Keeping the Faith
Psalm 146[1]
I told you last week about how
difficult it was for me to go through two divorces. What I didn’t tell you was
how hard and long I prayed for God to keep both relationships intact and both
of my families whole. When those prayers went seemingly unanswered, I had a
real crisis of faith on my hands. I had trusted God to make things work out
right, and when they didn’t, I wasn’t sure I trusted God to keep his promises. As
I pointed out last week, I’m sure I’m not the only one to have gone through
that kind of crisis of faith. We hope and pray that if we do what is right and if
we hold true to God, our lives will turn out the way we want them to. But the
fact is that life isn’t that neat and tidy and predictable. We can make all the
right choices and do all the right things, and still all our hopes and dreams
can come crashing down. That can pose a serious challenge to our faith.
Our lesson from Psalm 146 for
today addresses the question whether we can trust God to keep his promises. The
answer is an unqualified affirmation that God always holds up his end of the
bargain. The psalmist puts it this way: “Happy are those … whose hope is in the
Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever” (Ps. 146:5-6).[2]
The psalmist makes it clear that the God who has the power to create all the
heavens and the earth always keeps faith with those who trust in him.[3]
That means he always keeps his promises. As the New Living translation puts it,
“He keeps every promise forever” (Ps. 146:6).
The Psalm goes on to elaborate on
the kind of promises God keeps forever. He “gives justice to the oppressed and
food to the hungry”; he “frees the prisoners”; he “opens the eyes of the
blind”; he “lifts up those who are weighed down”; he “protects the foreigners
among us”; and he “cares for the orphans and widows.” These are the kind of
promises that God keeps forever. They are promises of restoration and new life.
They are promises of mercy and love that redeems and restores and renews our
lives. They are promises that demonstrate who God is: the God who knows our
deepest joys and our deepest disappointments and lifts up those who have been
broken by life.[4]
You may notice that these promises
are “slanted” in a certain direction. They are promises for the downtrodden;
like Jesus’ beatitudes they are for the lost and the least and the left out. [5] There
is nothing here about guaranteeing that those who already have more than enough
will gain even more. Nor do we find anything about climbing the ladder of
success or having that beautiful house on an acreage or the “perfect” marriage
and the “perfect” family. I think this points out one of the reasons why we may
struggle to trust that God will keep his promises: we expect God to give us
what we want in life. But when we do that, we have put our faith in promises
that God never made in the first place!
I think another problem with our
approach to God’s promises is that we have a certain idea about how and when
those promises will be fulfilled. We come to God with very definite requests
(or maybe it’s more accurate to call them demands) and we expect God to deliver
just what we want just when we want it. But it’s been my experience that we are
notoriously bad at knowing what we really need and therefore what we can expect
from our lives. And we are even worse at predicting the time for what is best
for us to happen.
So what can we trust in? According
to our Scripture lesson for today, we can trust that God will “keep the faith.”
When the Psalmist says that the Lord “keeps faith forever,” he is affirming
that God will always be faithful to us, no matter what the circumstances of our
lives. He will always keep every promise: promises to “never forsake us,” to
support us and sustain us with his loving presence. Promises to set right what
is broken in our lives, if not immediately, then in his own time and in his own
way. And what we may have to understand is that the promise may point to the
ultimate future; it may be that we will have to wait for the renewal of all
things in the Kingdom of God to see these promises the Psalmist outlines for us
finally fulfilled for all those who hope in God.
Even if we have to wait, we have
some assurances to hold onto. The first is that we’re talking about the God who
has the power to create all the heavens and the earth.[6] The
God who is powerful enough to make this vast and beautiful creation has the
power to keep his promises. The second assurance is that our Scripture lesson
speaks in terms of what God always does.[7]
The wording in some translations may not bring it out clearly, but the
implication in the Hebrew Bible is that these promises reflect the very
character of God.[8] The only
way for him not to keep these promises is for God to stop being God. And the
third assurance is that even if we have to wait to see the fulfillment, it will
surely come. That is the point of the final statement: “The LORD will reign
forever. He will be your God … throughout the generations.” Since God is the
one who reigns over all things—from creation to the final redemption of all
things in the new creation—we can trust him to keep his promises.[9]
Our God keeps the faith. He keeps
the promises he’s made, promises of restoration and renewal. He always has, as
the biblical story demonstrates again and again. He does so now, even though
oftentimes we may not understand it. And the declaration that “the Lord will
reign forever” means that he always will. Our God always keeps the faith.
[1] © 2015
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 9/6/2015 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] J.
Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New
Interpreters Bible IV:1264, where he contrasts “wickedness,” which in the
Psalms always means the decision “to trust something or someone other than God,”
“happiness is not the absence of pain and trouble but the presence of a God who
cares about human hurt and who acts on behalf of the afflicted and the
oppressed.”
[3] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope,
116: “if the revelations of God are promises, then God ‘himself’ is revealed
where he ‘keeps covenant and faithfulness for ever’ (Ps. 146:6).”
[4] McCann, “Psalms,”
NIB IV:1264: “In view of v. 10, which
explicitly affirms the eternal reign of God …, vv. 6-9 come into focus all the
more clearly as a policy statement for the kingdom of God. The sovereign God
stands for and works for justice, not simply as an abstract principle but as an
embodied reality—provision for basic human needs, liberation from oppression,
empowerment for the disenfranchised and dispossessed.”
[5] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A
Universal Affirmation, 129: “the God who in his almighty power created
heaven and earth is on the side of the people who have to suffer violence
because they cannot defend themselves. Their rights are his divine concern.”
Cf. also ibid., 130: “God, …, creates justice for the people who have been
deprived of it, and for those without any rights, and he does so through his
solidarity with them.”
[6] Cf.
James L. Mays, Psalms, 441: “Hope
attached to his reign is founded on a reality that does not pass away. The God
of Israel is king of the universe; ‘maker of heaven and earth’ is a title of
the God who rules all.”
[7] Cf.
Moltmann, Spirit of Life, 129: “just
as in Paul the justification of the sinner becomes the revelation of God’s
righteousness in the world, so in the Old Testament the establishing of justice
for people deprived of it is the quintessence of the divine mercy, and hence of
the divine righteousness.”
[8] Cf.
Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 116: “In
proving his faithfulness in history, he reveals himself. For the essence and
the identity of the God of promise lies not in his absoluteness over and beyond
history, but in the constancy of his freely chosen relation to his creatures,
in the constancy of his electing mercy and faithfulness.”
[9] Cf.
Mays, Psalms, 441: “Not only does the
Lord rule forever but in his rule he keeps the faith forever.”
