1 Lord, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob.
2 Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin. Selah.
3 Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.
4 Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease.
5 Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations?
6 Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?
7 Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation.
8 I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly.
9 Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him; that glory may dwell in our land.
10 Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
11 Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
12 Yea, the LORD shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase.
13 Righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way of his steps.
God will restore His disobedient people as they cry out to Him for mercy.
We are suffering under the displeasure of God, and this is an extraordinarily uncomfortable position for us. Sometimes when a child is disciplined, there is a short period of time in which he is out of fellowship with Dad and Mom and the rest of the family. Being out of fellowship is a miserable condition for the little one. As a child who loves his father cannot endure the displeasure of his father for long, even so we cannot continue under the anger of God towards us. God’s eternal justice demands a severe, fearful punishment for our sins. Justice cries mightily for death and eternal hell. But we are relieved to discover that mercy and peace intervene in our behalf. By the end of the psalm, we will express faith in the covenant promises of God. This brings a great relief to our souls, and we are confident that God will give us what is good.
Verses 1–3. How many times will God restore His people when they rebel against His law and reject His Word? With the Jews, that rebellion occurred almost continually over a period of 1,500 years—in the wilderness, in the time of the Judges, in the time of the Kings, and in the time of Christ. During His ministry, our Lord Jesus accused the Jews of partaking with their fathers in the murder of the prophets of God. In His words, they were about to fill up the measure of their forefathers (Matt. 23:30–36). What Christ is up against is an age-old pattern of rebellion, punctuated with periods of repentance and mercy. For the first three verses, the psalmist reviews God’s record of mercy and forgiveness. And it is on this basis that he steps in to plead for God’s mercy again.
Verses 4–7. Like the little boy who has been disciplined and now seeks his father’s forgiveness and restoration, the psalmist prays that God would put away His anger towards His people. But two things need to happen to restore this covenant relationship with God. Verse 5 elucidates that God must turn both our hearts back to Him and His heart back to us. The one will not happen without the other. So the psalmist speaks on behalf of the entire congregation when he prays for a revival in the hearts and lives of the people. When relationships are broken down in the family, there will be no happiness in the home; the same thing applies in God’s relationship with His church. God must soften our hearts and turn us back to Him, and then we are back in His communion. If God does not show His mercy to us by working in our hearts through His Spirit, then we are doomed. There will be no salvation for the church and no salvation for His people.
Verses 8–10. The very beginning of the restoration of our relationship with God happens when we listen to the words of God and hide them in our hearts. Faith begins when we hear the promises of God and cling to them. What are these words that we must cling to? With the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, God promised peace to men. As the man of faith reads the words, “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” he takes God at His word and knows that he has peace with God. These words produce immeasurable comfort in him. It is interesting that verse 8 includes another quick warning that we not return to folly. How quickly children raised in Christian homes wander away from the truth of God’s Word as they are drawn to the empty promises offered by the gods of this world!
Salvation is near to those who fear God. Even before we hear the Word of God, we must fear the God of the Word because the beginning of all knowledge and wisdom is the fear of God. A good way to understand this is to use an analogy of a Christian running the bases on a baseball diamond each time he gets into the Word. First base is always the fear of God. Without fear of God in the recognition of His power, His law, and justice, nobody will ever make it to second base, which is faith. The base-runner receives God’s salvation by faith, and then of course he moves on to love because it is impossible to receive God’s love without loving Him in return. Those who love God will naturally keep His commandments, and with that, he will have run all the bases!
Verse 10 provides a beautiful description of the salvation of God. The covenant of salvation that God has drawn up for His people is made up of truth and love. It is both a written compact and a relationship. When either one of these is absent, then we have something less than a saving relationship. A marriage of a man to a woman must consist of both objective vows and a relationship of loving and caring for one another. Suppose someone was to say, “Of course I’m married! I took the vows twenty years ago, and I have a ring, but—I have never kissed my wife. I have never told her that I love her. In fact, I have never spent a single minute cultivating our relationship in love.” What could we say about this marriage? It could hardly be considered a true marriage. On the other hand, if a man was living with a woman in an attempt to cultivate a marriage relationship—but without a commitment of vows or a ring—there would still be a problem with the relationship. The same problem can exist in one’s relationship with God. Some desire a relationship without the law of God and the truth of His Word. Others may unduly emphasize the law of God and preach His truth without an equal emphasis upon a relationship based in faith, love, and joy. This same imbalance can happen in how someone may view his relationship to the church. While some want a church relationship without a commitment to membership, others demand a commitment to membership but do little to cultivate the love of the brotherhood. Either perspective produces an unbalanced view of the Christian life.
God’s salvation is presented in verse 10 as a beautiful picture of justice and peace kissing one another. But how can this be? If the justice of God cries out for the punishment for our sins, how could we ever be reconciled to this justice? Of course, it is God who provides the solution to this great conundrum. It is only through the sacrifice of His own Son that He may be both Just and the Justifier of those who come to Christ by faith (Rom. 3:26).
Verses 11–13. The psalm began on a negative note, but it ends on a strong note of optimism. God’s truth springs out of the earth and righteousness prevails. Although He must work with a consummately rebellious people, He will make them righteous. He will set them in the way of His steps. It is a gradual process of sanctification that consummates in final glorification, but the faithful will trust in the faithfulness of God to pull it off. With every seed of faith that sprouts in the hearts of our children, and with every soul that is saved, we see the goodness of God. The Christian merely opens his eyes and witnesses the goodness of God all around him! With every generation, the righteous rule of Christ spreads from shore to shore. With every family that walks in God’s laws and every nation that roots itself on the principles of God’s Word, we see the fruits of righteousness spring up in the earth. This is God’s doing. Let us celebrate the goodness of God as He brings righteousness to this sin-enslaved world!
1. Attempts to separate the fear of God from the Gospel message have been devastating to untold numbers in our day. If you are going to be saved, you must first fear God. You will never be able to believe the Word that is taught unless you honor the God Who reveals it to you and honor those who teach it by listening attentively. It takes faith to listen to the Word, to then believe its importance and relevance for you, and to finally believe in it for your own salvation.
2. There are secular schools that teach the Bible as “literature,” but they warn their teachers not to teach it dogmatically as if it were true. “Teach it with scientific objectivity and proud skepticism,” they say. This is a wrong-headed way of looking at the Bible. If the beginning of knowledge is the fear of Yahweh, certainly no one should ever approach the Word of God without fearing God! Salvation is far from a people who refuses to fear the Creator, who have not been taught that the beginning of wisdom and knowledge is the fear of God.
3. There are thousands of denominations and splinter groups in the Christian church, and thus there is very little unity in the church today. Ultimately, these divisions result from a failure to understand the truth, or from a failure to use love, joy, peace, longsuffering, and meekness to resolve differences. When men fail miserably at keeping “the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace,” there must be either a lack of commitment to the truth or a failure to love. May God help us to love His truth and love one another!
Congregational worship provides a great opportunity to cry out to God for reformation of the church. The church is weaker today in Western countries than it has been in many years because of a lack of love of God, His truth, and His people. Are we that much different from the wayward people of Israel who lived from 1400 B.C. until the time of Christ? We should be able and willing to pray these sorts of prayers in the congregation of the saints, calling out to God for His mercy upon His church as it weakens from generation to generation in Europe and America.
1. Describe the pattern of rebellion found in the nation of Israel from the time of Moses until Christ came.
2. What are the first steps towards spiritual renewal outlined in this psalm?
3. What are the two things that constitute a marriage relationship and that constitute our relationship with God?
4. How do Righteousness (Justice) and Peace kiss one another?
5. In what spirit does the psalmist end the psalm? How did he begin the psalm?
6. Give several examples of Deliverance Psalms.
1. How careful are we to listen to the words of God?
2. Do we love both God and His truth in His Word? Do we communicate the truth in love?