Sermon Text: Psalm 85
Date: December 10, 2023
Event: The Second Sunday in Advent, Year B
Psalm 85 (EHV)
You showed favor to your land, O Lord.
You restored Jacob.
2You removed the guilt of your people.
You covered all their sin.
Interlude
3You put away all your wrath.
You turned from your burning anger.
4Restore us, O God who saves us.
Put an end to your indignation with us.
5Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you extend your anger through all generations?
6Will you not turn and revive us,
so that your people may rejoice in you?
7Show us your mercy, O Lord,
and give us your salvation.
8I will hear what the true God, the Lord, will say.
He indeed speaks peace to his people, to his favored ones,
but do not let them turn to foolish ways.
9Surely his salvation is near for those who fear him,
so that glory may dwell in our land.
10Mercy and truth meet together.
Righteousness and peace kiss each other.
11Truth springs up from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
12The Lord will indeed give good things,
and our land will yield its harvest.
13Righteousness walks in front of him.
It prepares the way for his footsteps.
Look to the Past for Strength for the Future
In our Sunday Morning Bible Class as we’ve been studying the life of Abraham, we’ve had numerous opportunities to see Abraham and those around him as examples for us. Sometimes they are positive examples—holding to your faith despite great challenges. Sometimes, the examples are negative—don’t follow this example as these people descended into sin. But as the Bible presents these people, positive things and flaws, they serve as both warnings and encouragements for us.
In Psalm 85, the sons of Korah have a similar goal: look to the past for strength for the future. And that is a wonderful Advent theme for us, because our preparation for Christmas and especially our Savior’s second coming hinges on God’s faithfulness in the past. And so, with joy, we look to the past and the future and, at the same time, find comfort in the present day.
It’s unclear when this psalm was written because most of its backward-looking is very general. We could see many different applications to God’s people from the time of the Exodus to the wandering in the wilderness to the times of trouble during the judges, to the unfaithfulness under most of the kings, to the exile by Babylon and then returning home after 70 years. Any of these could fit these verses: You showed favor to your land, O Lord. You restored Jacob. You removed the guilt of your people. You covered all their sin. You put away all your wrath. You turned from your burning anger.
Regardless of what era the psalm writer has in mind, the statements are true. God was routinely angry with his people for their sins, and yet had mercy on them and rescued them. His rescue was sometimes physical, delivering his people from the hands of their enemies, but it was always spiritual as he atoned for their sin by covering it in the blood of the promised Savior.
So, then, the psalm writer leads us to consider those truths as we consider present difficulties. Restore us, O God who saves us. Put an end to your indignation with us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you extend your anger through all generations? Will you not turn and revive us, so that your people may rejoice in you?
Will God deliver us? Will he rescue us? Well, what did he do in the past? He rescued his people from their troubles, and despite their faithlessness and sin, he remained faithful to them. He was true to his promises to be with them and rescue and forgive.
So, as the psalm writer asks questions he also answers them: I will hear what the true God, the Lord, will say. He indeed speaks peace to his people, to his favored ones, but do not let them turn to foolish ways. Will God be angry with us forever? No, because he speaks peace to his people.
We have a great example of God’s faithfulness and speaking peace in the Gospel this morning. John the Baptist’s preparation work for the Messiah was long-promised. We heard an early promise of John’s work in our First Reading this morning from Isaiah. More than 700 years before John and Jesus were born, God assured that the coming Savior would have a voice crying out to prepare the way before him.
In John, God fulfills that promise and uses his work to get the people’s hearts ready to hear Jesus’ teaching and, more importantly, to see the meaning behind his life, death, and resurrection that would happen in the coming years. God promised; God followed through; God is faithful.
And John’s message was one focused on forgiveness. His message was repentance, a turning away from sin and trusting God’s promise to save. John was preaching a message of law to people to get them to see their sins as serious. Still, he also proclaimed the beautiful gospel truths as he was able to point out Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of all of God’s promises—the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.
You and I are blessed in ways the writers of Psalm 85 were not. We know how God kept these promises in full. We know how he sent his only begotten Son to be our Savior. We know that the angel instructed that his name should be Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. We know the torment and torture of the cross and the victory of the empty tomb. We can look at God’s faithfulness and stand in awe of his goodness to us.
All of that addresses our now and our future. We might ask similar questions as the psalm writer did. Will God be angry with us forever? Will he punish us for our sins? Our guilty consciences really wonder this, or more, they try to convince us that the answer is yes, that there will be no end to God’s anger and wrath over what we’ve done and left undone. That our destiny is inescapably hell.
But our conscience is wrong. God is greater than what we know by nature and what we feel in our hearts. Yes, we’ve sinned, yes, we’ve brought God’s wrath on our heads, and yes, we do truly deserve hell for not being the perfect people that God demands us to be. But Jesus took our place. His blood shed on the cross covers those sins, making atonement for us so that we have nothing to hide. Our sins are gone, and there is no anger at us left in God because Jesus took it all on himself. He has completely saved us.
That’s exactly what God had promised to do, and that’s exactly what he did. While that is certainly the biggest promise God has made, it’s not the only promise he’s made to us. He’s promised us things that are very important in the here and now: he will work all things in our life out for our eternal good, he will continue to pray and plead for us, he will guard our coming and going, he will never leave us nor forsake us, but will be with us always to the end of the present age. And when this age ends, he will bring us to himself in heaven because he has removed our sins and loves us.
When it doesn’t feel like those promises are being kept, go back and look at God’s track record. How did he do in the lead-up to Jesus’ first advent? Was he faithful to his promises? Was he faithful even when it might not have looked or felt like he was? Most assuredly yes. If God was faithful to this global promise to send a Savior, can he keep these relatively smaller, personal promises? He who didn’t spare his Son—how could he not give us every good thing?
Look to the past for strength for the future. God perfectly keeps his promises. We’ll see that in the coming weeks as we rejoice in John the Baptist’s work and eventually celebrate the birth of our Savior. God is trustworthy. He will keep his promises. He will not leave you alone. Lean on him, now and forever.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Amen.
