Psalm 85 – Psalms In The Summer

We'll be reading from Psalm 85 today.

To the choir master, Asam of the sons of Korah.

Lord, you are favorable to your land.

You restored the fortunes of Jacob.

You forgave the iniquity of your people.

You covered all their sin.

Saila.

You withdrew all your wrath, you turned from your hot anger.

Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation towards us.

Will you be angry with us forever?

Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?

Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints.

But let them not turn back to folly.

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet.

Righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.

Yes, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps away.

And so reads God's word.

We'd love to get to know you afterwards.

If you're just visiting, that's great.

But if you're thinking about sticking around, we'd love to get to know you, to chat to you after the service.

We're going to be looking at uh Psalm 85 this morning, which Anna read uh just a while ago.

So if you have that open in front of you, that'll be great so you can uh reference it as we go through it.

It wouldn't be July in Ireland, would it, if it wasn't raining?

Welcome.

Again, if you're visiting, apologies for the rain.

Um but uh we had it pretty warm for a while there, almost too warm.

Um some of us Irish people were complaining.

Um and I was very relieved that uh some of some people from around the world who come from hotter climates were also saying it was hot.

It gave me some validation as an Irishman.

Um and everyone was flocking to the beach, uh, all the ice cream vans were out in force, um, and we lapped up and we needed to lap up uh that vitamin D, those rays of sunshine.

Uh but the grass was struggling in places.

I don't know if you saw that around where you live or on your commute or anything like that, but there was a patch of grass outside the front of our house, and that up until yesterday it was yellow.

The ground had baked in the sun, and there just wasn't enough moisture in the soil to keep it alive and to keep it green.

It was struggling for life.

But obviously, it's not long in Ireland before we get some rain, and so that problem was solved for the grass, and uh the grass was thankful for it.

And I checked this morning, and it's basically as green as ever in just a matter of a couple of days, haven't been rained on.

And this morning we see a people who have known the life-giving blessing of God before, but who are almost faint, and they cry out to the Lord to restore and to revive them.

In Psalm 85, we find a people who are in need of restoration.

We find a people who need to be saved.

We find a people who look back to a scene in the past that's very different from their present reality, and they long for God to revive them.

Psalm 85 is a Psalm praying for revival.

Not for those out there, but for a revival in us.

And he would give us life again.

As with many of the Psalms, we must look back at what God has done.

We must remember.

In the midst of our struggle through this life, we need to rehearse what we know to be true about how he acted towards us.

We need to remind ourselves of how God has worked before.

So remember God's past mercies.

That's our first point.

Remember God's past mercies.

The people are languishing.

They need to be restored and they're struggling for life.

So they remembered how God restored them in the past.

It's likely that what they're referring to in verse one is their return from exile.

God brought the people back from Babylon, restoring them to the land he had promised them.

This is obviously such a huge blessing for the people of God, the land that was previously torn apart, with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah separating, and then them being taken off into exile.

But God showed favor to the land.

He blessed the land he had given to his people to dwell.

He made it a place where they could live again.

There's a sense in which the word here favored, that he delighted again in his land.

And the way in which he did that was to bring back his people.

And you'll see in the next line, he restored the fortunes of Jacob.

Fortunes here is the same word that's used at the end of the book of Job, where God restored him to what he had before.

He restored Job to what he had before, and he blessed him with more, with twice as much.

It's a term that's related to something that was taken away, being restored.

And that's what's happening here.

They were in exile.

The thing that was taken away was the people.

It was nothing at all.

It was the people.

They were exiled, but subsequently, God brought them back.

He restored them.

I don't know how the lockdowns were for you.

For most people at one stage or another, it was terrible.

Um, maybe it was for most of uh it was terrible for you, but uh people do look back at it and and they made the most of it and they felt restored.

There was a maybe a time before uh before 2020 when life was hectic and they were struggling for life.

And so for some people, this stopping was the rest that they needed, or it was the kick that they needed to get out and go for a walk, or to to pick up gardening or baking or something, and just enjoying some of the more simple things in life.

It was the restoration that some of us needed.

Now, again, that may not have been your experience.

My experience at the start of COVID was trying to get 15 and 16-year-olds to do maths online because I was a I was a teacher.

Um, when they were sitting beside their PlayStation, it was a disaster.

Um, but think of a time, I want you to think of a time.

There were other times in COVID where it was just it felt restorative because we were able to just sit back.

But I hope there's another time in your life where where you did feel restored, where you realize even before that I was languishing, I was struggling.

And then this happened and I felt restored.

That's what the people are doing here.

They're remembering God's restored blessing.

And they weren't restored because they earned it or anything, they were restored because God withdrew his wrath.

God turned from his hot anger.

God forgave them, and he covered all their sin.

They had deserved their exile.

They had sinned, they had gone their own way, they had turned from God to other things, and their iniquity had consequences.

They'd earned their lot.

They hadn't listened to God's warnings and his calls to turn back to him, and instead they went their own way.

So again, how is it that they were restored?

It's because God forgave them.

He took away that iniquity and the consequences.

It was in his mercy.

As far as the East is from the West, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

He covered their sin.

They had completely missed the mark.

And God covered it.

I was looking after my two nephews and uh my niece two weeks ago, and my sister-in-law, she had said that if my niece was crying, it was probably because she's either hungry or needed a nappy change.

And of course, sure enough, not long after my sister-in-law left, leaving me with the kids for a few hours, um, my niece started crying.

And we changed her nappy, which was only a wee, so it was relatively easy to deal with, and she was all fine again.

Uh, but then we went to the playground and she started crying again, and it's up a big hill, and so I carry her, and I could clearly smell that we were dealing with a bit more this time.

But we got in, took off the nappy, cleaned her up, and put a new one on, and I got rid of the the dirty one.

I covered it up and I took it away.

That's like what God does with our sin.

He covered it up and he took it away.

And then he blessed us.

Now we should take a moment uh to to talk about God's anger.

It comes up here in verse 3, which we're moving on to, and then in four and five afterwards, so we'll kind of take them all together a little bit.

God is rightly angry at sin.

We see that clearly in what he says and how he acts.

In both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

God is not an angry God in the Old Testament and a loving God in the New Testament.

He's good and angry in both.

He's loving and kind in both.

He's deeply displeased with things that stand in opposition to him and who he is.

And so injustice angers him.

He's a God who wants to be with his people, and so whatever gets in the way of that, he's angry about that.

Jesus, when when he turned over the tables of the money changers and the merchants in the temple, it was because they were making a profit off of people coming to God.

He was angered that men were getting in the way of between God and people.

There's a lot more that could be said about God's anger, about Christ's anger, but I want to point out in John 11 that Jesus was angry at death too.

In John 11, there's that verse, Jesus wept.

And just around it, um, and sorry, and the reason he wept is because he's at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, and he sees uh he sees his friends weeping and crying, and there's sorrow.

And Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, but Jesus was still angry at death and the sorrow that it brings.

It says that he was deeply moved.

The word means indignant or this groaning.

He groaned with distress.

He hates sin.

He hates death, and he's angry towards us.

God in Psalm 85 is rightly angry towards his people, but he withdrew his wrath and he turned from his hot anger because he took their sin away and forgave their iniquity.

He was merciful and gracious to them.

And likewise we remember God's past mercies.

Brothers and sisters, remember God's past mercies.

And in the midst of languishing and struggling for life, you should pray for a revival.

Pray that God would revive you, that he would give you life again.

Ask God to restore you again because that's what he does.

That's who he is.

That's what the people do in verse 4.

God is their savior, and so they call out to him to save them and restore him.

Restore them, sorry.

It's like Superman.

I haven't seen it.

Zeke says it's great.

You can see it here later, I think, at 1.30.

Um, but when people in the world of Superman are in trouble, they call out to him to help them, to help them, and to save them because they know he can rescue them.

They know he can help because he's done so before.

They've witnessed it before, or they've heard about it.

So in their need, they call out to the one who can help.

How much more true is it?

Is that true with God?

He's way greater, way, way, far, far greater than Superman, who's only fictional anyway.

The people here have witnessed God's restoration before, and so they call out to him to restore them again.

They know that he has steadfast love, and so they ask to see it.

Show us your steadfast love.

They know that God is love, and so they ask to see him.

They know that God is their salvation, and so they ask that he would grant them his salvation.

In verse 4, when it says, Oh God of our salvation, the NIV translates it, God our Savior, I think.

It's it's who he is.

He is Savior.

So we ask him, grant us salvation.

And having remembered what he's done in the past, they've remembered, they remembered that he is the restoring God.

So they call to him to restore them again.

They've remembered that God forgave them before, turning his wrath away from them.

And so they ask him to take that indignation away from them again.

They've seen it before, they ask it again.

They don't deserve it.

They're not saying we deserve this, so give it to us.

But they ask him to be merciful and gracious as he was in the past because that's who he is, it's his character.

So pray for God to revive you again, to give you life, because that's what he does.

Pray for it both as an individual and with his people.

In calling for restoration here, it's restore us.

There's plenty of Psalms that are that maybe of David uh that are that are more restore me to the joy of my salvation, to the joy of your salvation, as I think Jida referenced earlier.

Um, but there's plenty of psalms like that.

But here it's restore us.

In speaking of God as Savior, it's God our of our salvation.

It's show us your steadfast love and grant us your salvation.

We remember together, and we cry out together to Him.

How wonderful that is.

That is one languishes, the other cries out for restoration on their behalf with them.

In looking back to what he's done, we also look back to what he has said.

We're moving on to verse 5, and and uh yeah, especially verse 5.

The questions there are so raw.

And they are what the people are feeling.

The Psalms are full of people asking questions to God.

They're asking from the deepest parts of their souls, through great pain, through great suffering, through great hardship.

They ask questions like, How long, O Lord?

Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Why have you forgotten me?

Why have you rejected me?

And here, will you be angry with us forever?

Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

There's a deep feeling of God being displeased with them, and so they ask these questions.

They've known God to turn away his wrath and anger before, which they've just brought to memory.

And so, in asking these questions, they somewhat know the answer.

They're they're somewhat rhetorical questions.

And not only on top of looking back in verses 1 to 3 at what he's done, they look at they look back at what he said.

They know what he said.

These questions are both, they're an appeal to God, but almost to themselves as well.

To remember what he said before.

They're calling to mind what God has said in the past, in places like in Exodus 34 through Moses.

The Lord says, The Lord the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

You can hear that this might be in the minds of the people in Psalm 85.

They're asking, will you be angry with us for generation after generation?

Remember that you said you're a God who's who's slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, on and on and on through the generations.

Remember that.

Because it feels like your anger is on us and it might remain on us forever.

You are merciful, be merciful.

You are gracious, be gracious.

You keep steadfast love for thousands, keep steadfast love for us, forgive us, restore us, save us.

So too.

We ask God to forgive us, to restore us, and to save us.

Even in the midst of asking questions like this.

But why?

What why are the people calling out like this?

There's obviously there's something that's happening that's making them languish, that's making them feel far from him.

They need restoring.

But why do they ask God to revive them?

To what end?

Verse six is central to the whole Psalm.

There's obviously some some there's reasons, there's circumstances, and there's even their relationship with God that that causes them to ask revive us again.

But in verse six, they say, Revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you.

They want God to give them life again so that they might know joy in him, that they might bring praise and honor and worship to his name.

They ask for restoration, forgiveness, and mercy, so that they might once again know him and marvel at him and live in him and rejoice in him.

They want their cries for salvation to turn to songs of praise.

They want their cries for life to turn to joy-filled lives in him.

This is the purpose that we've been born for.

To glorify him and to enjoy him forever, to rejoice in him.

As you cry to him for life, let that be your goal.

Rejoicing in him.

As you pray to be restored, remembering what he's done in the past, pray that you would rejoice in him.

As you confess your sin, asking for mercy and knowing that he forgives, pray that you would live a life that rejoices in him.

Pray that he would bring life out of death and joy out of gloom.

So we cry out together, we confess together, we ask for forgiveness together, and we rejoice in him together as his people.

And we shift in verse 8 to hear to hear one person speaking.

It's like a prophetic voice.

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak.

It's like someone sh who's shouting for quiet.

In a noisy room.

Imagine trying to hear someone at the window out there in the tea coffee area when you're at the connect table.

You'd have to shout for everyone to be quiet.

It gets so noisy out there, I know.

Maybe it's more like uh being somewhere that the TV is on in the background, uh like at a party or a bar or something, and some breaking news comes on and it catches your eye, and you ask everyone to be quiet because you want to hear.

It's actually probably more like getting a phone call that's really important when you're in that noisy place.

You know there's good news on the way.

You've been waiting for this call, but you need to be able to hear what the person on the other end says.

You really want to hear.

Let me hear.

And what is it that the psalmist wants to hear?

He wants to hear what God the Lord will speak.

Our God is a speaking God.

He's revealed himself to us and he comes near to speak.

So we sing, speak, O Lord.

We come on Sunday, week after week, expecting to hear him as his word is read and preached, and as we minister to each other.

We listen attentively to him.

So I'd encourage you to pray before you come on a Sunday as you prepare, prepare yourself, pray that you would hear what God the Lord will speak.

Quiet in yourself so that you can hear him.

And what is it that God the Lord will speak?

He will speak peace to his people, to his saints.

The psalmist wants to hear God speak and he knows that God will speak peace.

To a people languishing, he speaks peace.

He speaks the shalom is the word.

It's being right with God, it's being right with everything, it's being whole, being fully satisfied, it's comprehensive well-being without conflict.

The psalmist is confident that God will speak peace to his people.

His people not only look back to what he has done and what he has said, but they hear him speak peace to them now.

And so God speaks peace to you.

But for the people here, it's clear that the Sama says it's important that they listen.

It's important that they don't shut up their ears to what he has to say.

Let them not turn back to folly.

It would be so foolish to hear God speaking peace and then and then just shrug your shoulders and go back to what you were doing.

To have more interest in whatever else is going on, that you ignore God speaking, turning back to the things that have failed to bring life and peace.

So hear God speak.

He speaks peace to his people, but hear him speak.

Don't turn back to anything that would stop you from hearing him.

Don't turn to anything else for peace instead of him.

And how is it that he's spoken?

Well, it's in his word, the Bible, and it's in the word, his son.

Christ speaks.

He came and he preached peace.

He preached peace to those who are far off and to those who are near.

In Christ we know peace.

In Christ, we've been reconciled to God.

And verse 9 points forward to this too.

The psalmist is sure that God's salvation is near to those who fear him.

The psalmist is confident that God will be close to and save those who do not turn back to folly but live rightly before him.

Back up in verse 4, he spoke, sorry, the people spoke of God being their salvation, and now in verse 9, the psalmist says that his salvation is near to them.

God himself is their salvation, and he is near to them.

We're saved by him being with us.

His salvation is near because he is near.

It's kind of like I was thinking about the warmth of a fire.

The warmth comes from being near.

God's salvation is near to those who fear him.

And we see God coming nearer in the person of Christ.

Jesus is God with us, God incarnate.

He's our salvation, and he came near to us.

He came to save us.

John 1 says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I wonder, did John have Psalm 85 in his mind as he wrote that?

The word who is Jesus dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.

See that in verse 9 of our Psalm here?

God Himself came to dwell with us in the person of Jesus Christ, and he is glorious.

God has always wanted to be with his people in the garden with Adam and Eve, in the Ark of the Covenant and in the temple among his people.

His desire is to be with his people.

And he did that in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who became like us and dwelt among us.

And he dwells with us now by his spirit, by the Holy Spirit.

God is near.

Know that Christ is near, that he speaks peace, and that he dwells with us.

So find life in him.

Because he's perfect.

Look at the next verse, verse 10.

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet, righteousness and peace kiss each other.

I mean, that's just beautiful poetry by itself.

But as it speaks of who he is, it speaks of his perfection.

That he's all these things together.

He's perfectly united in himself.

There's four parts here that are that are brought out in terms of who he is, but it's not like he can be divided into these parts.

It's not like matter, which can be divided into parts.

Apologies, I'm a I was a science teacher as well as a maths teacher, but I was thinking about matter and how we, as humans in our in the history of scientific discovery, we were trying to see what's what's at the bottom, and we came to the atom, and atom means indivisible in Greek.

And then, however, much longer later, in terms of human history, we divided the atom, and we found it was divisible into protons, neutrons, and electrons.

And then we thought that was the basis of it.

And then they found quarks.

And if I've lost you there, I'm lost too.

But they say that that's where it is now.

That's the fund, they're the fundamental, that's part of the fundamental building blocks.

I don't know about that.

But God is truly indivisible.

He's perfect in all his ways, as verse 13 says.

In verses 1 to 3.

We began looking back at God's mercies in the past, and we moved through to the present, to those present realities, and now we we see him moving out in righteousness.

And as Christ, as Christ uh came, as we read in John 1 already, we see there was only there was one who prepared a way for him.

John the Baptist said, I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.

He quotes from Isaiah there, but that's what we're anticipating at the end of Psalm 85, the righteous one whose way is prepared.

Jesus is the righteous one.

And that picture that we see in verse 10, we see that perfectly in Christ.

In his cross, we see the steadfast love of the Lord displayed.

And we see that he's faithful to keep all his promises, he's faithful to his word and to his people.

We see his righteousness displayed and given to us, it's imputed to us.

And he makes peace between God and man in his blood.

And for that, rejoice in him.

So rejoice in him, O people of God.

He's the way, the truth, and the life.

So follow him.

And his blessings, they bring life.

Verse 11 Faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky.

There's a sense in which this is the picture of the peace between heaven and earth, between God and man.

Faithfulness is coming up from the earth, and righteousness is coming down from heaven.

But it's also that God is blessing his people.

He's drawn near to them, we saw in verse 9, and now life is coming.

The people have been languishing like a land that hasn't seen rain for a long time, like that grass that's been burnt up.

And God comes near in verse 9, and now we see something springing up from the ground to meet that thirst that they have.

It's like a literal spring as a source of water for this dry and thirsty land.

And we see something coming down, looking down, or coming down from the sky.

It's like rain falling on a parched land.

So it's life.

Life is coming.

Where the people cry out to God to be revived.

God gives himself and he gives life.

In verse 12, the Lord gives what is good.

He said, Yes, indeed, the Lord will give what is good.

I don't know, maybe that's maybe that's like the only thing you need to take away from today.

The Lord will give what is good.

And then the land gives in return.

Again, that's that's a similar picture to verse 11 there, the peace between heaven and earth.

But more so it's it's pointing to how God blesses us with life.

Life is coming.

The land is yielding its increase, it's giving its increase, it's producing because water has come on it.

The land out the front of my house, that small patch of ground, is yielding its increase.

The grass is growing.

Verse 12 points to how God blesses us with life, with true life in him.

And God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.

He's lavished his grace upon us, forgiving us in him, giving us true and lasting hope in him.

He's made us alive in Christ.

Jesus restores us, and when we drink the water that he gives, we're fully satisfied.

So, brother, sister, those who are languishing, come to Jesus.

Find life in him.

Christ revives us.