When Promises Seem Silent

All right, Psalm 89, a masculine of Ethan the Ezraite. And I may be pronouncing some of these words wrong, so forgive me. But, I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever.

With my mouth, I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. For I've said, steadfast love will be built up forever. In the heavens, you established your faithfulness.

You have said, I've made a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to David, my servant. His seed, I will establish forever and build up his throne for all generations.

Selah. And the heavens will praise your wonders, O Lord. Your faithfulness too in the assembly of the saints.

For who in the heavens can be compared to the Lord? Who is like the Lord among the heavenly beings? God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be held in reverence by all those around him. O Lord, God of hosts, who is mighty like you? O Lord, your faithfulness also surrounds you. You rule the raging of the sea.

When its waves mount up, you still them. You crush Rahab like a carcass. You scatter your enemies with your mighty arm.

The heavens are yours. Yours also the earth. You established the earth and all that is in it.

You created the north and the south. To Warren Herman, sing for joy at your name. Your hand is endued with power.

Your hand's strong. Your right hand exalted. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne.

Steadfast love and faithfulness go before you. Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance. In your name, they rejoice all day long.

And in your righteousness, they are exalted. For you are the glory of their strength. And in your favor, by your favor, our horn is exalted.

For our shield belongs to the Lord, our king, to the Holy One of Israel. Of old, you spoke in a vision to your godly one and said, I have granted help to one who is mighty. I've exalted one chosen from the people.

I found my servant David with my holy oil. I have anointed him with whom my hand shall be established. My arm shall strengthen him.

The enemy shall not outwit him, nor the sons of wickedness afflict him. I will crush his foes before his face and strike down those who hate him. But my faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him.

And in my name, and in my name, his horn shall be exalted. Also, I will set his hand over the seas and his right hand over the rivers. He shall cry to me, you are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.

Also, I'll make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him. Also, a seed I shall make to endure forever in his throne as the days of heavens.

If his sons forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they break my statues and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their sin with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my love and kindness I will not utterly take from him, nor cause my faithfulness to fail. My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has gone out from my mouth.

Once I've sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His seed shall endure forever in his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established forever like the moon, a faithful witness in the sky, Selah.

But now you have cast off and rejected. You're full of wrath against your anointed. You renounce the covenant with your servant.

You have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls. You've laid his strongholds in ruins.

All who pass by plunder him. He has become the scorn of his neighbors. You've exalted the right hand of his foes.

You've made all his enemies rejoice. You've also turned back the edge of his sword and have not made him stand in battle. You've made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground.

You've cut short the days of his youth. You've covered him with shame. Selah.

How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? Remember how short my time is. For what vanity you have created all the children of man. What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah.

Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which the mock, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed. Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and amen.

Well, the men are going to come pass out the bread and the drink, and you are welcome to partake with us if you're a believer. You've obeyed Christ's command to be baptized and publicly identify with his church. Now, that was a long psalm.

When did, at what point, David is, Ethan is saying God is faithful, faithful, faithful, right? Steadfast love. What verse does Ethan, in a way, change? His perspective, or he starts to wrestle with something. What verse? Say it a little louder.

38. And if you look at verse 33 to 34, he's reminding himself of all these truths. I will not violate my covenant.

Notice that? 34. I will not violate my covenant. But then look what Ethan says in verse 39.

What's he say? You have renounced the covenant with your servant. You have defiled his crown in the dust. And what's this covenant all about? If you look up at verse 29, I will establish his offspring forever and his throne is the days of heaven, of the heavens.

So here Ethan is, which Ethan is mentioned in the Bible. Who knows when Ethan is brought up in the Bible? He's brought up there. The Bible is going to talk about a certain man.

And in order to explain who this man is, it brings in Ethan. Who does he get brought up in discussion with? Solomon. Right? To talk about the wisdom of Solomon, there's a comparison to Ethan, meaning Ethan was a very wise man and Solomon is even wiser than Ethan is.

And so Ethan is recording all of this. We can't pinpoint the exact time, but it seems like what's happened. It seems like the lineage of David is completely been destroyed and it almost appears as if God has renounced the covenant with his servant.

I say that's what it appears like had happened. Now, can you think of any time, were there times like that in the Old Testament where, you know, say you have like 10 kids and then nine of them die and then one of them's alive and you kind of get whittled down to where you have one person left in the lineage of a family in David's line. That happened multiple times.

I mean, listen to, I had to write this down to try to get it all right, but listen to this. This is amazing how God, God did fulfill his covenant. God did keep his covenant.

Ethan is saying right there, you have renounced the covenant with your servant. I mean, you read that and you think, did God renounce the covenant with his servant? The Lord did not. In 2nd Chronicles, Jehoram, to secure the throne, murdered all six of his own brothers.

Thus, the only branch left for the line was his own sons. Then seven years later, raiders came and carried off all of Jehoram's son, so that only one was left. Ahaziah, 2nd Chronicles 21.

So the whole, the whole line hung upon one surviving child. Right? And God's made a covenant with David that even when his sons do disobey, what's the, what did it say in the text? He's going to discipline them, right? Verse 30, if his children forsake my law, he's going to, he's going to discipline them with the rod. Verse 32 mentions that.

Where is that? So only Ahaziah survives Jehoram's sons. After Ahaziah is killed, only Joash survives Ahaziah's sons. You catch this? So each time the covenant line is killed back to one person remaining.

Not this great, you know, this great plurality of people that could possibly carry on David's line, but one individual is left. And God preserves that life. First it was the full-grown keen Ahaziah, and then a hidden baby Joash.

Then in 701, an Assyrian siege was looming, and Hezekiah has a terminal illness. And what did Hezekiah not have? He had no heir. He had no heir.

And what happened? God granted Hezekiah 15 more years. And what happened during those 15 more years? Who was born? Manasseh. Manasseh was born in Hezekiah.

So you see, it's interesting. Ethan is witnessing at some point, obviously it's after Solomon's day, he was compared to Solomon. So this isn't during Absalom's rebellion when he wrote Psalm 89.

It comes at a later point. I mean, Ethan is facing what we can face as a Christian sometimes. God, these are your promises.

And it almost feels like there's a disconnect. Is it going to be fulfilled? To the point where he's remembering in verse 33 that you will not, or verse 34, you will not violate your covenant. But then he says in verse 39, you have renounced the covenant with your servant.

So he's hearing the Lord has said this, but is this actually being fulfilled? And we get the glorious reality to be here. You know what tells us this has been fulfilled and that there was always a line in the son of David? The fact that we have these elements right here right now, right? Because this points to the ultimate fulfillment of David's son, ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ, seated upon the throne. Another example, this is the Old Testament.

Jehoiachin was in a foreign prison. He was the last legitimate king. He's chained and he's childless, childless, like Hezekiah, no heir to the throne.

And yet he gets freed. He's granted a stipend and he fathers a son. Isn't that amazing? So God, even in the midst of Babylon, taking Israel and quarantining them and being used by God as a judgment, God was able to always keep one male child alive upon the line all the way through.

And the Lord did keep his covenant. Whatever, Ethan, fear was right here, it didn't happen. God was at, I say fear because, you know, 39, is he dogmatically saying you've renounced the covenant with your servant? I mean, that's how he sounds right there in the moment.

But, you know, some would take it. He's just kind of wrestling with this fear that that's what's happened, that he's not in total disbelief. So a single son survived, right? All the way until the one son that mattered, right? The one son who could come and purge away all of our sin is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's what we have in these symbols right here. This is, let this remind you of the razor thin edge of provision that God kept to keep one of the sons alive all the way to the point of Jesus Christ. And then the beauty of the gospel is that son had to die.

He had to not stay alive. He had to actually die in our place. And so there might be areas in your Christian life where experience at times, it seems to contradict the promise.

I mean, that's what you have in Psalm 89. The experience of what they were going through seemed to contradict. You've ever had that happen? Your experience feels like God's promises are not being proven true in your life.

Psalm 89, God's promises were proven true. We've got these symbols right here to remember the fact that David's son, he is seated on the throne right now. The Lord Jesus, you know, even when Jesus was born, what happened? All these infants here had all these infants slain.

And yet one, that one son of David survived. All of that, Christ was not taken out then. He survived.

And so it's amazing if you consider the Old Testament, all the razor thin survivals of these different male children, even God giving men longer life to have a male child just in order to fulfill his word. And so we can remember we have a God who even if you don't experience his promises as being true today, the problem is not with God. It's our ability to interpret what God is doing in our life.

And so, brethren, we want to eat this in remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Especially, you know, what if you are like Ethan, wrestling with God's promises in your life? I mean, even in our own unbelief, it's a beautiful thing that we can remember that Christ has shed his blood that cleanses of all sin. Father, Lord, we do thank you for being a God who always keeps his promises.

Lord, we look at the other kingdom, the divided kingdom there, and they don't have perpetual heirs. They don't have that. Lord, they've got the line ending here and there and everywhere.

But Lord, with David, you kept your covenant promises. Lord, you are a God who keeps your word. And Lord, we've seen that in your son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Father, would you help us to love your son in a greater way? Lord, would you?