Psalm 89

Introduction

Well, I was going to tell Brother Dennis if he looked over me, we could have done at least one more if you wanted to. I wasn’t pressing, but uh good morning to everyone. I invite you to be turning in your Bibles to the 89th Psalm. The 89th Psalm is going to be our passage this morning. First of all, to those who are visiting with us, thank you for joining us on this Lord’s day as we come together to worship our great God. And now as we look to his word, and for those who are visiting with us, what we’ve been doing at the 9 o’clock hour is looking at one of the psalms that we’ve read the previous week in our weekly Bible reading. And there were several psalms to be read this past week.

Two psalms on the last day of our Bible reading, Psalm 32 and Psalm 51, that have an integral part in David’s sin with Bathsheba and his repentance. And those are wonderful Psalms, and I considered doing those. But Psalm 89 is connected to another important event in David’s life, and I decided to focus on that one this morning instead.

The covenant that God had made with David back in 2 Samuel chapter 7. That David’s descendant would reign on the throne, and that would be an eternal kingdom, a kingdom that would last forever. And as that covenant that the 89th Psalm has in mind. And if I would get out of Jeremiah chapter 4 and turn back to Psalm 89, it would probably help a little bit.

1. A Psalm of the Covenant

I will sing of the loving kindness of the Lord forever. To all generations, I will make known your faithfulness with my mouth. For I have said, loving kindness will be built up forever. In the heavens, you have established your faithfulness. I have made a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn to David, my servant, I will establish your seed forever and build up your throne to all generations. There you have the promise that God had made to David back in 2 Samuel chapter 7. This was a covenant that God had made with David. And if you’re in the habit again of marking in your Bibles, you can do something interesting with Psalm 89 and just picking out the covenant language of the Psalm. A few terms in particular that you’ll find over and over again in Psalm 89.

The term faithfulness is found seven times. And of course, when speaking of God’s covenant with man, God’s faithfulness is emphasized over and over and over again. The promise to David is sure because God is faithful. And so faithfulness, the faithfulness of God is emphasized seven times in the Psalm. Then the term loving kindness. Depending on your translation, it may even be translated as grace or mercy in your Bible. But the term loving kindness is the term that we would often associate with grace, but it’s an idea of God’s love and God’s gracious bestowal of his blessings. And that is a term that again is associated with God’s covenant. This is not something that David had earned, but it is God’s love to him. It is his loving kindness in making this promise to David.

And just like faithfulness, the term loving kindness is found in the Psalm seven times. And then the matter of forever. Forever, God said this would happen. Forever God’s David’s covenant would last. David’s descendants would reign on the throne. Over and over again, this idea of forever in the Psalm, nine times in the Psalm, you’ll find the word forever, speaking of God’s promises to David. And so this is a Psalm of the Covenant. That this is God’s promise to David and what he was doing for him. Why is that covenant valid? Why is that covenant sure? Well, the psalmist goes on to proclaim that this promise to David is sure, that God’s loving kindness and faithfulness are important because of who God is. And that is the aspect that is discussed in verses 5 through 18, where God is described.

2. Sure Because of Who God Is

Verse 5 through 8, you have the matter of God’s majesty. The heavens will praise your wonders, O Lord. Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones. And the idea of the assembly of the holy ones, of course, is simply that God in the heavenly realms are surrounded by the angelic beings, those even beings of great power, and yet God is the one who is faithful and holy in such an assembly. For who in the skies is comparable to the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty is like the Lord? A God greatly feared in the counsel of the holy ones, and awesome above all those who are around him. O Lord of hosts, who is like you, O mighty Lord. Why could David be sure that God was going to be faithful?

How could David be sure that God would actually be able to keep his promise? It’s because of who God is. That there is none like God. That in all the heavenly hosts, there is none like him. He is supreme. He is the Lord of hosts. He is over and above all. So the majesty of God is emphasized there. And then beginning in verse 9, you have God’s mastery. You rule the swelling of the sea. When its waves rise, you steal them. The idea of the sea there being that which is uncontrollable. The Israelites, you may know that they, while they maybe traded some on the sea, the Mediterranean Sea right there, they were not seafarers. They were not people given to the sea. And so for such a people, the sea could symbolize something that is scary, frightening, uncontrollable, and yet God is master of the sea.

You yourself crushed Rahab like one who is slain. You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. That term Rahab is an interesting one. It was used in the literature of the day in the Middle Eastern area, the ancient Near East, of the what we might refer to as the chaos monster. That which was symbolized as chaos, that the gods had to overrule. And so you may have these stories of Baal subjugating the chaos monster, Rahab. Well, here it is not Baal who has done this, it is God. But in particular, Rahab in the Old Testament can refer to Egypt. This refers to Egypt in Psalm 87 and verse 4, Isaiah 30 and verse 7, Isaiah 51 and verse 9, where there Egypt is personified as Rahab, this which is chaos, and Israel is brought out of that.

God subjugated Egypt. God conquered Egypt. So you yourself, you crush Rahab like one who is slain. You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours. The world and all it contains, you have founded them. The north and the south, you have created them. Tabor and Hermon shout for joy at your name. You have a strong arm. Your hand is mighty, your right hand is exalted. The mention of the mountains in particular here, Tabor and Hermon. Perhaps, again, just emphasizing that God being the God of even the mountains. And it may also be that these mountains were associated with idolatrous practices. But the idea being that no matter where these idols were served or where their strongholds were thought to be, God is powerful, God is supreme.

So again, the emphasis here is how can David and David’s descendants be sure that yes, God’s covenant to David is sure and is steadfast, because the one who is promised is the one who is clothed in majesty, and the one who has exercised mastery over all things. There is nothing that God cannot control. There is nothing that God cannot conquer. There is nothing that God is not greater than.

Loving kindness and truth go before you. How blessed are the people who know the joyful sound, O Lord, they walk in the light of your countenance. In your name they rejoice all the day. And by your righteousness they are exalted, for you are the glory of their strength. And by your favor, our horn is exalted, for our shield belongs to the Lord, and our king to the holy one of Israel. This is not like the gods of other nations. This is not like the gods that the Greeks served, that they could not trust, that they would not know, would they even keep their word? God is holy. The very foundation of his throne is righteousness and justice, loving kindness and truth go forth from him. So again, the idea is that when God has made a promise, God is going to be faithful to that promise.

When God says something, you can know it is true. And therefore, the people who follow such a God, they are blessed, because they serve one who by his own nature is holy. And so they are exalted by his righteousness. Their strength is his glory.

3. The Covenant God Had Made With David

How could such a promise be made? Well, it could only be made by one who is as great and mighty and as righteous as God. But then in verses 19 through 37, we have again the covenant that God had made with David emphasized. In verses 37 through, I’m sorry, verses 19 through 27, David is the one who is emphasized here. Once you spoke in vision to your godly ones and said, I have given help to one who is mighty. I have exalted one chosen from my people. I have found David, my servant, with my holy oil I have anointed him, with whom my hand will be established, my arm will also be strengthened. The enemy will not deceive him, nor the son of wickedness afflict him, but I shall crush his adversaries before him, and strike those who hate him.

My faithfulness and my loving kindness will be with him, and in my name his horn will be exalted. I shall also set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers. He will cry to me, You are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. I also shall make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. If you kept up with a reading this week and reading through 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, you saw just how God had done all these things for David. That no matter who the foe was, whether they were the Moabites or the Philistines or the Ammonites, God crushed them before David. And then yes, David could have even literally placed his right hand on the rivers as he extended the border of Israel’s kingdom even as far north as the Euphrates, and in going south to Egypt.

God had done that for him. And of course, when we read something like verse 27, I also shall make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. Our minds instantly go to the seed of David, the Jesus, the Messiah, and not saying there’s not an application there, but the idea is simply that as God’s people are called his children, his sons, then David has been exalted to the very firstborn. The idea of the preeminence among God’s people, and he is the kings of the earth. This is what God had promised to David. This is what God had done for David. But then the Psalm goes on to say, and this will happen for David’s descendants. My loving kindness, verse 28, I will keep for him forever.

And my covenant shall be confirmed to him. So I’ll establish his descendants forever in his throne as the days of heaven. If his sons forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgressions with the water with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. But I will not break off my loving kindness from him, nor deal falsely in my faithfulness. My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of my lips. Once I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His descendants shall endure forever, and his throne is a sun before me. I shall establish forever like the moon, and the witness in the sky is faithful.

Even though his descendants turn away from me. And if you understand the history of the Israelite kingdom, then you understand that David’s descendants did in fact turn away from him. Turn away from God. God said, I will punish them. I’ll afflict them sorely. I will punish them with rods. Yet I will not break my covenant with David. The same idea as God’s covenant back with Abraham. That Abraham’s seed would become that great nation. Why was Israel not destroyed in the wilderness? Because God had made a covenant with Abraham. God was going to be faithful and sure to that covenant. And so he says to David, his descendants will reign. I will keep my covenant with him. All sounds wonderful at this point. All sounds great. But then the psalmist laments.

4. The Psalmist Laments

What has happened to God’s covenant with David. The psalm is ascribed to Ethan, the, let me make sure I pronounce it correctly, if I can, the Ezrahite. We don’t know exactly who this Ethan the Ezrahite is. There is an Ethan the Ezrahite mentioned other places in the scriptures. He was one of the singers in the temple that David had set up in 1 Chronicles 15. So that may be the same Ethan the Ezrahite. There is also an Ethan that was mentioned in 1 Kings chapter 4 as one of the wise men that Solomon was wiser than. So it could be that all three references are to the same person. And if so, it is someone that was living for sure during the days of David, and also during the days of Solomon, and perhaps even in the days of Rehoboam.

So whether or not he writes what he does from here, and again, we’re of course taking an inspiration. But if there was a setting to his mind, it may have been in the days that the kingdom divided. And that is Rehoboam is left with only a small kingdom after the ten northern tribes have made another their king. And it’s certainly in a prophetic sense, he may be looking forward to a time when David’s descendants are slain. Those studying the book of Jeremiah have seen that in the days of Jeremiah the prophet that yes, David’s descendants who were to reign, their reign came to an end. With the sons of Josiah, their reign ended in the Babylonian captivity. And so Ethan the Ezrahite says in verse 38, but you have cast off and rejected.

You have been full of wrath against your anointed. You have spurned the covenant of your servant. You have profaned his crown in the dust. You have broken down all his walls. You have brought his strongholds to ruin. Contrast that with what was said back in verse 23, when God said, I will crush his adversaries, and now it is the adversaries who is crushing him. All who pass along the way plunder him.

Whereas God had promised to uphold David by his right hand, and David’s own right hand was to exalt over the rivers and the waters. But as you see, things have changed now. You also turn back the edge of the sword. You have not made him stand in battle. You have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground, the very one who is called the firstborn of God, and the highest of the kings of the earth back in verse 27. Now his throne has been cast to the ground. You have shortened the days of his youth. You have covered him with shame. How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Will your wrath burn like fire? Remember what my span of life is, for what vanity you have created all the sons of men.

What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Where are your former loving kindnesses, O Lord, which you swore to David in your faithfulness? Remember, O Lord, the reproach of your servants, how I bear in my bosom the reproach of all the many peoples, with which your enemies have reproached, O Lord, with which they have reproached the footsteps of your anointed.

We have the facts given to us.

And perhaps in an attitude that you and I ought to mimic, rather than a casting of false charges against God, there’s a seeking for understanding. How long, O Lord, will this happen? And a pleading with God that you remember how short our life is, that you remember the reproach of your servants. That there is still the confidence on the part of Ethan that God will still keep his covenant with David. It seems as if it has failed, but there is confidence that the Lord will remember, and so it’s telling that the Psalm ends in verse 52 with Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and amen.

5. A Righteous Branch From David

Maybe you would even see a picture here of Jesus as he was rejected. The very son of David who is to rule and enters into Jerusalem, triumphant. And yet it seems as if his throne is cast to the ground with the crucifixion. And yet, what power Sheol would have over him? But the fact for Israel was that David’s earthly line was going to cease to rule over the kingdom. The physical kingdom, that is. But here’s where you have those promises that were made to Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 23 and verse 5. And Jeremiah and prophesying to a people that were going to go into captivity. And he says in Jeremiah 23 and verse 5, God says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I’ll raise up for David a righteous branch, and he’ll reign as king and act wisely.

Jeremiah, who saw the descendants of David ceased to reign on the throne, and yet God says through Jeremiah, a righteous branch from David is going to come forth. This is what the apostle Peter has in mind as he by inspiration is proclaiming the gospel in Acts chapter 2, as saying how Jesus could not be held by death. In Acts chapter 2 and verse 29, he says, Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on the throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ.

That he was neither abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh suffer decay.

And yet there was this hope that the branch of David would come.

And so God’s covenant with David was sure. It was steadfastness. God had been faithful in issuing his loving kindness to David. It did not come in the ways that men would think, but it came nonethelesson there for us.

6. He Who Promised Is Faithful

How are God’s covenant blessings going to be fulfilled? What blessings has he promised to us under the covenant that we now have? We think of those wonderful spiritual promises that God has made. The forgiveness of our sins. That he has made to us peace. A peace that surpasses understanding. That he has made to us better lives. And that he has made to us eternal life with him. The problem that you and I could have in looking at the promises of God is that when we look at our lives and what is happening in our lives, if we were just to look at it in the way that men would look at it, it may not match up with what God is actually doing. Israel could have looked at the Davidic line and wondered, what is God doing?

He made this promise to David. He said that David’s descendants would be set over the throne forever, and now it looks like that promise has come to an end. What happened to God’s promises? It’s not going the way we thought it was going to go. And so we too, we might be in danger of looking at our lives. We look at the struggles that we have, we look at the burdens that we have, and we wonder, where is the peace that God promised? Where is the better life that God promised?

If we’re thinking of health and wealth, then we’ve mistaken what God promised. If we’re thinking, though, of lives of holiness that could, in fact, bring to us greater blessings even in this life, then we can reset and we can think, yes, God is still fulfilling that. But the problem with any promise of God, any covenant that God makes with his people is that there are going to be times in our lives where we are tempted to wonder, is this going to come to pass? You go all the way back to Abraham, and Abraham could have wondered, is this going to come to pass? How am I going to have this son that God promised me? Oh, that Ishmael would stand before you, you may remember that he says to God, because he doesn’t know that this is actually going to be able to happen.

And yet, God, because he is faithful, and God in issuing his loving kindness to his people, God is going to bring it to pass. And so if you’re going to hold on to something, then that’s what you’ve got to hold on to. That he who promised is faithful. And if it doesn’t look like it’s coming about the way you thought it was supposed to, or I thought it was supposed to, it does not mean that God’s blessings and promises are not going to come about anyway. Because God’s the one who promised. God knows how things will work out, and God is sure to continue to exercise his loving kindness to his people.

What happened to this covenant? It looks like it is in shambles now. Where is the king reigning in Jerusalem? But you see that God actually gave David something better. A descendant from David’s line who reigns eternal at God’s own right hand. And now that kingdom is extended not just to Israel in the flesh, but is extended to all those who become Israel by the Spirit. All those who have become children of God through Christ’s blood. You see, what God actually did for David was better than perhaps what David originally thought. It was better than what Ethan the Ezrahite was thinking. That’s the blessings that God has.

Conclusion

That’s the kind of blessings that he offers. We’re going to sing a song of invitation at this time, and it may be that you have not experienced the full blessings of God. Well, God has promised in his covenant that in his son, through his son, you can experience true blessings. They are not the blessings that man thinks of. They’re not health and wealth. They’re not that everything in your life is going to be rosy. They are the blessings that you can be forgiven, you can be holy, you can have life with God everlasting. But to have that, you must become a part of his covenant. And to become a part of his covenant, you must come to him through his son. And so can we aid you in some way this morning?

Can we aid you by baptizing you into the Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins? Or can we aid you by even praying with you and for you? If so, won’t you come as we stand and as we sing this song?