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Psalm 89:1-2   I will sing of the LORD’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.  I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have established your faithfulness in  heaven itself. 

Like several other psalms, this Psalm wrestles with the question of God’s ‘strange’ providence. The LORD is the only true God, and as the Almighty Creator of everything that exists he is clearly in full control over everything he has made (5-18).

This same LORD God has established a covenant with his people, an everlasting Covenant that cannot be broken – not even by the sin and disobedience of the people with whom it is established (19-37)!

In the light of these two unchangeable truths, why is it that throughout history his covenant people have so often been in such dire circumstances, suffering defeat and humiliation at the hand of their (and therefore God’s) enemies (38-48)?  The psalmist, Ethan, can’t answer this question fully, but he does have a firm basis on which to deal with it: the conjunction of God’s ‘great love’ (‘cheséd’) and his ‘faithfulness’ (‘amunah’).   There is no single English word to cover everything that the Hebrew word ‘cheséd’ involves, and other English translations use ‘(tender) mercy’, ‘lovingkindness’, etc.  There are at least 20 places in the Book of Psalms where ‘cheséd’ and ‘amunah’ occur in the same verse (cf Psalm 89:14, 33, 49), and many others where they occur in adjoining verses.  The one thing of which Ethan is absolutely certain is that, regardless of whatever might happen, regardless of the inexplicable twists and turns in God’s providence, his ‘love/mercy’ ‘stands firm for ever’ and his ‘faithfulness’ is ‘established … in heaven itself’.  They are an essential part of our God-in-heaven’s character – without them he ceases to be the God we know.

This is why the apostle John can make the claim: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8, 16).  The people of God today, his Church, can take great comfort in these truths.  

Moreover, at the very heart of the Covenant is his ‘anointed king’, or ‘Messiah’, David, and the language of the ‘Messianic’ psalms like this one looks beyond the son of Jesse to his descendant Jesus.  Jesus is the true ‘Messiah’ (ie ‘Christ’) of whom David is only a shadow.  God’s forever-unchanging love/mercy and faithfulness are demonstrated supremely in Jesus; let us never be discouraged by the way our hostile world is flouting God’s Word and mocking the truths of his Gospel.  The ultimate victory belongs to Jesus.  “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or … …? … … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:35, 37)   Hallelujah!

– Bruce Christian