Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Seeing Through the Fog | The Writings | Psalm 89

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

When life gets foggy, are you tempted to give up? Is God still good during a season of suffering? Will God be faithful? In today's episode, Jensen shares how David's prayer in Psalm 89 reminds us of our hope on the other side of the fog. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 89

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. In 1952, Florence Chadwick attempted to swim the channel between the coast of California and Catalina Island. It was a 26-mile journey, but she only made it 25 of those miles. You see, after swimming around for about 15 hours, a deep fog set in around her. She couldn't see where she was going. She didn't know how far she had left, and as she grew tired and didn't know how much longer it would take, she gave up, and she got in the boat that traveled alongside her.

She only had one mile left. But because of the fog, because of the circumstances surrounding her, she lost sight of the shoreline, and she let it cloud her judgment, her motivation, her confidence, and she gave in. I think that oftentimes my faith in Jesus has looked similar to this. When things are sunny, when I can clearly see the goodness of God, the way that God is at work, growing me, building his kingdom, bringing blessing into my life and the lives of others, it's in those times that I feel energized to follow him,

to obey him, to trust in him. But when the clouds come in, when I can't see him clearly, when he seems far off, when it doesn't seem like he is who he says, he is, when things are difficult and I face the fog of depression, anxiety, illness, loss, injustice, evil, well, it's in those moments that I wonder if he is truly good. I doubt his promises. I doubt his character. I lose sight of who God is and I don't know if I have the motivation to keep going, to keep serving, to keep building his kingdom of love, justice, and mercy. A quick Google search.

will tell you that many, many people are asking the question, why does God let bad things happen to good people? That very question exposes something that we believe about God and ourselves. We believe that God promises a good life to good people. We believe that a good life means an easy, blessing-filled, difficulty-free life. And we believe that if we believe in him and do the right things, we deserve the good life. Now, it makes sense why the prosperity gospel of false belief that the Bible promises good things in this life, like blessings and riches and health to good people. People who do and say and believe the right things, it makes sense that that false gospel is so prevalent today. It just makes sense to us. But then it follows that it also makes sense why

when bad, horrible, tragic things happen, people wonder, where was God? If we expect good things for being faithful, then when bad things happen, despite our belief in God, despite our quote-unquote clean record, we begin to question his promises, question his goodness. The fogginess of life keeps us from trusting in God. But what if we are very, very wrong? What if the good life isn't what we think, think? And what if God's promises to bless his people mean something entirely different than what we've been led to believe? See, our psalmist today in Psalms chapter 89 faced this same dilemma that we often face. If you've read it already, you know that chapter 89 is a long one. We can't possibly read the whole thing, so I want to give an overview of the different sections that we see in this

Psalm. So first, our psalmist reminds us of the promise that God made to King David. You, that's God, you have said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to David my servant, I will establish your offspring forever and build your throne for all generations. So if you've been listening and reading along with us this year, then you may remember the context of this promise. You see, God made a covenant with David, the king of Israel. It was a promise to preserve his line, his throne forever. It was a promise that the nation of Israel held fast to. It encouraged them and comforted them to know that God was with them, that he would protect them, that he had promised that David's line would never end. From his line would come a king who would establish a

kingdom that lasted forever that ruled over all of the nations. And as the psalmist recounts this promise, he's moved. He's moved to worship God in the next section. Verses 5 through 18 is full of beautiful imagery and poetic language describing the might and majesty and magnificence of their God. the one who made this promise to them. And this section of worship and awe is sandwiched in between another section, going back to and recounting in more detail the promises that God made to David about that forever kingdom that he would make from his line. My hand shall be established with him. I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. The psalmist reminds us that God has said, if his children forsake my law and do not walk according

to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. But I will not remove from him my steadfast love, or be false to my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter the words that went forth from my lips. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness. I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever. His throne, as long as the sun before me like the moon, it shall be established forever. A faithful witness in the skies. So the psalmist is remembering that God has promised to be faithful, no matter what, he will fulfill this promise. But in the next verse we shift to a new section. See, verses 38 to 45 recount the psalmist's dismay that God has rejected his people.

Verse 39 says this, you have renounced the covenant with your servant. You have defiled his crown in the dust. And he goes on to give evidence for why he believes this. What he describes is the fall of Jerusalem, the fall of the king and of the temple of God. The people are taken into exile. Their nation decimated. No king sits on the throne. The fog is settling in. And in verses 46 to 51, the psalmist cries out to God, how long, O Lord, will you hide yourself forever? Where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? See, there was no king on the throne that God promised would endure forever.

The king, God promised to make higher than all the kings of the earth, had been dragged into exile. This is the moment where the fog takes over. The darkness and murkiness of the world is clouding the vision of his people. They know the promises of God, but they cannot see how they could be true anymore. more. Will they give up? Will they lose trust? Will they call their God unfaithful? Verse 52. Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and amen. You see, book three of the Psalms is closed with a praise.

Blessed be the Lord forever. No matter the circumstances, no matter the fog, no matter what it looks like today, forever we will bless the Lord. The word Lord in this verse is capital L-O-R-D. which signifies that this is not just a title, but the name of God that he gave to his people all the way back in Exodus. It's a reminder of who God is. He is Yahweh. He is the great I am. He is who he is. He is unchanging, steadfast, good. He's the great rescuer of his people. He's the one who promised Abraham to be a great nation, to have a promised land. He's the one who delivered his people out of Egypt. He's the one who gave them the promised land, he was faithful, even when it happened in unexpected ways. Despite verses 38 to 45, despite crying out that God has forsaken his covenant, the ark of this psalm tells us the psalmist is not

accusing God of being unfaithful, but reminding his heart to remember what is beyond the fog, to remember who God is, to remember that despite what it looks like, God is always faithful. God is always faithful. And he was. See, many, many years later, in Matthew 1, we read that God preserved the line of David, that throughout the exile, his descendant Zarubabel returned to the promised land as governor, and his children had children who had children. See, the line of David it endured until eventually a baby named Jesus was born into the line of David. That baby, fully human, fully God was born in a manger. He never sat on a physical throne here on earth, though he claimed to be the promised one, the son of man, the king who had reigned forever. And he wasn't what the people

expected their king to be, till they crucified him. But his crucifixion was exactly what God used to enthrone him forever. You see, when he rose from the dead three days later, when he conquered death, when he paid the price for all evil, all sin, all brokenness, he robbed Satan of his power. He was crowned king, not just of Israel, but king of all creations. All nations belong to him. All power and majesty and honor belong to him. Death cannot hold him. Satan has already lost. Jesus is on the throne forever right now, and his kingdom will have no end. He is king. He is your king. And when you trust in him, when your hope is set on the promise of his kingdom, when your life is given in service

to bringing the goodness of that kingdom to earth today, tangibly in the way you live, love, care for others, and bring glory to your king Jesus, then you can be absolutely positive that one day you will experience the same bodily resurrection of that Jesus was the first. That's the blessing of God's people, that we have a hope, a promised, sure, a promised eternal resurrection to live alongside our King Jesus forever in his kingdom of love, justice, and peace. And because that blessing is secure, whether we are swimming through bright and cheery or foggy and confusing, we will not quit. We will not give in to the doubts. We will not ultimately surrender to the fear that God is not good, that he is not faithful. Why? Well, because

our God is Lord. He is Yahweh. He is faithful. And our God is king over all of creation. We know that he will be faithful because he has always been faithful. It hasn't always looked the way God's people expected it. The Israelites didn't expect to wander in the wilderness for 40 years before the promised land. They didn't expect to go into exile. That didn't expect to wait hundreds of years of silence for their king. They didn't expect their king to be a poor baby from Nazareth. with no political power or army, but he was. And in all of the fog, God was faithful. He was faithful. You see the good life that God has called you to live, the blessing that God has promised on your life, the path that he is calling you to walk today will have its moments of fog. But that will never change

who God is. It couldn't possibly. He is who he is. forever, always, king of creation. So no matter the circumstances surrounding believers, we will keep going onward toward the kingdom of God, faithfully living obedient lives as agents of justice, love, and mercy to a broken world. It starts today. Each and every day, we have a call to faithfully give our lives and service to our king, to keep going, to praise him forever. Amen and amen.