“Will you
not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us
your steadfast love; O Lord, and grant us your salvation.” -Psalm
85:6-7 (ESV) [Read Psalm 85]
Psalm 85,
attributed to “the sons of Korah,” is asking God to revive the
people and the land, a community lament, believed to be based on the
incident recorded in Exodus 34:1-10 when Moses was commanded to take
two more tablets of stone on which God would again write the
commandments. Moses had been so angry and disappointed when he came
down from Mount Sinai with the first tablets of stone on which God
had written the ten commandments and found the people worshiping the
golden calf fashioned from their own jewelry melted down (see Exodus
32:19), that he had thrown the stones in anger and broken them. Then
followed Moses’ heart-rending prayer: “But now, if you will,
forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that
you have written” (Exodus 32:32). But God had not finished with
Moses, nor with His chosen people, although He had purged them with
about three thousand falling on that awful day of their worshiping
the golden calf (see Exodus 32:28b).
Move forward
to the time of the writing of Psalm 85. The Psalmist is appealing to
the people to remember God’s dealing with them and is pleading for
a current outpouring of God’s blessing consequent upon the people’s
not turning back to folly (v. 8). It is always good to remember God’s
work in the past and plead that He will again revive so that
“Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps a way.”
We ourselves
are now in the midst of remembering. During the week leading up to
Resurrection Sunday, many of us meet in our churches to recall with
reverence and awe the Lord’s passion and His death on the cross
that brought about the fulfillment of what the Psalmist wrote in
85:10-11: “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and
peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and
righteousness looks down from the sky.” The Psalmist could not have
known all the implications of fulfillment of his words. On a day of
atonement in the far distant future from the time the psalm was
written, the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross would be
bring to fruition the promise when “Steadfast love and faithfulness
meet”—and indeed they met as Jesus on the cross uttered “It is
finished!” (John 19:30).
Renewal and
revival for us came at the cost of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Poets, writers and ministers have tried through the ages to express
the depth of love and the great cost of what it means for us to be
revived—to come from death in sin to life of forgiveness, when
“steadfast love and faithfulness meet” in our own spirit and
life.
The third
stanza of “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” by Paul Gerhardt
(1607-1676) [words translated by James W. Anderson, 1804-1859]. set
to the minor music “Passion Chorale” by Hans Leo Hassler
(1564-1612) and harmonized by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) gives
a poignant statement of how we should respond when we think of the
price Jesus paid:
“What
language shall I borrow/To thank Thee, dearest Friend,
For this Thy
dying sorrow,/Thy pity without end?
O make me
Thine forever,/And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me
never, never/Outlive my love to Thee."
Prayer: May it
be so, Lord. O, revive us again!” Ethelene Dyer Jones 03.25.2016
