Bible Commentaries

THE FAILURE OF FAITH

‘Lord, where are Thy former lovingkindnesses, which Thou swarest unto David in Thy truth?’

Psalms 89:49

It was on the morrow of the profound humiliation of Jerusalem by Shishak, and amidst the political and religious ruins which it had brought with it, that the eighty-ninth psalm was written. The writer was an old servant and friend of the royal house: Ethan the Ezrahite. He was one of those wise men whose names are recorded as having been exceeded in wisdom by King Solomon, and had long taken part with Heman and Asaph in the Temple’s services; and thus at this sad crisis of his history he pours out his soul in the pathetic and majestic psalm before us, and of this psalm the keynote is to be found in the words, “Lord, where are Thy former lovingkindnesses, which Thou swarest unto David in Thy truth?”

I. ‘Where are Thy former lovingkindnesses?’—As he sings Ethan looks around him, and his eye rests on a scene of degradation and ruin. He suffers as a patriot; he suffers as a religious man; he suffers as the descendants of the old Roman families suffered when they beheld Alaric and his hosts sacking the Eternal City. What had become of the lovingkindness of God, what of His faithfulness, what of His power? Ethan, in his report of the promise, answered his own difficulty. The covenant with David was not an absolute covenant. It depended upon conditions. There is a difference between the gifts of the Creator in the region of unconscious nature and His gifts in the region of free, self-determining will. The former are absolute gifts; the latter depend for their value and their virtue on the use that is made of them. The race of David was raised from among the shepherds of Bethlehem to reign over a great people upon conditions—conditions which were summed up in fidelity to Him who had done so much for it. Ethan himself states this supreme condition in the words of the Divine Author of the covenant: ‘If David’s children forsake My law, and walk not in My judgments … then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their sin with scourges.’

II. Ethan’s cry has often been raised by pious men in the bad days of Christendom: ‘Lord, where are Thy former lovingkindnesses?’ And the answer is, ‘They are where they were.’ ‘The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.’ Now, as always, the promises of God to His people are largely conditioned. If the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church, much short of this may happen as a consequence of the unfaithfulness of her members or her ministers. Of this let us be sure, that if God’s promises seem to any to have failed, the fault lies not with Him, but with ourselves; it is we who have changed, not He. The cloud which issues from our furnaces of passion and self-will has overclouded for the moment the face of the sun; but beyond the cloud of smoke the sun still shines.

—Canon Liddon.

Illustration

‘There are dark seasons when this expectation is not clearly displayed, and troubled hours when the soul finds it hard to seize the word of promise, so surely attested, and only by a great effort can cling to the word of the oath of the true Witness. Then there is danger, lest the praise of God, whose strength is still the ornament and glory of His people, should be hushed, or changed into vain complaining; lest by so long enduring of evil the hope of amelioration should sink into the fear of greater evil.’