Jeffrey C. Long

Psalm 89:1

I will sing of the loving mercy of the LORD forever;

To all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth

For I have said, “Loving mercy will be built up forever;

In the heavens You will establish Your faithfulness.”

This psalm is written by a man named Ethan the Ezrahite. He was a Levite. Apparently very wise because 1Kings compares Him to King Solomon saying “He (Solomon) was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. And his fame spread to all the surrounding nations.”

Ethan found Himself in troubling times as you read in the psalm. It doesn’t sound like it when it begins but the farther you get the more desperate the situation becomes.

One of the things that I believe we can learn from this is how to pray. Ethan begins by singing praises to God. I will sing of the loving mercy of the LORD forever;

Psalm 147 says “How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!” God is amazing

Part of my devotional life is to periodically go to the Benedictine monastery for the evening prayers at 5:30pm. They sing in chant which is written out in their prayer book so that you can sing along if you want to. They sing the psalms. Word for word.

I’m sure many of us have been in setting where they do things a little different then you are accustomed to at your own church. So you watch, and you imitate what they are doing. If you are there more then once, you get in the rhythm and their traditions, words and actions become a part of you and become meaningful to you.

Something very meaningful to me is how they end each psalm. They end them with the gloria patri. “Glory be to the father and to the son and to the holy ghost, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.”

But what is significant about this is that we are always standing when we sing this. And everyone bows. Leans their chest over in reverence. I’ve taken each of my children with me. And it was so cute to watch Elijah because he watched them, and when they bowed, he bowed with them.

I have found that no matter what my spiritual condition. What my relationships with my family. Sins that I am carrying. My relationship with God. It is good to sing praises to God. There is a part of me that sighs. I have come to God and I have honored him with my lips. Honored Him with my throat. Honored Him with my body.

So Ethan begins his prayers by singing of the loving mercies of God. Because God is amazing. His mercy toward us is amazing. His faithfulness toward us is amazing.

I’ve mentioned before that I first responded to the gospel message when I was 5 or 6. A lady down the street that my mom knew held something called a 5-day club. She had us into her home and told us bible stories using a flannel board. And had us learn memory verses. And fed us graham crackers. I remember that one of those days she asked if we would like to invite Jesus into our heart. And I remember saying “yes!” And so she went back into her bedroom and knelt at her bed and said a little prayer. And then I remember coming back the next day and she asked again, and I said “yes!” again and she said that I didn’t need to twice, that the work that Jesus was going to do had already begun.

Isn’t God’s mercy amazing? The work that Jesus was going to do had already begun. God showed mercy on me at a tender age. When He offered me the gift of salvation and I responded He gave me the gift of the Holy Spirit. And a result of that is that I know that His mercy protected me from many poor choices because of the gift of His Holy Spirit. Sometimes we look back on our life and wonder if God was even there because we see all the bad choices that we made. But imagine how much worse it could have been had He not been in our life. God’s mercy is shown to us in that He saves us from our sin, but also He guides us and the choices that we make, protecting us from ourselves.

And God’s faithfulness is amazing. He has carried me through many times when I felt so faithless. He is faithful even when we feel faithless.

My faith was fairly solid through Jr. High and High School. I became really excited about Jesus in High School and began sharing my faith with my friends. Because there was skepticism in my family about the Bible and Jesus, I began reading apologetics, the study of reasons to believe that God exists, that the Bible is true and that Jesus was the Son of God. I began meeting with my youth pastor once a week for prayer, praying for revival.

And so when it came time to decide what to do for a career and for college, I wanted to go to a Bible college to get my Associate of Arts and get grounded in the world of God and then go on to a music school so that I could be a music minister.

But something happened at college. A strange thing to happen at a Bible college. Doubts started to seep in. I think that this is a natural thing to happen at this age as we question everything. This is one reason that a secular college can be hazardous to the spiritual health of a young adult. It is a questioning time and skeptical professors can lead people away from the faith. Suddenly the door was open to the possibility that maybe God didn’t exist. Maybe He hadn’t been real in my life.

This troubled me for awhile. And then I came into contact with the music of Michael Card and a song He wrote called “God’s own fool.”

It seems I’ve imagined him all of my life as the wisest of all mankind

But if God’s holy is wisdom is foolish to man, he must have seemed out of his mind

For even His family said He was mad and the priest said a demon’s to blame But God in the form of this angry young man could not have seemed perfectly sane.

We in our foolishness thought we were wise He played the fool and He opened our eyes

We in our weakness believed we were strong, He became helpless to show we were wrong

So we follow God’s own fool for only the foolish can tell.

Believe the unbelievable, come be a fool as well.

I had attempted to find God in intellectual pursuits… to grasp Him with my mind. And Michael Card reminded me that in order to come to Jesus, we must believe the unbelievable and become a fool.

God is faithful. He is even faithful when we are faithless.

Beginning with Verse 3”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.”

And continuing with verse 30.

“If his sons forsake My law

And do not walk in My judgments,

31. If they violate My statutes

And do not keep My commandments,

32. Then I will punish their transgression with the rod

And their iniquity with stripes.

33. “But I will not break off My loving mercy from him,

Nor deal falsely in My faithfulness.

34. “My covenant I will not violate,

Nor will I alter the utterance of My lips.

35. “Once I have sworn by My holiness;

I will not lie to David.

Romans 11:29 says for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. He swore by His holiness that He would not lie to David. That even if Israel would violate His laws and not keep His commandments He would not take back His promise that David’s throne would reign forever.

We know now that that promise was fulfilled when Jesus came.

But Ethan didn’t know and it seemed that God had forsaken His covenant even when He said that no matter what He wouldn’t. So after God declares He won’t revoke His covenant, Ethan replies:

But God…

You have cast off and rejected,

You have been full of wrath against Your anointed.

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.

Ethan saw the state of disrepair in Israel, the state of the crown, that they had fallen under the sword of God’s enemies and He said, “God you have turned back your covenant. You said that even if we broke your laws you wouldn’t forsake your covenant. But here we did and it seems like you have abandoned us. There is no king. How can there be an everlasting line of David if there is not king? We have broken relationship with you. And now you have broken relationship with us.”

Some of you today find yourself in the same place as Ethan and Israel. You have known the mercy of God as He saved you… saved you from your sin, but also showed mercy on you by protecting you from your choices as you lived your youth and adult life. He has been faithful to you, carrying you through faithlessness. He made a covenant with you and promised that He would not break it.

But in your heart you know that you have broken His law. Repeatedly. Purposely. You’ve felt yourself moving away from God. You began living your life on your own strength rather then relying on God. You’ve wondered and worried about your salvation, uncertain as to whether you would find yourself in heaven or hell if you were to die in your sleep or a car accident.

It is such a hopeless feeling. You feel imprisoned in yourself. Wanting to run back to God, but not wanting to give up fighting him. Fighting for the things that even though you know aren’t good for you you still want. There is a constant fight in you with the holy spirit. with your conscience. your stomach turns and you want to yell out for help. but that thing in you that wants all the things that aren’t good for you trap the voice and kept your relationship with god severed. hopelessness seeps in even more. until you feel like there is nothing anyone can do to help you. even though you know god could reach you and wanted to, it was too far to walk alone

You read verses like Hebrews 6:4 and worry that you have completely gone away from Christ.

“4It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance.”

If this is where you find yourself, you are in the company of Israel. In the company of Ethan. You have declared the glory of God. Known His faithfulness. Known His mercy. Heard His promise to you that He will keep you even in your faithlessnes. And yet you have found yourself breaking His law. Rejecting His relationship with you. And now you’ve found that it seems He has turned back His promise to save you.

It is time to join Ethan in prayer:

How long, O LORD ?

Will You hide Yourself forever?

Will Your wrath burn like fire?

Where is Your former loving mercy, O Lord,

Which You swore to David in Your faithfulness?

Blessed be the LORD forever!

I believe that God will not turn back from His covenant with you. Even in your faithlessness. If you are still worried about your relationship with Him then you are still under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, still aware of your sinfulness, still humble of your need for a savior. Hebrews 6 is describing those who do not feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit anymore.

But it is a horrible place to be to feel hopeless. And there are no quick fixes. There is something interesting about how this chapter ends. It ends with “Blessed be the Lord God forever” after a prayer of hopelessness that God would turn back. But this is a benediction that comes at the end of each of the 5 books of the Psalms. It may not be the ending of this psalm. This psalm may end in despair.

We can not take for granted God’s eternal covenant with us. If we turn away from him, harden our hearts, then we are going to feel the consequences. And coming back into right relationship is not a quick fix. We need to cry out to him. Ask him to remember.