Psalm 89 ~ Reassurance

I heard someone define assurance this week as "a sure thing", it’s being certain of something. But other than death & taxes, is there any thing that is a sure thing. Unfortunately not even our faith is a sure thing at times. It’s not that God’s grace toward us ever fails, it’s not that God stops loving us, but sometimes we struggle to believe God really does loves us. I don’t know about you, but there are so many times I struggle to feel loved by God & there are times I wonder if God is with me & if God really can or does forgive me, & it’s in those times of doubt that we all need some reassurance. We all to be need to be reminded that God’s grace & love is a sure thing.

If we look at Psalm 89 we see here the story of David. While the psalm is written by Ethan the Ezrahite, it reveals to us the heart & life of David, & it begins with words of assurance. David is certain that God was with him - look at 89:1-2.

1 I will sing of the LORD's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.
2 I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself.

Look at the words here, stands firm, established, & faithfulness. These are words of assurance. David is certain that God is with him. He is certain of God’s love & protection, & then look at 89:19-24.

Once you spoke in a vision, to your faithful people you said: "I have bestowed strength on a warrior; I have exalted a young man from among the people.
I have found David my servant; with my sacred oil I have anointed him.
My hand will sustain him; surely my arm will strengthen him.
No enemy will subject him to tribute; no wicked man will oppress him.
I will crush his foes before him and strike down his adversaries.
My faithful love will be with him, and through my name his horn will be exalted.

David is certain of the promise & covenant God made with him. David knows that God is with him. David knows God is fighting for him & he is certain that God will bless his family. For David God’s love & faithfulness is a sure thing. But then something happens, look at 89:38-42 & 46.

38 But you have rejected, you have spurned, you have been very angry with your anointed one.
39 You have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled his crown in the dust.
40 You have broken through all his walls and reduced his strongholds to ruins.
41 All who pass by have plundered him; he has become the scorn of his neighbors.
42 You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice.

46 How long, O LORD ? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire?

David is no longer certain of God’s love. He now questions whether or not the promise God made to him & his family is valid. Suddenly David is filled with doubt & fear. His faith is gone & so is the certainty he once had that God had anointed him & blessed him. Have you ever been in a place where you faced these same kinds of questions? Maybe we question God’s love for us? Maybe we wonder whether or not God can forgive us, maybe we begin to ask ourselves if God is even there. These doubts & struggles are real & they are all too common & it’s during these times that we need some reassurance, but what causes us to lose our assurance in the first place?

What are those things that take away our certainty in God’s promises? Why is it that we can go from having a strong & abiding faith in God one day to incredible doubts & fears the next? Well, if we look at David we find that one reason might be our own sin. A few weeks ago as we looked at the life of David we heard the story of his moral collapse. When David committed adultery with Bathsheba it began a series of choices by David that did not honor or glorify God. All David did was try to cover up his own sin in order to keep his public image in tact & in the process David made one bad choice after another. David’s failure & sin robbed him of the assurance of God’s love because it broke his relationship with God.

Our sin robs us of the assurance of God’s love because sin always breaks our relationship with God. While forgiveness can & does restore that relationship, the reality is that each time we sin, each time we fail in our walk with God we will wrestle with doubts & fears because sin separates us from God. It’s not that God turns away - we do & each time we do we will question whether or not God loves us & we will ask ourselves, can God forgive me again.

It’s not just sin that can rob us of assurance – it can also be our poor self image or low self esteem. Maybe deep down we have always questioned whether or not God does loves us. If we have a hard time seeing the value & worth God has placed in us, it can be easy to question whether or not God really is with us or working for us. What’s amazing to me is how a low self esteem or a poor self image can follow us all through life. How many of us can remember every word that a bully said to us on the bus or during recess? While the old saying goes sticks & stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me, the truth is that names & words do hurt & while bones might heal, sometimes our self image does not & if we don’t see value & worth in ourselves, then it will be hard for us to be certain that God loves us & cares for.

Circumstances can also cause us to question God’s love for us. When everything starts to go wrong, when we find ourselves in a string of one crisis after another that are not of our own doing & beyond our ability to fix, we might begin to ask ourselves where is God? Has God turned away? Has he hid his face from us? Like David in 89:49 we might start crying out, Lord, where is your steadfast love of old?

Our own sin & failure, our poor self image & low self esteem, & the circumstances of life can rob us of the assurance that God is with us & God loves us, but did you notice something about all of those things - they all focus on ourselves. When we are caught up in our sin & our failures - we are looking at ourselves. When we struggle with a poor self image or low self esteem we are looking at ourselves & when the circumstance of life become overwhelming & we feel defeated, again we are only focused on ourselves. So the assurance of God’s love & the certainty of God’s promises begin to fade because we are not looking at God, we are only looking at ourselves. If we need some reassurance, if we need to be reminded of God’s great faithfulness & steadfast love, then we need to look to God.

Let me offer 3 ways we can turn & look to God to find this kind of reassurance. The first way we can look to God is to look back. We can look back into our own lives not to look at ourselves but to look at how God has been faithful to us in the past. Can we find those moments when God was there to help us & can we use those moments to remind us that God will help us again? Throughout the Old Testament God called the people of Israel to look back at their lives & remember how God had been faithful. Israel was always looking back to the story of how God delivered them from the Red Sea & the hand of Pharaoh. When the people of Israel had the Red Sea in front of them & Pharaoh & his army behind them everything looked hopeless. They were trapped & thought they would die, but then God parted the Red Sea & Israel was able to cross over on dry ground. God often told the people of Israel to look back to that moment to reassure them that God would continue to help them.

David could also have looked back into his own life to see all the ways God had provided for him & cared for him. God had rescued David many times & proven himself trustworthy over & over again, so he could have found reassurance from his own life’s story if he had turned back & remembered how God had helped him. So can we look back into our own lives, or maybe into the lives of our families & remember a time when God was faithful? Can we look back & see how God was there during a crisis, or how God provided for us in some clear way? And then can we hold on to those moments as a reminder that just as God was with us in the past, so is God with us today & we can be assured that God will be with us into the future.

The second place we can look for reassurance is to those around us because many times it will be our family & friends who will helps us see & hear God more clearly. When we begin to doubt & question our faith & trust in God we need people who will speak to us words of truth. This is why small groups & Bible Studies & Sunday School classes are so important because it’s in these places where our friends can share with us God’s words. We heard some of those words today from Isaiah 43:1-5.

1 I will sing of the LORD's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.
2 I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself.
3 You said, "I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David my servant,
4 'I will establish your line forever and make your throne firm through all generations.' "
5 The heavens praise your wonders, O LORD, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy ones.

These are the kinds of words we might need to hear when we question our own value. When we doubt God is with us during a difficult time or when we wonder if God can ever forgive us, we need people who will speak to us these kinds of words & give us the reassurance we need.

Then the third place where we can find reassurance is right here in worship. Look again at Psalm 89:1-2. It’s in singing of God’s love, it’s in proclaiming God’s faithfulness & declaring God’s goodness that we find reassurance. The reason that worship brings reassurance is because worship helps shift our focus from us to God. Worship reminds us that we are not to be the center of our lives – God is, so we need to stop looking at ourselves & start trusting in God. That’s why we pray, that’s why we look to God’s word, that’s why we sing & praise God, that’s why we tithe & give to God, because it all helps us keep our eyes & hearts fixed on God & sometimes just saying it & singing it & praying it over & over again helps us trust & believe it.

That reassurance comes from our times together in worship is also the message of the old Fanny Crosby hymn, Blessed Assurance. We are going to sing that hymn in just a minute but if you know the chorus it goes, this is my story this is my song, praising my savior all the day long, this is my story, this is my song, praising my savior all the day long. The song reminds us that the blessed assurance we need to strength our faith comes from praising God, it comes from reflecting on the story of our lives & looking back to those times & places where we have seen God at work, & it comes from hearing the story & the song of others.