DUNCAN/A Psalm for adversity

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Psalm 89. When you look at the first thirty-seven verses of this psalm, it looks like a praise psalm that you would meet at the end of the Psalter. And then you get to verse 38 and suddenly the tone completely changes. Listen to the language: “You have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed.” And the rest of the psalm goes that way. So I want to look at three things with you in this psalm: perplexity, praise, and providence. 

I. Perplexity 

My first memory of this psalm comes from youth group. And I think that has colored how I read Psalm 89. I read it as an upbeat, happy song of praise. And of course, it is ascribing praise to God. I think I did not adequately understand that the psalmist is saying those things through blinding tears! It’s like he’s saying, “I don’t feel like singing. I’m not sure whether I understand what’s going on in my life. But I will sing of the mercies of the Lord! I’m struggling to believe the mercies of the Lord, but I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever!” And he sings back to God the very promises and praises that he’s struggling with. And you learn that in verse 38, “You have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed.” In other words, he’s singing praises from the standpoint of perplexity. He and the rest of his people are deep in adversity.

And here’s the thing that I want you to see. Christianity, knowing Jesus savingly, believing the Gospel, believing your Bible, walking with the Lord in this life does not exempt you from suffering and perplexity. It enables you to suffer with hope. The adversity and suffering have engulfed all the people of God. And in the midst of that, this psalm is a cry of hope. So in the midst of his perplexity, he is suffering with hope by singing God’s Word back to Him. This psalm is reminding us that we are not exempt from that kind of suffering and perplexity. But the question is, “Will you have hope when the adversity and the perplexity come?” The psalmist is showing you how. You go back to God’s Word, and you believe it, even when you don’t understand it. We’re not exempt from suffering and perplexity, but we are equipped to suffer with hope.

II. Praise

Here's the second thing I want you to see. It's always time to praise God. Whatever our state, whatever our circumstance, whatever our situation, whatever public life is like, whatever our private circumstances are, it's always time to praise God. It reminds you a little bit of Job, doesn't it? “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!” Doesn't the end of Psalm 89 remind you of that? Look at verses 50 and 51: “Remember, O Lord, your servants are mocked! We're bearing the insults of the nations! They mock us on the footsteps of your anointed!” And then verse 52, “Blessed be the Lord, forever.” Isn't that juxtaposition fascinating? “We're mocked! We're insulted! We have no hope! Blessed be the Lord!” It's just like Job. “The Lord gave, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” and he fell down on his face and he worshiped God. No darkness in this world exempts us from needing to express praise to Him for His perfections.

And you see how the psalmist begins. He sings for God’s steadfast love. He sings of God’s wonders and greatness beginning in verse 5. He sings of God’s sovereignty; he sings of God’s promises. All of these things, no matter what our circumstances are – God is deserving of our praise because of these things. It’s always time to praise our God. And that’s one of the reasons we gather Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day. I mean how often do you come to this place and the last thing in the world you are thinking about is praising God? And yet what’s happening? We come here no matter how we feel, and our hearts are being trained by the Word of God so that when the disaster is so pervasive and the adversity is so deep, we can praise God.

III. Providence

Now here's the third thing I want you to see, and it's providence. The whole psalm is really about this. The psalmist cries out, “Lord, how do we put Your Word and Your promises together with Your providence and our perplexity? We know You're sovereign over all these things. We know You're in charge. But how do we put Your promises together with the perplexity that we're in?” And the answer is God's providence. You have to believe God's providence even when you don't understand it.

Now to have a doctrine of providence, you’ve got to have a number of things. Firstly, you have to believe that God is sovereign. If you don’t think that He is the ruler of everything, how in the world can you expect Him to bring purpose out of perplexity? Secondly, you must believe He is good. If He is the ruler of everything and He is not good, then we’re all in trouble. So you have to believe that He is the ruler over everything and you have to believe He’s good. Thirdly, you really have to believe the Gospel because if you know that you’re a sinner, and if we’re honest and say, “Okay, what would happen if God gave us what we deserved?” – it would not be good. So you really have to believe the Gospel. So one of the messages of this psalm to us is – you have to perceive the mercy of the Lord to you in Jesus Christ to really get the comfort that’s being offered in this psalm. This psalm won’t comfort people that don’t believe the promises of the Gospel and don’t rest on Him alone for salvation as He is offered in the Gospel. It won’t make sense to you unless you’re trusting Christ.

But if you believe that God is the ruler of everything and you believe that He's good and you believe he has been merciful to you in Christ, then you have the equipment to trust His providence even when you can't figure it out. But isn’t it interesting, usually in the midst of perplexity none of that is apparent. And the deeper perplexed you are, the more opaque God’s purposes are to you. So how do you approach it? Not with blind unbelief but with trust in His providence. This psalm reminds us that the Christian life is filled with perplexity, but it also reminds us that it’s always time to praise God, no matter what, and that the key to living and thriving in the Christian life is trusting God’s providence.