SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/19/2012 8:48:07 AM
My Worship Time Focus: More on God’s Faithfulness
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Psalm 89:39-52
Message of the verses: In today’s SD we will continue looking at
Psalm 89, remembering that we are looking at this psalm by looking at it
through the prism of God’s faithfulness.
God Is Faithful in
His Chastening (vv. 39-45): “39 You
have spurned the covenant of Your servant; You have profaned his crown in the
dust. 40 You have broken down all his walls; You have brought his strongholds
to ruin. 41 All who pass along the way plunder him; He has become a reproach to
his neighbors. 42 You have exalted the right hand of his adversaries; You have
made all his enemies rejoice. 43 You also turn back the edge of his sword And
have not made him stand in battle. 44 You have made his splendor to cease And
cast his throne to the ground. 45 You have shortened the days of his youth; You
have covered him with shame. Selah. “
I want to
look at these verses in whole by the covenants that the Lord had made with
Israel. We know that the first covenant
that the Lord made with Israel was through Abraham and that can be found in two
places, Genesis 12:1-3 and also in Genesis 15:18-21. When Israel was about to cross over the
Jordan River to take possession of the Promised Land we read in Deuteronomy 28
of another covenant that God made with Israel, and this one unlike the other
two was a conditional covenant which is at times called the Palestinian
Covenant. In that conditional covenant we
find that the Lord told the children of Israel that if they obeyed the Lord and
kept His laws that He would bless them, but if they disobeyed God’s law then
the covenant stated that the Lord would remove them from His land. Now we move to 2Samuel 7 where the Lord makes
an unconditional covenant with David stating that there would always be one of
David’s sons on the throne. Here we see
the problem that Ethan, the author of Psalm 89 saw, and that was that if Israel
was defeated then how could there be one of David’s sons on the throne? What I see here is that God did not supersede
His unconditional covenant with His conditional covenant, for it was because of
Israel’s sin in breaking the conditional covenant that they were defeated by
Babylon. The two unconditional covenants
are still intact for it is because of God’s faithfulness that He will fulfill
those covenants, for Jesus Christ is now on the throne in heaven ruling over
all the earth and will someday soon return to take up His father David’s throne
in Jerusalem and rule all the earth from there for 1000 years, and this will
fulfill both of the unconditional covenants that God made with Israel, and
David.
Let’s us
look back at verse 37 “"It shall be established forever like the moon, And
the witness in the sky is faithful." Selah.” Dr. Wiersbe writes “The ‘witness’ in verse 37
is probably the Lord Himself in heaven, but the constancy of the heavenly
bodies is also a witness to the faithfulness of the Lord’s promises (Genesis
8:20-22; Jer. 31:35-36; 33:19-26).”
Dr. Wiersbe
goes on to say “Ethan told the Lord what He had done to Judah’s anointed king,
the descendant of David. The Lord was
angry with the kings because of their sins, especially idolatry (v. 38), so He
permitted the Babylonians to come and ravage the land, destroy Jerusalem, and
burn the temple, (v. 40-41). To Ethan,
the Lord was actually aiding the enemy!
(vv. 42-43). But the glory had
once more departed from the temple (v. 44; see 1Sam. 4:21-22; Ezek. 8:1-4; 9:3;
10:4, 18; 11:22-23) because the leaders had turned their backs on the Lord and
turned to idols. It appears that verse
45 applied especially to King Jehoiachin, who was but eighteen years old when
he became king and reigned for three months and ten days (2Kings 24:8). He became a captive in Babylon for
thirty-seven years.”
God’s Faithfulness
Will Never Cease—Wait for Him (vv. 46-52):
“46 How long, O LORD? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your
wrath burn like fire? 47 Remember what my span of life is; For what vanity You
have created all the sons of men! 48 What man can live and not see death? Can
he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah. 49 Where are Your former
lovingkindnesses, O Lord, Which You swore to David in Your faithfulness?
50 Remember, O Lord, the reproach of
Your servants; How I bear in my bosom the reproach of all the many peoples, 51 With which Your enemies have reproached, O
LORD, With which they have reproached the footsteps of Your anointed. 52
Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.”
As we begin
this last section it is good to note that this is the last section in the third
book of the book of Psalms. Psalms is
made up of four books and with this last section we have covered the first
three books of Psalms with one more to cover which contains sixty Psalms in it
and has the longest chapter in the book, and in the entire Bible, Psalm 119
which has 176 verses and will take many days to discover what gems we will be
able to mine there.
I see a
flavor of Job in verses 46-48, and perhaps Ethan had read the book of Job
before writing Psalm 89. We also see in
these verses that Ethan asks a question that he probably already knew the answer
too and that question is “How Long.” The
answer to that question is found in Jeremiah 25:1-14 and 29:4-14. How long will Israel be in exile? Jeremiah writes that it will be for seventy
years.
In verse
forty-nine Ethan looks back and asks the Lord what had happened to His
lovingkindness, but the
Lord’s lovingkindness had not changed, however Judah’s love for the Lord
had waned. Dr. Wiersbe writes these
insightful words, “Like any good parent, God shows His love to His children
either by blessing their obedience
or chastening them for their disobedience, but in either situation, He
is manifesting His love.”
We see in
verses 50-51 that Ethan looks around and sees the reproach of the enemies. The nation had been taken into exile and the
beloved city of Jerusalem was devastated along with the temple of the Lord, and
worst of all the glory of the Lord had departed from the temple and would not
return until the Lord Jesus Christ would enter into the temple, but what He saw
was displeasing to Him. Many would think
that the god’s of the Babylonians were more powerful than the God of Israel,
and that is not and never will be true.
When will
looked at the last verse in Psalm 72, which was the end of book three in the
book of Psalms and found out that it was not really a part of Psalm 72 we see
that verse 52 is not really a part of Psalm 89.
Dr. Wiersbe writes as he conclude his commentary on this section “no
matter how much we suffer because of the sins of others, and no matter how
perplexed we may be at the providential workings of the Lord, we should still
be able to say by faith, ‘Praise the Lord!
Hallelujah!’ And our fellow sufferers ought to respond with, ‘Amen and
amen! So be it!’
“That’s the
way of trust—faith in the faithfulness of the Lord.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It is wonderful to remember the great
promises of the Lord, especially when trouble comes, and there are great
friends of mine who are going through some deep waters so I will pray that I
will be able to comfort them with these great promises from God’s Word.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: Trust that the Lord will give
me the courage and strength to tell others of the wonderful truth of becoming a
born-again believer in Jesus Christ for there are only two kinds of people on
this earth, those who believe and those who do not believe: “"He who believes in the Son has eternal
life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God
abides on him.’” (John 3:36)
5/19/2012 10:15:06 AM
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