Sunday, October 4, 2015

Psalm 89: Making Sense Of God's Silence

The Psalms frequently question, "How long, O Lord?" (vs. 46)  It is a plea that rises up from a discouraged and beaten-down heart, lifted up to a God that is not understood, Whose silence and inaction are inexplicable.

Psalm 89 contains several themes common to other psalms as well: there is the praise of God's faithfulness (vs. 1-2), the recitation of redemptive history through David's line (vs. 3-4), and the incomparable majesty of God's might and glory (vs. 5-18).  But the focus of this psalm is on God's eternal covenant with the kings of Judah as descendants of David - along with God's seeming rejection of that covenant revealed in the events of recent history.

Verses 19-37 emphasis the unchanging nature of God's anointing of the house of David to rule over Israel.  "My hand shall always remain with him" (vs. 21), "Forever I will keep my steadfast love for him" (vs. 28), "I will establish his line forever, and his throne as long as the heavens endure" (vs. 29), "His line shall continue forever" (vs. 36) and "It shall be established forever like the moon" (vs. 37) are all indicators that this relationship between God and David is permanent and timeless.

Yet that promise introduces a problem - there is a sharp disconnect between what has been regarded as the eternal covenant with David and the reality of Jerusalem's destruction in the days of the psalmist.  Verses 38-45 point out that the experience of David's descendants has been anything but a permanent monarchy.  Instead we read,"You have spurned and rejected him" (vs. 38), "You have renounced the covenant with your servant" (vs. 39), and "You have removed the scepter from his hand, and hurled his throne to the ground" (vs. 44).  What happened?  Where has God gone?  Why is He silent?  Why has He turned His back?

The rest of Psalm 89 tries to come to grips with this dissonance.  The psalmist asks the Lord, "Where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?" (vs. 49)  The psalmist tries to rouse God by pointing to the taunts of His enemies, but in the end, he must satisfy himself with a concluding "Blessed be the Lord forever.  Amen and Amen" (vs. 52).  Although the psalmist does not get a fulfilling answer as to the reason for God's inaction, our Christian experience may have some to offer.

Making sense of God's silence is something that we all may have to do at certain points in our lives.  At times when we expect blessings and close fellowship with the Lord, we may find a bewildering absence.  There are desert places in our spiritual journeys; there are "dark nights of the soul" to be grappled with in our spiritual pilgrimages.  Sometimes these may be due to receiving a different answer from God than we expected.

In the case of Psalm 89, we can surmise that God was up to something different than the psalmist expected.  Instead of a monarch on a throne reigning in Jerusalem until the end of time, Christians believe that God intended Jesus, the heir of David, to reign eternally in the hearts of His people - who may or may not be Jews themselves but who have come to recognize Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Certainly He has come to rule as king, but His kingdom is not of this world.  Considering that Jesus continues to be the most powerful figure in history 2000 years after He died on a Roman cross, it is not a great leap to suggest that what God had in mind was very different from the Jews in ancient times.

He had Jesus in mind so that we might have Jesus in our heart!

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