Yesterday morning, on the way to Parkrun, a bird came right down under my car. I had no time to stop. I felt it go under the wheel. I looked back in the rearview mirror and saw it on the ground, and then two of his friends came down and checked on the poor squashed thing. It affected me more than I thought it should. Why did that happen? I felt really bad about that.
Unexpected and troubling things happen all the time. Your boyfriend might have broken up with you. You failed that maths test. Your job fell through. You got that terrible medical report. Someone you know has died.
We live in a broken world, and so when we look around, we see trouble and strife all around us.
Job 5:7 says
Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.When things feel terrible, when everything has been kicked from under your feet, where can you land? What is something rock-solid that you and put your life on?
Now, given the context of this room, the Sunday school right answer here feels like you should say “God”. God is who we can trust through thick and thin. After all, He is almighty, He is powerful, He is loving, right?
But in our troubles, what happens when what we see around us doesn’t align with what we know about God? Or to put it another way: What happens when it feels like God has failed you?
Have you ever felt that? Or have you ever felt that and then thought that you’re not allowed to feel that, and so you are left feeling that God has failed you and also guilty for thinking it.
Suffering
The existence of suffering has always been in tension with the existence of God. One of the oldest books in the Bible, Job, is about this very thing.
But about 300 years before Epicurus we have Ethan the Ezrahite. He is facing a similar dilemma with the true God. He knows God is faithful and powerful, and yet it seems like God’s promises have failed. God said He would keep someone on the throne from the line of David, and yet, when Ethan looks around, with their nation being smashed, it seems like God is not keeping His word.
Ethan’s problem is: if God is faithful and powerful, why does it look like His promises are broken?
For the last two weeks we have been looking at Psalm 89 by this Ethan the Ezrahite. He has been recalling how great God’s love is, how God is mighty and faithful and how He has made eternal promises to David. But now, in the last third of his Psalm, the tone has changed.
Accusations
Almost out of nowhere, Ethan’s praises to God turn into accusations against God.But you have rejected, you have spurned,After saying how loving and mighty and faithful God is, Ethan tells God that He has not looked after His King or His nation. He has rejected and spurned the anointed one - the king. The crown is dirty and defiled, and his buildings are in ruins.
you have been very angry with your anointed one.
You have renounced the covenant with your servant
and have defiled his crown in the dust.
You have broken through all his walls
and reduced his strongholds to ruins. (Psalm 89:38–40 NIV)
He tells God, “You have renounced the covenant”. Those are fighting words. Like the walls that have been broken, God’s promises also lie in ruin.
Has God lied? Has God failed to keep His word? Is that even possible? Are you allowed to think this?
At this point in time, Ethan is seeing disaster come to his nation, and he doesn’t know what is going on. Yes, from last week, there is a discipline that God is doing to this nation, but this is not what he thought it would look like. God, after all, said someone would always be on the throne, but now there isn’t. What has happened?
The psalmist believed God’s promises, but he now faces a historical reality that contradicts his beliefs. (Psalms, Volume 2 The Faithfulness of God Questioned (89:38–51))
The place is in ruin. There is no king on the throne and God, you promised. What is going on here?
And this is only the beginning of the complaint.
All who pass by have plundered him;
he has become the scorn of his neighbors.
You have exalted the right hand of his foes;
you have made all his enemies rejoice.
Indeed, you have turned back the edge of his sword
and have not supported him in battle.
You have put an end to his splendor
and cast his throne to the ground.
You have cut short the days of his youth;
you have covered him with a mantle of shame. (Psalm 89:41–45 NIV)
He says: You, you, you, a dozen times: you, Lord, you who made all these promises, you who stressed how solid and permanent they were—it is you, of all people, who have now broken your word. (The Message of Psalms: Songs for the People of God 6. The Terrible God and His Contradictions (vv. 38–51))
God has stopped supporting the King in battle. He has allowed their enemies to rejoice because of their victory over them.
The king, and by extension the kingdom, is covered in shame. This is the opposite of what everyone thought would happen.
But now, about 400 years after the promises God made to David, the capital, Jerusalem, was destroyed and the people in charge deported out of the land in 587 B.C.E. (The Book of Psalms Psalm 89: A History Lesson for God)
The original plan for Israel was to be a blessing to all nations, but they struggled to do that. Instead of trusting in God Himself, they used the external signs of God’s promises, like the monarchy or their temple, to make them feel safe and secure over other nations. They thought they were better than the nations, not a blessing to the nations.
So God disciplined them. He removed these signs they trusted in. God did this so that His people would come back to trusting Him. God always wanted to be in relationship with the people of Israel. He had great love for them, but their outward symbols became the things the people were putting their trust in, and not God.
When all of this happened, Israel had to face the fact that their monarchy, along with the temple, was no more. They had the promises of God on one hand, and in the other, they had to make sense of what was going on around them.
God has stopped supporting the King in battle. He has allowed their enemies to rejoice because of their victory over them.
The king, and by extension the kingdom, is covered in shame. This is the opposite of what everyone thought would happen.
But now, about 400 years after the promises God made to David, the capital, Jerusalem, was destroyed and the people in charge deported out of the land in 587 B.C.E. (The Book of Psalms Psalm 89: A History Lesson for God)
The original plan for Israel was to be a blessing to all nations, but they struggled to do that. Instead of trusting in God Himself, they used the external signs of God’s promises, like the monarchy or their temple, to make them feel safe and secure over other nations. They thought they were better than the nations, not a blessing to the nations.
So God disciplined them. He removed these signs they trusted in. God did this so that His people would come back to trusting Him. God always wanted to be in relationship with the people of Israel. He had great love for them, but their outward symbols became the things the people were putting their trust in, and not God.
When all of this happened, Israel had to face the fact that their monarchy, along with the temple, was no more. They had the promises of God on one hand, and in the other, they had to make sense of what was going on around them.
Questions
This left the nation with questions that Ethan articulates. Ethan cries out for God to remember them. His accusations turn to questions of God. (The Book of Psalms Psalm 89: A History Lesson for God)How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?Ethan wants to know what God is doing. Sometimes wouldn’t you like to know what God is doing in this world?
How long will your wrath burn like fire?
Remember how fleeting is my life.
For what futility you have created all humanity!
Who can live and not see death,
or who can escape the power of the grave?
Lord, where is your former great love,
which in your faithfulness you swore to David?
Remember, Lord, how your servant has been mocked,
how I bear in my heart the taunts of all the nations,
the taunts with which your enemies, Lord, have mocked,
with which they have mocked every step of your anointed one. (Psalm 89:46–51 NIV)
In Lanyon High CEIS, we asked the kids, “What is one question you would like to ask Jesus?” One kid said he wanted to know what his life would be like in 10 years. Another would ask Jesus, “When will you come back?” It would be great to know that. Those are great questions.
Ethan asks, how long will it take you, God, to remember what You have said? Life is short and hard. Enough is enough. Why must the nation die in exile?
Ethan’s questions ask deep and troubling things. Where has God’s great love gone? God had made promises to David, but it seems almost unbelievable that God has broken His promise.
Armchairs and wheelchairs
The armchair questions are good. They can prepare you for the suffering. An armchair answer to Ethan about what he is going through could be that God’s love had not changed; it was Israel’s love for the Lord that had waned. Like any good parent, God shows His love to His children either by blessing their obedience or disciplining them for their disobedience but God still loved them. (Be Worshipful God’s Faithfulness Will Never Cease—Wait for Him (vv. 46–52))
But that objective fact doesn’t remove the pain of Ethan in the wheelchair. Ethan is receiving mockery and taunts; surely this is not part of the process?
And before we look at the last line of this Psalm, we need to realise that there is no answer from God here. There is no resolve. Nothing at the end of this Psalm might reduce the tension between God’s promises made and their present circumstances.
And sometimes in life it can feel this way. We are not privy to everything going on in the realm of the universe. And we might not ever get a resolution for why things are currently happening around us. And yet there still is one more line for us.
Praise
The last line feels like a strange ending to this Psalm. It goesPraise be to the Lord forever!That feels out of place, doesn’t it? Most commentators think that this was inserted afterwards by those who collated the Psalms together to mark the end of Book 3.
Amen and Amen. (Psalm 89:52 NIV)
So this then might raise the questions: why did they include this line, or even this whole Psalm, in their book?
Did the editors start reading the top and think it was nice and didn’t get to the end where it accuses God of breaking His promises? Or did they read the whole thing, and thought it ended too sad, so they added an upbeat note?
The editors must have been aware of what they were doing in adding this voice of praise at the end of the lament (Psalms, Volume 2 The Final Doxology (89:52))
Psalms as a whole is broken into five books, or perhaps you could call them albums as they are a collection of songs. Book 1 is about the covenant with David. Book 2 ended with the transfer of the covenant to Solomon, and at the end of Book 3 the covenant with David seems to have been terminated. (The Book of Psalms & The Book of Proverbs Commentary)
And so, it is worth noting that Psalms doesn’t end here. There are still two more books to go. After hitting rock bottom, there is still more in the story. And sometimes it can be helpful to know where we are in the timeline. But while we are going through hard times, that might seem like a small comfort knowing we are only at the end of Book 3 and there is more to come.
But it can be good to know, as with how our world is made, that springtime always follows winter and that daybreak always comes after the darkness of night.
This added ending reminds us that God is worthy even when his people are conflicted in their experience of him. (Psalms, Volume 2 The Final Doxology (89:52))
No matter how much we suffer because of the sins of others, and no matter how perplexed we may be at the workings of the Lord, it is still possible to say “I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever” (Ps 89:1) even when it is hard. (Be Worshipful God’s Faithfulness Will Never Cease—Wait for Him (vv. 46–52))
That’s the way of trust—faith in the faithfulness of the Lord. (Be Worshipful God’s Faithfulness Will Never Cease—Wait for Him (vv. 46–52))
Can God break His promises?
It may feel like you can’t even ask such a thing of God, but if you have the question, ask it anyway. Give it to God. Ask Him.
You might meet someone who has these questions. How might you answer someone like Ethan who as struggleing to see God’s promises when it comes to suffering?
If someone is asking from a position of comfort from an armchair, you could point out that God did keep His promise to Israel. There is someone from the line of David on the throne ruling over all things. This King knows the human condition first-hand. It’s Jesus. He came to earth, experienced troubles, sickness, the death of friends, and suffered Himself at the hands of the state, who condemned Him to death. He was the mocked anointed one. He knows suffering on Earth, and He is ruling over all things, now and forever. He has experienced and overcome all suffering, and He promises to come back and remove it all. So there is suffering now, but it has been dealt with, and ultimately it will all be removed.
But what about someone who asks the same question of suffering from a wheelchair? Their questions are more personal, less abstract? Like Ethan, I think we shouldn’t be too quick to resolve the tension with some quick answer. We should struggle with the pain and the grief, and in our struggle we can do what Ethan did, which is to take the complaint to God. He is big enough to take it.
In my garden, sometimes when digging up weeds to make the place look better, I move a rock only to discover that I have upended a whole colony of ants. They come out in complaint of me turning their whole city upside down. To the ants, this is a massive problem for them, so they let me know, and I can take their complaint. God can take ours too. When our whole world has been turned upside down, He will hear us, and He is not like some disinterested gardener towards us. He knows what it is like to be there, and He is working and has a plan that we might have no idea about, but He loves His creation and has promised to restore it.
And so for those who are suffering, it is good to know that God has kept His promises and will keep His promises. Jesus is on the throne. History is in His hands. Knowing who God is, like what Ethan recalls, helps us take our troubles to God.
Sometimes because of suffering you hear people walk away from God. And in one sense, you kinda can understand it. In our Psalm, Ethan is suffering and walks towards God. He recalls what He knows of God and then lays his troubled heart at His feet. He sees the mess around him and gives his confusion, frustration and anger to God. Through all this, God knows what is going on, and we do not. But we can go to Him and talk to Him about it.
And that really is the best option. If you stop believing in God’s existence or His goodness because of suffering, you are saying that there is no one on the throne, or there is no one above that cares. This means history isn’t going anywhere; this world is full of random chance, it is meaningless and heading to nothing, and after all of that, your suffering is still there. Walking away from God doesn’t remove the troubles you are in.
I have lived a privileged life, and I really haven’t suffered that much. But in 2015, Hannah and I had a baby at 20 weeks die. There was nothing good about that. What was going on there? Why did our little David die? We got an autopsy report that goes for 20 pages; it lists a whole bunch of things he didn’t die from, but they couldn’t say why he died.
In that season, it wasn’t fun. It was a mess, but I still knew that God was on the throne, sovereignly ruling over all things. I knew that Jesus had walked out of the tomb and defeated death, and one day there will be no more tears. And yet, we are currently living in the mess, before all things will be made right. And so in the real life time of now, there is suffering. As Christians, we don’t just skate over this earth and not fall over or bump our knees. There is pain and suffering and death. And God is ruling over all things. How do we mesh this together?
A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” (Knowledge of the Holy). How do we respond when things don’t go how we think they should? What things do we put our trust in that aren’t God, so when it is taken away, our world crumbles. Healthy? Family? Money?
Before trouble comes, stock up on the promises of God. See that He is a loving Father, see that He makes eternal promises to His children. See that the Son of David is in control and that one day, the resurrected life will come down to us in the new heavens and the new earth.
But if you are in the trenches, if you feel face down in the mud trying to breathe. Know that God is there, and you can cry out to Him. Go to Him and not away from Him. Take it to Him. Pray openly and honestly with what you see while also leaning on what you know about God.
So that even in our troubles we can walk towards God, and not away, we can remember that we are not at the end of the story and so we can still say:
Psalms as a whole is broken into five books, or perhaps you could call them albums as they are a collection of songs. Book 1 is about the covenant with David. Book 2 ended with the transfer of the covenant to Solomon, and at the end of Book 3 the covenant with David seems to have been terminated. (The Book of Psalms & The Book of Proverbs Commentary)
And so, it is worth noting that Psalms doesn’t end here. There are still two more books to go. After hitting rock bottom, there is still more in the story. And sometimes it can be helpful to know where we are in the timeline. But while we are going through hard times, that might seem like a small comfort knowing we are only at the end of Book 3 and there is more to come.
But it can be good to know, as with how our world is made, that springtime always follows winter and that daybreak always comes after the darkness of night.
This added ending reminds us that God is worthy even when his people are conflicted in their experience of him. (Psalms, Volume 2 The Final Doxology (89:52))
No matter how much we suffer because of the sins of others, and no matter how perplexed we may be at the workings of the Lord, it is still possible to say “I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever” (Ps 89:1) even when it is hard. (Be Worshipful God’s Faithfulness Will Never Cease—Wait for Him (vv. 46–52))
That’s the way of trust—faith in the faithfulness of the Lord. (Be Worshipful God’s Faithfulness Will Never Cease—Wait for Him (vv. 46–52))
Now
So what about us now? This Psalm names our deepest fears and asks the most frightening questions. (The Book of Psalms Psalm 89: A History Lesson for God)Can God break His promises?
It may feel like you can’t even ask such a thing of God, but if you have the question, ask it anyway. Give it to God. Ask Him.
You might meet someone who has these questions. How might you answer someone like Ethan who as struggleing to see God’s promises when it comes to suffering?
If someone is asking from a position of comfort from an armchair, you could point out that God did keep His promise to Israel. There is someone from the line of David on the throne ruling over all things. This King knows the human condition first-hand. It’s Jesus. He came to earth, experienced troubles, sickness, the death of friends, and suffered Himself at the hands of the state, who condemned Him to death. He was the mocked anointed one. He knows suffering on Earth, and He is ruling over all things, now and forever. He has experienced and overcome all suffering, and He promises to come back and remove it all. So there is suffering now, but it has been dealt with, and ultimately it will all be removed.
But what about someone who asks the same question of suffering from a wheelchair? Their questions are more personal, less abstract? Like Ethan, I think we shouldn’t be too quick to resolve the tension with some quick answer. We should struggle with the pain and the grief, and in our struggle we can do what Ethan did, which is to take the complaint to God. He is big enough to take it.
In my garden, sometimes when digging up weeds to make the place look better, I move a rock only to discover that I have upended a whole colony of ants. They come out in complaint of me turning their whole city upside down. To the ants, this is a massive problem for them, so they let me know, and I can take their complaint. God can take ours too. When our whole world has been turned upside down, He will hear us, and He is not like some disinterested gardener towards us. He knows what it is like to be there, and He is working and has a plan that we might have no idea about, but He loves His creation and has promised to restore it.
And so for those who are suffering, it is good to know that God has kept His promises and will keep His promises. Jesus is on the throne. History is in His hands. Knowing who God is, like what Ethan recalls, helps us take our troubles to God.
Sometimes because of suffering you hear people walk away from God. And in one sense, you kinda can understand it. In our Psalm, Ethan is suffering and walks towards God. He recalls what He knows of God and then lays his troubled heart at His feet. He sees the mess around him and gives his confusion, frustration and anger to God. Through all this, God knows what is going on, and we do not. But we can go to Him and talk to Him about it.
And that really is the best option. If you stop believing in God’s existence or His goodness because of suffering, you are saying that there is no one on the throne, or there is no one above that cares. This means history isn’t going anywhere; this world is full of random chance, it is meaningless and heading to nothing, and after all of that, your suffering is still there. Walking away from God doesn’t remove the troubles you are in.
I have lived a privileged life, and I really haven’t suffered that much. But in 2015, Hannah and I had a baby at 20 weeks die. There was nothing good about that. What was going on there? Why did our little David die? We got an autopsy report that goes for 20 pages; it lists a whole bunch of things he didn’t die from, but they couldn’t say why he died.
In that season, it wasn’t fun. It was a mess, but I still knew that God was on the throne, sovereignly ruling over all things. I knew that Jesus had walked out of the tomb and defeated death, and one day there will be no more tears. And yet, we are currently living in the mess, before all things will be made right. And so in the real life time of now, there is suffering. As Christians, we don’t just skate over this earth and not fall over or bump our knees. There is pain and suffering and death. And God is ruling over all things. How do we mesh this together?
Before trouble comes, stock up on the promises of God. See that He is a loving Father, see that He makes eternal promises to His children. See that the Son of David is in control and that one day, the resurrected life will come down to us in the new heavens and the new earth.
But if you are in the trenches, if you feel face down in the mud trying to breathe. Know that God is there, and you can cry out to Him. Go to Him and not away from Him. Take it to Him. Pray openly and honestly with what you see while also leaning on what you know about God.
So that even in our troubles we can walk towards God, and not away, we can remember that we are not at the end of the story and so we can still say:
Praise be to the Lord forever!
Amen and Amen. (Psalm 89:52 NIV)
Almighty and merciful God,when your face is hidden and troubles surround us,give us grace to draw near to your steadfast love rather than turn away in doubt.Renew our confidence in your unfailing promises,and look with hope to your sure salvation.Uphold us in every trial by your words of promise and the means of prayer,so that we may find our refuge in you alone;through Jesus Christ our Lord,who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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