Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 44 | Date: June 9, 2024 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Reminiscences Of Israel’s Past Blessing

Open your Bibles with me, if you will, please, to Psalm 44. Continue our series of expositions through many of the Psalms, not all of them. Today we take up Psalm 44. I’ll begin with verse 1. Notice the superscript tells us this is a maskil of the sons of Korah. We don’t know exactly what a maskil is. It may be a musical note. It’s more likely that I think the type of psalm that it is, but in any case, this is by the sons of Korah. I should note here, because we’ll mention it a little bit later on, that we saw early in our studies that there are two parts to our superscripts, and that is authorship and performance. Authorship, who wrote the psalm. Performance, that is to the choir master or to the director of music, depending which translation you have. And sometimes a melody, a tune name or something like that, like “To the Lilies” or “With the Flutes.” Performance and authorship.

And you’ll notice in that, just to help you remember what we’ve seen, performance always comes first in the superscript. And that, you may remember, is because it’s actually the postscript to the previous psalm. Now, that sometimes makes no difference because you’ll have it in both, but I’ll often point out a postscript to the psalm, and that will come into play again in this psalm as well. That understanding is due largely to the work of Dr. Bruce Waltke, and the work that he has done on that I think will end up showing itself in future Bible publications as well, that originally these performance parts—not the authorship, the performance part of our superscript—is the postscript to the previous psalm.

All right, so this is a psalm of the sons of Korah. Verse 1: “O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old. You with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted. You afflicted the peoples, but them you set free. For not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm and the light of your face, for you delighted in them. You are my king, O God. Ordain salvation for Jacob. Through you we push down our foes. Through your name we tread down those who rise up against us. For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me. But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah.”

“But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies. You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoiled. You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us among the nations. You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them. You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us. You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples. All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger. All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way, yet you have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death. If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign God, would not God discover this? He knows the secrets of the heart. Yet for your sake we are killed all day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Awake. Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself. Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust. Our belly clings to the ground. Rise up. Come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.”

And then the postscript, he hands this over to the director of music to be sung. Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we come to another psalm of lament where the inspired psalmist complains, laments the sad circumstances that have befallen him, and we learn again so much from it. We learn that even in these times we must praise, that our God is always worthy of our praise and worship. We learn to trust. We learn to look to you. We pray that you will direct our minds and hearts in these ways this morning from your Word, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

In the early 17th century, Protestants, or evangelicals as they were called there at the time in Bohemia, entered the time of what’s called the Great Persecution. In 1575, the Bohemian Christians had produced a confession of faith, a strong Protestant confession of faith. And over the following decades, the Roman Catholic opposition to them grew and grew very intense. Ferdinand of Austria was advised by his counselors to exterminate all the heresy in the nation, and increasingly evangelical Christians were persecuted. They were denied rights. They had land holdings stripped away from them. They were imprisoned, and some were put to death. And in fact, in late June 1621, over the course of two days, 47 men, believers, were executed. As the first of these were being led from the prison to their execution, their fellow prisoners, their fellow evangelicals around them even, sang the words of Psalm 44. You’ll see that very poignantly in verse 22: “Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

So Psalm 44 is a psalm for martyrs. It’s a psalm, a prayer for martyrs to sing. A prayer for martyrs, a psalm for martyrs to pray. It’s a lament psalm. But it’s also something of a protest. You have that tone in some of the Psalms, not that they’re saying that God has done something wrong, they’re not falsely charging God, but they’re trying to figure out this problem that it is for God and for His sake and through their faithfulness that somehow, suddenly, they find themselves being persecuted and in horrible circumstances.

The superscript tells us that it’s a psalm written by the sons of Korah. The sons of Korah are a priestly family. You might remember they were appointed by David to serve in temple worship. They were a group of men, priests, who were extremely loyal to David. They guarded the temple. We find that in 1 Chronicles 26. We made mention of them, you might remember, way back at the beginning of our studies in the Psalms when Psalm worship was introduced to Israel’s worship. They led in the music that accompanied the Mosaic rituals in Old Testament worship. And there was also a kind of prophetic office, the Sons of Korah, prophetic in the sense that they gave God’s Word to the people, and so Psalm 44 is God’s Word given to the people, and just like all of the Psalms, then it is God’s Word given to the people to sing back to God. It is God’s Word to us, and it is then His Word for us to sing back to Him. That’s the nature of the Psalter.

Now the occasion that lies behind Psalm 44 was evidently an awful one of some kind. We don’t know the specifics, but there was some otherwise unknown national defeat. The armies had gone out to battle, and they had been routed. There was a crushing defeat of Israel’s armies. We don’t know anything about the occasion, exactly when this was, but the psalm itself tells us about that. We have another example of a psalm like this with Psalm 60. Again, it’s lamenting an otherwise unknown defeat during David’s reign. But this defeat was evidently a complete rout. It was a national humiliation. It was doubtless leaving them with a frightening kind of outlook. And so we have in Psalm 44 community lament.

The author here, from the Sons of Korah, places the lament on the lips of the king and his army. This may well have been sung antiphonally, so there’s perhaps a soloist singing and then echoed by a choir back and forth. You see some verses in particular that work that way, this alternating between “my” and “our” where there’s a singular person singing or speaking, presumably the king, and then the choir or perhaps the congregation echoing back with their words as well. Verse 4, “You are my king, O God.” So here’s probably the king speaking. “You are my king, O God. Ordain salvation for Jacob.” Verse 5, “Through you we push down our foes. Through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.” And then again the king, verse 6, “For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.” And then again it’s back to the plural in verse 7. There may have been some alternating antiphonal singing back and forth as this song was performed.

Now to appreciate the lament, and I’ve already alluded to this, we have to note that the suffering in view in Psalm 44 is not just suffering of any kind. It’s a particular kind of suffering. And that is probably the worst kind of suffering. It’s undeserved suffering that he laments. Suffering that came in the pursuit of faithfulness. And you might remember, by contrast, the penitential Psalms that we find in the Psalter, like Psalm 51, where David is lamenting, or in some other Psalms, like Psalm 6, where he’s lamenting the evils that have come upon him and God’s chastening hand. We’ve seen that in other Psalms; there was due to David’s own sin. In his penitential psalms, he’s lamenting, but he’s not saying that God has—he’s not questioning the rightness or the wrongness of it. He sees that it’s deserved. It’s due to his sin and his unfaithfulness.

In this psalm, it is entirely different. We have the people of God, the armies of Israel, who have been faithful to God, suffering a crushing defeat of some kind. And their suffering seems to be completely undeserved. The king has been faithful, the people have been faithful to the Lord. They’ve not, in the words of the psalm, lifted up their hands to false gods. They’ve been faithful to him, and yet, because they are righteous and in the pursuit of their faithfulness to God, they suffer. Verse 22 again: “For your sake we are killed all the day long.” This is not because of what we have done, but for your sake we have been killed all the day long. Their suffering is not for wrongdoing. Their suffering was in the pursuit of faithfulness. And so there’s this tone then of puzzlement and even a hint of protest. Why is this happening?

So those 17th-century Bohemian martyrs chose and sang Psalm 44 with that understanding, and that is the understanding that the Apostle Paul gives it in Romans chapter 8 verse 36 when he cites verse 22 of Psalm 44. But Psalm 44 then is given to provide some truths to live by when we suffer unjustly—truths about trusting God, and we’ll see those as we go along. The psalm has the usual components of a lament. Verse 1, we have the direct address. That’s always the clue that we’re entering a lament psalm: “O God,” the direct address. But then verses 1 to 8, we have his expressions of confidence, or trust, and praise. That’s a regular component of the lament psalms. Verses 9 to 16, then we have the lament itself, a complaint that is registered to God. Then verses 17 to 22, it continues that lament, but it’s more in the form of a protest, as we’ll see. And then finally, and this is always an important part of the lament psalms, verses 23 to 26, he makes his petition to God, asking for Him to intervene.

The psalm, I think, is structured around time considerations. Verses 1 to 8, we have reminiscences of Israel’s past blessings. And that’s contrasted then, beginning in verse 9 through verse 22, with laments of Israel’s present afflictions. So verses 1 to 8, God has blessed us in the past. Verses 9 through 22, God is not blessing us in the present. He seems to have abandoned us. And then verses 23 to 26, we have his petition, a plea for Israel’s deliverance.

Alright then. Verses 1 to 8, reminiscences of Israel’s past blessing. Here in these verses, the psalmist looks back across Israel’s history, and he recalls God’s powerful help on the part of Israel from the beginning. And specifically, he’s looking to the days of the Exodus, the days of Joshua. Verses 1 and 2: “O God, we have heard with our ears. Our fathers have told us what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old. You with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted. You afflicted the peoples, but them you set free.”

So he’s speaking of the time of Joshua’s rout of the Canaanites when God brought Israel into the land. You’ll remember God said this would be the case. He promised that to Abraham 400 years earlier. He had said to Abraham that the Canaanites’ iniquity is not yet full, but it will become full, and at that time I’ll send in your people. And Joshua then comes at that time, God sends him in, and they’re taking the land for themselves that God had promised for them. And in verse 3 we find, in fact, it was not Joshua’s sword that won the victories. Whatever a great warrior he might have been, it was not Joshua’s sword that won those victories. Verse 3: “Not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm and the light of your face, for you delighted in them.”

So Joshua did in fact carry a sword, but that sword didn’t account for the victories that were won under Joshua’s leadership. It was not Joshua’s sword that dried up the Jordan River when they walked into the land. It was not Joshua’s sword that accounts for the plague of hornets that was sent against the enemy. It was not Joshua’s sword that accounted for the falling of the walls of Jericho and so on. Joshua’s sword didn’t do any of those things. The exploits of Joshua were due to the intervention of God and his powerful working on Israel’s behalf. He had made a promise to Abraham and now the time had come and he delivered on that promise and mighty things were done for them. The sun stands still and things like that to bring them into their land safely.

And now in his own time, the psalmist—so here we are 400 years later—the psalmist is recalling those things. He says, “We’ve heard of these things. Our fathers have told us.” So it’s like faithful fathers today explaining the works of Christ for his children. Looking back to what the greater Joshua has done in bringing our deliverance and faithful fathers teaching this to their children. The psalmist is saying, “We’ve heard this from our dads. They’ve told us these great exploits that you have done.” And so he’s recalling God’s work on behalf of Israel in the past.

Now I think I should pause here for just a second to recall something about what we call the historical Psalms. There are a number of Psalms in the Psalter that are historically oriented. They seem to narrate God’s works in the past, sometimes at great length. Sometimes the Psalms, one of the Psalms in its entirety, may be given to recounting, just recounting the works of God in the past with regard to Israel. So, for example, Psalm 105 recounts God’s works during the time of the patriarchs. Psalm 106 recalls God’s works during the time of the Exodus. Psalm 136, which is familiar probably to most of you, recounts God’s works in a panoramic view from creation onwards. And they’re recalling what God has done in the past. He did this, He did this, He defeated this enemy, He defeated that enemy, and so on.

Psalm 44, in these opening verses, not the entire psalm, but in these opening verses, this is what the psalmist is doing. He’s recalling God’s work for Israel in the past. Verses 1 to 3 here recount passages like Exodus chapter 15, the whole book of Joshua, Deuteronomy 32, looking back to the time of Joshua and the exploits that God accomplished through him in those days. Now that’s an important thing to recognize in these Psalms because for Israel, like us, Israel’s faith was historically grounded. That is, their faith was not just grounded in some ideas or theories or even abstract doctrines. Their faith was grounded in divine interventions in history. God had invaded history, as it were. He spoke to Abraham. He made a promise. He brought Israel out of Egypt and out of their slavery. He brought Israel into their own land. He defeated their enemies. God, time and again, has, in miraculous, unmistakable ways, worked on behalf of his people, and reciting that history was not just praise, although it was that, but reciting that history of what God has done for his people in the past was a faith-stimulating encouragement for the people. Look at what God has done. God is not remotely absent from his people. He’s made Israel his own people. He’s stepped in on their behalf a time and time again.

And more to the point, all of that stands as a pledge and a witness to God’s continued faithfulness to his people. He has intervened for us in the past. He’s moved into history and in stupendous ways delivered his people. And that stands as a pledge and a witness of his faithfulness to us in the future as well. And that’s the purpose of these historical Psalms. When I read these historical Psalms, I often think of those old commercials—I don’t know if they play them anymore, I don’t watch television anymore, and I hardly ever listen to the radio, but I’m sure many of you have heard them—commercials for the investments of various kinds, mutual funds or whatever, and it tells how they performed and they’ve done great and they’ve helped their customers in these kinds of ways, and it gets to the end in a really fast voice at the end: “Past performance no indication of future results.” It’s hard to say it that fast.

That’s exactly what these Psalms are not. These psalms are a declaration of future results. When you look back to God’s performance in the past, they themselves are understood as a pledge and a witness of what God will do for his people in an ongoing way. And so the psalmist is rehearsing Israel’s history to strengthen himself and as reminders of what God has committed himself to his people. And that’s the thinking then that underlies verses 1 to 8. God is trustworthy. He’s demonstrated that over and again throughout our history. And the psalmist is rehearsing all of that in his mind. God has made us his people. God has made promises. God has intervened. And through all of that, he’s finding encouragement. That even though the circumstances now don’t look so good, I need to look back and be reminded of what God has done.

In fact, all of this in verses 4 through 8, the king evidently recalls in a personal way: “You are my king, O God. Ordain salvation for Jacob.” That’s the petition. We’ll see more of that at the end of the psalm, but that’s the petition in brief. Ordain or command salvation for Jacob. Verse 5: “Through you we push down our foes, through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.” That is, we’ve seen you work on our behalf as well. We’ve seen that God has sided with us and made us his and he has routed our enemies before us. Verse 6: “For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me. But you have saved us from our foes, and have put to shame those who hate us.” That is, you have helped us in the past. You’ve continued to help us in the past. I’ve seen it myself many times over.

And so he concludes his first stanza of the psalm with this firm expression of faith, past and future. Verse 8: “In God we have boasted continually and we will give thanks to your name forever.” God has helped our people for all the history of our people. God has helped us in our own experience. We’ve seen it. And so we have praised him and we will continue to praise him. Whatever else we see through this psalm, his faith in God is not shaken. See that he’s puzzled, but his faith in God is not shaken.

Laments Of Israel’s Present Afflictions

And the problem is, the problem is, although all of this about the past history and God’s intervention and God’s commitments to his people—while all of that is true, present circumstances seem to belie it. And that’s the problem he faces. We have in verse 9 all the way through verse 22 a dramatic shift in tone from verses 1 to 8. And here he laments Israel’s present suffering and adversity. And this is their defeat in battle.

Verses 9 and 10, he describes this situation in very literal terms. Verse 9: “You have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies. You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoiled.” It’s been a total rout. Verses 11 and 12, he characterizes the problem more metaphorically. Verse 11: “You have made us like sheep for slaughter, and have scattered us among the nations. You’ve sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.” So he’s picturing here the dead soldiers lying on the battlefield as defenseless sheep being slaughtered, and those who survived the battle are compared here to men and women who have been sent out into exile. God, he says, has sold them for a trifle, for a mere pittance. It costs the enemy virtually nothing. And it cost us all of our loss of lives and seems to have cost us everything. We lost our army. They lost nothing. We’ve been killed off. And they are the ones who killed us. They came out flourishing from this battle, and we were completely plundered.

Verses 13 through 16 then describe the resulting shame that came upon the king and the entire nation. “You’ve made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us. You’ve made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the people. All day long my disgrace is before me and shame has covered my face at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.” So here he’s at least imaging or imagining the enemy nations around them: “Yeah, that Israel, they are so tough. They’ve won so much and they think they’re king of the hill. Look at them now.” And he says, “All day long my disgrace is before me.”

Now we take another turn of tone as well when we come to verse 17. Here we continue the lament, but here it’s something of a protest that this suffering that has come to them, this defeat, was undeserved. Verse 17: “All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way. Yet you have broken us in the place of jackals, and covered us with the shadow of death. If we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands to a foreign god, would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

All of that is to say, “God, we have been faithful and you know it. We’ve kept covenant. We’ve lived in obedience to your law. We’ve not turned to false gods. We’ve not turned against you.” Verses 20 and 21: “If we had been unfaithful, you would know it.” But verse 17: “We have not been false to your covenant.” Health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, this is not. The implication is, “God, you’re not holding up your end of the relationship.”

And in fact, did you notice as we read through those verses how the psalmist looks behind the battle and the defeat to ultimate causes? Notice he attributes their defeat to God. And you’ll see it repeated time and again with simply a pronoun, “you.” Notice verse 9: “You have rejected and disgraced us.” Verse 10: “You have made us turn back from the foe.” Verse 11: “You have made us like sheep for a slaughter.” Verse 12: “You have sold your people for a trifle.” Verse 13: “You have made us the taunt of our neighbors.” Verse 14: “You have made us a byword among the nations.” Verse 19: “You have broken us in the place of jackals”—so they’re out on the battlefield—”and covered us with the shadow of death.”

So just as in victory God was the ultimate cause—it wasn’t Joshua’s sword who did it—so also in their defeat God was at work working out his own will and purpose. So his complaint is just that, that God has not merely allowed these other nations to defeat Israel, but that God Himself has brought this about. It seems, at least, that God has abandoned His people. Again, as I mentioned earlier, the psalmist here has not lost faith. In fact, his very lament assumes that the covenant relationship continues. Verse 26, we’ll see that: “Rise up, come to our help, redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.” That’s covenantal overtones. He’s assuming the relationship continues, so this is not so much a deficient faith, but it is the struggle of a faith, well, to use the old phrase, it’s the struggle of a faith seeking understanding.

Worth noting, that the first three stanzas of the psalm end—verse 8, verse 15, verse 22—the first three stanzas of the psalm end with the same expression. In the Hebrew it’s the very same expression, in the English it’s changed just a little bit. The end of verse 8: “In God we have boasted continually,” or all the day long. Verse 15: “All day long my disgrace is before me.” Verse 22: “Yet for your sake we are killed all day long.” So he’s in a conundrum. It’s a seeming paradox that Israel praises God all day long, and despite the fact that they praise God all day long, now they suffer all day long. And that doesn’t seem to add up.

Now before we finish the psalm, we should just go ahead and stop and make some observations here. Some truths already that arise from all of this that ought to encourage or strengthen our faith. The most obvious one, we’ve seen this all over the psalm already, and that is that God is sovereign. And what that means is that God does what he wants to do. What that means is God is not bound to any considerations outside of himself. He’s bound to himself. He’s bound to his truthfulness. That’s God. He’s bound to his word. But God is not bound to any considerations outside of himself. He’s never coerced. He’s never pressured. God is sovereign. He’s king. The psalmist here is correct when he assumes that behind all of the events, both their victories and their defeats, God is working out his will. He’s not bound to any other considerations but himself. He’ll always keep his word. He’s bound to do that because he’s a God of truth. He will always be faithful. He’ll always be trustworthy. But the way he goes about accomplishing his will is not up for us to determine. It is for him.

And this is very important. God has never promised that we would not suffer. And God has never promised that he would, when you suffer, explain his reasons why. He’s not obligated to us to do that. It’s enough for us to know that in all events, God is working all things according to the counsel of his own will. And it’s enough for us to know that that will is good and that will is wise. Verse 24: “Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?” The short answer is, it’s not for you to know. These are hidden, the counsels of God, and you are not God. It’s enough to know that God has his reasons and that his reasons are good and wise. And so we must know that in all events God rules, directing all things to his own ends. He’s a sovereign God. That has entailments.

More observations from all of this. Because God is sovereign, his timing is not tied to your clock or to mine or to your calendar or mine. Verse 23, the psalmist complains that God seems to be sleeping. Why is it taking so long? Why haven’t you helped yet? These lament psalms, we’ve seen this many times through our studies, these lament psalms teach us that it’s not wrong for us to lament before God. But we must never presume to know better. We must recognize that because God is not tied to our calendar, we must not assume that because he hasn’t done it according to our calendar, that somehow he’s wronged us. We don’t judge God by our calendars.

Another observation: God does not dole out persecution and injustice and suffering on a tit-for-tat basis. Aren’t you glad he doesn’t? What a mess we’d be in if he did. Job’s suffering was not because of his sin. Job’s suffering was because of his faithfulness. Job had no clue of this whole episode going on around him. He was completely unaware of it, completely unaware of the fact that he was suffering for God’s honor. That he was suffering not because of his sin, but he was suffering precisely because of his faithfulness.

The direction that our culture is going, at the pace that it’s going, doesn’t take a prophet to say that some difficult times, if God doesn’t intervene, some difficult times are ahead for Christians. And we’ll see some of the suffering the psalmist is lamenting here. The last few hundred years we’ve lived in some kind of a historical bubble in the Christianized West where we’ve had it really good. God doesn’t owe that to anybody for any period of time. And one of the things we learn here is that persecution and suffering may be simply the battle scar of righteousness. That’s what it was for Job. That’s what it’s been for God’s people throughout the centuries. That’s what it was for those Bohemian Christians in the 17th century. Derek Kidner in his commentary on the Psalms remarks that the price of loyalty—that is the price of loyalty to God—suffering is the price of loyalty to God in a world that is at war with God.

A Plea For Israel’s Deliverance

Now there’s one more observation from all of this that I want to make, but I’ll deal with that in due course. We’ll see that a little later on. Again, let’s go back now to verses 23 to 26. And here the psalmist gives his petition for Israel’s deliverance. Pleads for God. Verse 23: “Awake. Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself. Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust. Our belly clings to the ground. Rise up. Come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.”

It seems to the psalmist that God has fallen asleep. Of course, he knows better than that, but it seems as though God has fallen asleep. And so he petitions, verse 23: “Awake. Why are you sleeping? Rouse yourself. Do not reject us forever.” Then he pleads, verse 26: “Rise up, come to our help, redeem us.” But you’ll notice then, in all of that, that when the psalm ends, the situation is unchanged. Nothing’s different. Verse 25, their soul is bowed down to the dust, their belly clings to the ground, they’ve been utterly humiliated. Verse 26, he’s still pleading, trusting for divine intervention: “Rise up, come to our help.”

And notice again, verse 26, the basis of his plea. “Redeem us.” Why? “For the sake of your steadfast love. Redeem us. Help us. Not because of anything about us. Redeem us. Help us. Because you’ve promised. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.” That expression, “steadfast love,” we keep coming across in the Psalms. It speaks of God’s covenanted love. It carries the ideas of his affection for his people, but also his faithfulness, his loyalty to his people. Often it’s coupled with that word “faithfulness”—his steadfast love and faithfulness. And as I’ve said before, that expression is just almost redundant, because steadfast love entails the idea of faithfulness. But this is what God has promised to his people: to be their God forever, and because of his steadfast love and faithfulness, he will remain to be their God.

And this is the truth that underscored and sustained the psalmist’s faith. God has pledged his love and his faithfulness to his people. Therefore, this defeat will not be the last word. So against the circumstances and seemingly against the evidence, the psalmist affirms his trust. God has his reasons. God has his timing. He will do all that he has said he would do. I’ve said this many times through the studies in the Lament Psalms. These Lament Psalms call us to a robust kind of faith. Not just a Sunday morning kind of faith. These Psalms call us to a robust, rugged kind of faith that trusts God even against the circumstances.

One preacher I think very effectively has likened this to a child, a small child, who’s at the doctor’s office with his mother. A problem has been diagnosed and the doctor’s determined there must be an injection; it’s going to be painful. The doctor’s determined that, the mother agrees, the kid doesn’t want it—it’s a small child, he doesn’t understand, “Why do I have to have this?” But he submits to it, and a painful injection is given. The child doesn’t understand. He presses himself against his mother. He clings to her with a loving kind of trust. That’s where the psalmist has been pushed. He just clings to the Lord. He says, “Lord, I don’t understand. I don’t understand. But I trust you.” Many of us have been there—pushed into a situation week after week, month after month, year after year, intense suffering. And you’re left there: “Lord, I don’t understand, but I trust you.”

And so, verse 26, emboldened with the assurance of God’s steadfast love, he concludes with a petition: “Rise up, come to our help, redeem us.” The psalm ends here. Verse 25, soul is bowed down to the dust. Verse 26, still pleading with God for help, trusting that because of God’s steadfast love, help and vindication will come. Now there is one more final expression of the psalmist’s continued faith, and that’s in the postscript. When he finishes the psalm, he hands it over to the choirmaster, the director of music. In fact, he gives it a specific tune: “According to the Lilies.” He wants the entire congregation to sing and to hear this plea, and we are left to infer that God in his time did awake and did come to their help and did redeem his people. In fact, presumably this psalm made its way into the canon precisely because God did hear him and answered him.

Today we don’t sing the Psalms as much as we ought, but we sing or at least quote Psalm 44 along with the Apostle Paul. Suffering, trusting in eager anticipation of God’s final vindication. That’s the context in which Paul picks this up, the Apostle in Romans chapter 8. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword, as it is written”—and here’s Psalm 44 verse 22—”for your sake we are being killed all day long. We’re regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. So will any of this separate us from the love of Christ? No,” he says, “in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I said one more observation from the psalm. What we have here in Psalm 44 is a saint who, though righteous, was defeated, and yet, through it all, he remained trusting. A saint who, though righteous, was defeated, and through it all, remained trusting. Now, this is a royal psalm. This is a psalm about the king, about the king and his army who had gone down in defeat. And we’ve seen time and again how in these psalms the king foreshadows the greater king, and this psalm foreshadows a greater king who also went down in defeat. The Lord Jesus was abandoned, rejected, and entirely, utterly humiliated. And he went to his death, trusting his Father for vindication. Of course, that was Friday. His vindication came on Sunday.

Today, we read this and we just can’t help but recall the victory and the vindication that was secured in his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his present kingly reign, his future return. And we must never ever lose sight of the fact that the vindication and the victory that Jesus secured in his death, resurrection, ascension, and in his coming return—it all is a victory and a vindication in which we will follow. Oh, in principle, it’s already true. We’ve been raised with Christ. We’ve been seated with him in the heavenlies. On a spiritual level, we feel it is an experience for us today, but it’s not in full yet. One day he’ll come and we will be raised with him. And in the meantime, if he calls us to go the way of the cross also, it won’t shake us. It won’t shake us because we remain confident that for the sake of His steadfast love, He will do all He has promised. In the end, we will share in the glory of our Redeemer King forever. Amen.