re not exactly equivalent, but there’s enough overlap of the meaning of the two that it’s redundant to say God’s love is steadfast and that he is faithful. It’s kind of like when we have love songs and we’ll say things like that one popular love song, “You’ll always be my endless love.” Well, if you’ll always be my love, of course it’s endless. “Endless” is completely redundant. Or if you say, “You’re my endless love,” then you don’t need to say you’ll always be my endless love. It’s completely redundant. But we do that; we do that some in our own talk, but we do it often in poetry like this just to underline the point. And that’s what Ethan’s theme is here. God has made a promise, and God is a God of steadfast love. And he’s a God of faithfulness. That promise that he made will be kept. That’s his emphasis.
Now the promise that he has in mind, of course, is the promise that God made to David, and we read of that in verses 3 and 4. “You have said,”—here’s the promise—”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.”
Now the reference here is back to 2 Samuel chapter 7. And we can’t really appreciate this psalm unless we go back and bring 2 Samuel 7 back into our minds. You remember there, David has just come to Jerusalem. He’s established his kingdom, a unified kingdom in Jerusalem. He has brought God’s Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, established a tent for worship there. And David is thinking and he says, “I have this beautiful palace that I live in. I’ve got a great big house and God has a tent. That’s not right. I’m going to build a house for God.” And so he tells Nathan the prophet, “I want to build a house for the Lord.” And Nathan says, “That’s good.” And then Nathan goes home and God says, “That’s not good. That’s not what’s going to happen. David will not build a house for me. He’s a man of war.” His son, Solomon, we find out later, is a man of peace; he’ll build the temple for me. But God says to Nathan, “Here’s what you tell David: ‘You will not build a house for me; I will build a house for you.'” And there’s a pun. David wanted to build a house, that is a temple, for God. And God says, “No, I will build a house, that is a dynasty, for you. And your son will rule. And he will be my son. I will be his father; he will be my son.” And so now we have the big biblical theme of the king as God’s son that is born. “Your son will rule. He will be my son. I will be his father. I will establish your house forever. Your throne, your kingdom will be established forever and your house will be sure.” That’s 2 Samuel 7. Verses 3 and 4 here are simply rehearsing that in brief in two verses.
And all of that has just major structural significance throughout the Old Testament. It is one of the highest points of Old Testament revelation: the idea of God promising David that his son will rule on his throne forever. It’ll be a universal kingdom, it’ll be a kingdom of righteousness, and he will prosper and will not fail. Huge theme in the Psalms, huge theme in the prophets; over and over again it’s repeated. Now verses 3 and 4 here highlight the permanence of that promise. Verse 3: “You have said…” now verse 4: “I will establish your offspring forever and build your throne for all generations.” That is, it’ll be made sure from one generation to the next. And then again, we have this word “forever.” Verse 1, verse 2, verse 29, verse 36, verse 37. Again, verse 52, this word “forever” keeps cropping up. That God has made a promise. He is steadfast. He has steadfast love. He’s faithful. His promise is sure, and his promise will be good forever. That’s Ethan’s theme in verses 1 to 4. “I will sing of God’s steadfast love forever because he has made a promise to David, and that promise is good forever. We can count on it.”
Hymn of Praise
Well, that’s the introduction to his theme, and now he begins this hymn of praise in verse 5. And first of all in this hymn of praise, which we can’t work through in detail—there’s just not enough time—but first of all here in verses 5 through 18, there’s praise to God as the transcendent Creator and the Ruler over all. Let’s just sample some of it. Verse 5, his wonders are extolled: “Let the heavens praise you, your wonders, O Lord.” This is works of creation. So this is about as high as we can get in terms of offering praise. How great is God? Well, he’s the one who made everything that is. And so he’s extolling God for his wonders of creation. Verse 6, his incomparable greatness: “Who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord?” Verse 7, he’s an awesome God to be feared above all others. Verse 8, the Lord God of hosts, he’s mighty and faithful. Verse 9, he rules over the seas. Verse 10, he rules over the nations. Rahab, there’s the name often given for Egypt. He rules over Egypt and all of Israel’s enemies. However great they are, he rules over them. Verses 11 and 12, he owns them all. All of heaven and earth is his. “Your heavens are yours, the earth is yours, the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.” It’s an expression of God’s sovereignty. He has made it, and because he’s made it all, it all belongs to him. And he can do anything he wants with it because it’s his. He owns it. And so God can accomplish his will not simply by right of power, although that’s certainly true, or right of ownership. He has a right over it. This belongs to him. He made it. And so he rules over it all. Verse 13, he’s almighty. Verse 14, he’s just, he’s faithful. He’s marked by—here’s our word again—steadfast love. Saves the oppressed.
So there’s this hymn of praise to God as the transcendent Creator and Ruler over all. Now I suspect that if this—verses 5 through 14—seems to be a little aside of the point. His pointed hand, remember, is God’s steadfast love to David, the covenant that he’s made with him. And if all of this, praising God as the Creator and Ruler over all, seems a little aside of that point, I think we need to understand it as saying that this God who made the promise is the God who rules over all. That is, he certainly can keep his promise and nothing can interfere.
Now in verses 15 and following, he narrows the focus. Verses 15 and 16, the people who are privileged to worship him are blessed. Verses 17 and 18, we come now to the point at hand: the Davidic promise. “For you are the glory of their strength; by your favor our horn is exalted. Our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel.” Now in verse 17 there, the horn, that’s the typical metaphor for strength. “So you are the glory of their strength, by your favor our horn is exalted.” And then verse 18: “Our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel.” Israel’s shield is her king. And this has come by God’s promise as well. The net of verses 17 and 18 then is simply that David, the Davidic king, is like no other. His status and his success are made sure by God’s own promise.
Well then we come to verses 19 through 37, the rest of this hymn of praise, and here he simply rehearses the Davidic promise of 2 Samuel chapter 7. It would be good to take the time—we don’t have time—but it would be good to take time to go back to 2 Samuel 7, read through that narrative, what David says, what Nathan says, what God says, and then read now verses 19 and following. It’s simply a poetic rendering of what we find there.
Verse 19: “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 also shall 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 for 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 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 skies.'”
All of this is just a summary and poetic rendering of what we find in 2 Samuel chapter 7. He even mentions the detail where God says to Nathan to tell David that “your son will rule. He will be a faithful son. He’ll be an obedient son. And if you have a son who’s not obedient and not faithful, I’ll punish him. And I’ll punish him with the rod of the nations around him. But my steadfast love I will not take away. You will have a faithful, obedient son.” Well, this is the topic then of Ethan’s praise.
Ethan’s Lament
But this is also the heart of Ethan’s dilemma. There’s a sense of confusion, a sense of maybe frustration in Ethan at this point. God’s promise was very specific and very sure. It was grand in scope. God could hardly have made words more plain to say that David’s son will rule on the throne forever. And so we can just scarcely imagine the trauma of the faithful when Nebuchadnezzar and his armies came into Babylon, or came into Jerusalem, and sacked the city and carried away all their prominent people into exile. In fact, not only prominent people broadly, but even their king Jehoiachin is carried off. This was the final blow. Jerusalem is sacked and the Davidic line is cut down. Here we’ve held God’s promise dear in our heart. God has promised David’s son will rule. And now the Davidic line is cut off. God has intervened for us so much through history, ever since Abraham, ever since the Exodus, Moses, ever since Joshua, through David. God has intervened in marvelous ways, keeping his promise. And now it seems that that promise is impossible. Jerusalem is sacked; our king is gone. Whatever happened to God’s steadfast love and faithfulness?
And so in verses 38 and following, we have Ethan’s lament, and you can just feel the pathos of it. Verse 38: “But now”—and here he turns the corner. He’s been praising God for his promise to David that is so sure and steadfast—”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 in the dust. You have breached all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass 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 also turned back the edge of his sword, and you have 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.” The kingly line is over. It’s done. And so, verse 49: “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?”
Well, you can see Ethan’s problem. Ethan’s faith, his understanding of God’s promise, which was made very clear, doesn’t seem to line up with reality. There’s faith and devotion on the one hand, and now here’s real life, and the two just don’t match. The big house is gone. Seems to be over for good. We thought that God had made a promise that he could never go back on. But now this.
But there’s one consideration that remains. It seems to be what Ethan is hanging on to. It may seem that God’s promise has fallen, that God has reneged. “It’s over. Because of your disobedience, I’m not gonna keep it after all.” It may seem like that. But that’s not what God has said. And that’s what Ethan is hanging on to. Circumstances may seem to say that God has reneged on his promise, but God hasn’t said that. What God has said is that David will rule. His son will reign on his throne forever. What God has said is that He is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, and his word can always be banked on. That’s what God has said.
And in fact, God has gone to great lengths to emphasize just that promise. And we find it even at the time of the exile, when it’s even before the time of the exile, announcing the exile ahead of time, and then during the exile, God announcing again and again, “This promise is sure. David’s house will be restored. A shoot will grow out of the stump of Jesse. I will rebuild the booth of David that is fallen.” Over and again we find the prophets reassuring. God’s promise stands. God’s promise stands. Even though it seems no way. King’s gone. Kingly line’s cut off. How can he keep his promise? But if we look simply to what God has said, the promise stands. Impossible as it may seem, David’s son will reign. And that’s the ground of Ethan’s hope.
Petition and Plea
And so we have his petition and his plea in verses 50 and 51. Verse 50: “Remember.” That’s a rhetorical device you find sometimes in the Psalms. Don’t forget. Don’t forget your promise. He’s calling God, calling on God to act in accordance with the promise that he has made. So he says, verse 50: “Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations.” Seems that your promise has fallen. Everything that has happened to us now seems to belie your promise. Remember your promise.
And so with that word, “remember,” and with his plea, we see that Ethan’s faith had not been lost. He had not given up. He’s confused. He might be frustrated. But Ethan has not concluded that God’s promise has failed. Despite the circumstances, he still looks to God to do what he said he would do. This is certainly one of the lessons, one of the big lessons we find over and again throughout the Psalter: We don’t judge God by the circumstances. We evaluate our circumstances in the light of what God has said.
And so he concludes with his doxology in verse 52, reaffirming his faith: “Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.” As dark as things were, he commits himself to God’s praise. And that’s the mark of the faithful. Whatever the circumstances, they persevere in hope, a hope that’s grounded in what God has said. So now, despite the way things look, and it seems like the promise has fallen, Ethan says, “Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen.”
Our psalm ends here, verse 52, with a note of hope—hopeful praise, but still hope. So now we have to ask, would Ethan’s faith prove to be well grounded? It seems that God’s promise has failed. Ethan is hanging on, still trusting, still asking God to remember. Would his faith prove to be well grounded? Well, first of all, I think we should learn again something from the faith of the editors of the Psalter who arranged these Psalms in the order that they are, here now at the end of Book 3 of the Psalter.
You might remember way back at the beginning of the Psalms, we have Psalm 1 and 2 put right up front. There we have Psalm 1: it’s the righteous who will be blessed, and those who turn from God and oppose his king, they’ll be destroyed. The same psalm, Psalm 2, that tells us that God has set his king on Zion, his holy hill, also tells us that in the meantime, the nations are in a rage and rebellion against God and against his anointed. And then throughout the Psalter, we’re reminded again and again that God’s kingdom will prosper. Despite the opposition, God’s kingdom will prosper. And despite whatever setbacks may seem to be, God’s kingdom will prosper and his king will rule.
And then we come to Book 3 of the Psalter, which is marked by lament throughout. You might remember the first psalm in this third book of the Psalter; that was Asaph’s psalm, where he complains that things seem to be so mismanaged. If God is King and he rules in righteousness, why are things so bad and why do the wicked prosper? The whole book is marked chiefly by lament, climaxing here in Psalm 89, where God’s promise seems to have fallen altogether. But he ends with doxology: “Blessed be the Lord forever.”
And then we turn the page. And next—here we’re getting ahead of ourselves—the first psalm in Book 4 of the Psalter, Psalm 90. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Psalm of Moses, with his hint of the deliverer now speaking for Israel. “You’ve been our dwelling place, our refuge forever.” The implication, obviously: you will be forever. And then he ends up in the psalm, “Establish the works of our hands; don’t let all this be for nothing.” And then we have Psalm 91, a Messianic psalm where it’s promised that the king himself will not only succeed, but he’ll be safe; he will be unscathed in his rule. And then Psalm 92, which again promises the success of the Messianic King. And then we have Psalms 93 and following, which are the “Yahweh is King” psalms. “The Lord is King. The Lord is King.” You’ll see that repeated over and over in those psalms. “The Lord is King. The Lord is King. The Lord is King.” It may seem like God’s promise to David has fallen, but the Lord is King and he rules, and he will come and he will judge—rejoice all the earth. He will fulfill his promise. And at the climax of all of that, we have Psalm 100, which invites all the nations of the earth to come and worship in Jerusalem to worship Israel’s God.
His hope is not gone. And as the editors put all of this together, they have their expression of faith just in the ordering of the Psalms where they put them. God’s promise stands. His steadfast love remains sure. He is still a God to be trusted. Now living on that side of history, the editors of the Psalms, putting them all together along with Ethan, they held in their heart a hope: God’s promise to David will be fulfilled. David’s greater son will rule over the nations. The blessing of Abraham, the promise to Abraham to bring blessing to all of the families of the earth, will be fulfilled. And it will be fulfilled through David’s son.
Well, on that side of history, they held that hope in their heart. On this side of history, we’re able to see that that promise was, in fact, kept. And that is the significance of the otherwise boring opening lines of the New Testament. Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1: “The book of the generation of Jesus the Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham.” And then you remember the announcement to Mary in Luke chapter 1: “You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and you will call his name Jesus. And he shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God will give unto him the throne of his father David, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
And so then we read on in the Gospels and we see the life and the ministry of Jesus, and we see the Messianic signs that he performed in his miracles, and we see the great claims that he made and the promises that he made and the preaching that he gave. And we see the signs that he gave, all showing that he is the Messianic King that has been hoped for, and many believed on him.
Then once again, it seemed that God’s promise had failed. The King came. The people wouldn’t have him. He came unto his own; his own wouldn’t receive him. He was despised and rejected. He was put on a cross, executed like a criminal. The faith of his people was shattered. We read of it in Luke chapter 24. Remember the road to Emmaus? Jesus, resurrected now from the dead, meets up with the disciples along the road, and they’re just distraught. And he goes, “What’s bothering you? What’s going on?” “Well, haven’t you heard? Did you just stop in from nowhere? What’s been going on in Jerusalem?” “What’s been going on? Tell me.” “Jesus of Nazareth, a man mighty in word and deed. We had thought”—you notice the past tense—”we had thought that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”
And what they couldn’t see was that all of this was prophesied ahead of time too. And what they had failed to understand as of yet was that in order to establish his kingdom, God must first deal with the sin of his people. So he sends his King, he sends his servant to establish the kingdom. And the first thing he does now is offering himself in place of his people and standing in for them, takes their sin to himself, brings it to himself and bears the judgment of God in their place so that their sin is removed and they may be brought into fellowship with God. And in consequence of his successful work, and in vindication of it, and an announcement to the world that his work is in fact successful and accepted by God, God raised him from the dead. And then God exalted him to his right hand, to his own throne where he shares in the rule today. And from the throne he has dispensed his Spirit. One by one, he’s bringing men and women into fellowship with Christ to share in his reign and to be part of his kingdom.
Today, we wait for the final kingdom, the final phase of it, the glorious fullness of his kingdom in the return of Christ. And while we wait for the consummation of the kingdom of God, what we see is the kingdom of God under assault. It’s Psalm 2 all over again: the nations raging, the wicked rebelling against God. The kingdom of God today doesn’t lie in ruins like it did in Ethan’s day, when he saw it all crumbling and it seems gone forever. But it doesn’t always seem to be prospering either. We see it prospering on the one hand and growing, but we also see this rebellion and increasing rebellion against the King. And it’s very easy, very, very easy for us to give such attention to the evil of our day that God’s promise seems incidental. We lose perspective and we become so caught up with the fierceness of the rebellion that it doesn’t seem like God has set his King on Zion, his holy hill.
But like Ethan, we don’t forget either God’s promise or the greatness of the God who made it. And when we sing of God’s greatness and his transcendence—like Ethan does, we sing of God’s transcendence and his rulership and his ownership of all, and we sing of God’s steadfast love and his faithfulness—a hope is born in our hearts and it’s nourished and strengthened that God’s promise will be kept. And it’s not in unbelief that we pray with Ethan in verse 46: “How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?” That’s a line we can sing. “You’ve established your kingdom. You rule over all of it. You’ve established your King on Zion. You’ve told us that he reigns over all to bring about your kingdom. And yet it seems the whole world is in rebellion. And it seems that that rebellion is getting more fierce all the time.” They won’t recognize God, they certainly don’t want his law, and more and more it seems that his rulership is being contested by the entire world. It’s Psalm 2, the nations raging, and it’s the people getting caught up in the rebellion of the nations. It’s what Jesus said in John 15: “They hate you because they hate me.” The people of God are caught up in the rebellion against him.
In this prayer, verse 46, “How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?”—it finds an echo in the New Testament. You remember where? Revelation chapter 6. Revelation makes a lot of the martyrs for Jesus. They’ve given their life for Jesus. And here in Revelation chapter 6, we have the martyrs for Jesus in heaven, the saints in heaven at this present time, crying from under the altar to God: “Lord, how long before you avenge our blood? Will you keep your promise or not?” It’s not in unbelief, but with a longing heart that we pray verses 49 and 50. “How long, O Lord?” Verse 46, verse 49: “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of the many nations.”
Well, like I say, we’re not looking at the kingdom of God in its crumbling form like Ethan had seen it, but we see massive revolt against it. And in fact, we will read—we read in Daniel 7, we read in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, we read in the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2, we read it from the Apostle John in the book of Revelation—there’s going to be even further outbreak of evil at the end. We don’t get tired. Well, we may get tired, but we don’t lose hope. God has made a promise to David. The Lord Jesus will return and he will bring his kingdom to its glorious fullness. We find that in the Psalms. We find it in the prophets over and again. There’ll be a great reversal. The Lord Jesus will come. The Davidic King will establish his rule and the whole world will know it. And in light of that, we sing with verse 52 with Ethan: “Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.” God’s promise may seem to have failed. God’s word will be kept, he has assured us. And just as Ethan’s faith was well grounded, we will find so is ours as well. Amen.