This week, I felt led to go back to the Psalms again and read a couple more. So if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Psalms 33, and then, if you have a bookmark, please bookmark Psalm 27.
These are all promises from the Lord, and it’s something that I personally need to hear often; and it’s something that in this crazy world of ours, we need to be reminded of––and that is the goodness of the Lord.
It’s so easy to get distracted by the worries of this world, and the disappointments of life. It’s so easy to fall into that trap of discouragement and waiting on the Lord––at least it is for me. The idea of waiting on the Lord has been something that has been a struggle for me lately, so that’s probably why I’m coming back to it again this week. I, like many of you, need to focus on the goodness of the Lord.
So let’s take a look at that.
Psalm 33:4-5:
“4 For the word of the Lord is right and true; He is faithful in all he does. 5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”
And then if we go down to verse 20:
“20 We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. 21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. 22 May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.”
And now let’s go back a few chapters to Psalm 27. As you can see from what we just read, again, here’s the idea of putting our hope and trust in the Lord as we wait on Him.
In Psalm 27:13-14, we read:
“13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
Just two short, simple verses. But powerful.
As life goes on, as we’re waiting for an answer, as we’re going through what we’re going through, it’s easy to lose strength. Even from week to week–from Sunday to Sunday. It’s easy from one day to the next to lose our confidence in God. We ask ourselves, ‘Should I hold out hope any longer? Maybe waiting so long is a sign that God is not ever going to answer my prayer. Should I rethink this whole thing? God, give me a sign.’
And then God gives us a sign. Like a bald eagle that reminds us of soaring on wings as eagles. I mentioned that a couple of weeks ago and will return to it again at the end of this sermon. This past week, he threw some verses at me–repeatedly–that told me to trust his timing. Which is exactly what I needed, and exactly what I’ve been struggling with, and what I’m going to preach on today.
It’s times like that when God gives us those signs that we are to not lose hope. Hold on. God is faithful, and he knows what he is doing. Trust His timing and trust his provision. Trust that not only will it come to pass, but in the meantime–even though we don’t see it or understand it–something is being accomplished in the waiting period.
Let’s go back to our first set of verses. Psalm 33:4-5.
“For the word of the Lord is right and true;
He is faithful in all he does.
The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
The earth is full of his unfailing love.”
In his commentary on these verses, Adam Clarke said, “All the words, laws, promises, and threats of God are perfectly true and just. The dispensations of his providence and mercy are equally so. When he rewards or punishes, it is according to truth and justice.”
The reason why I wanted to point this out is because we see a lot of standards of God in the Bible. Those standards are standards of righteousness, which means that God’s punishment is right and true. How could it not be? How could there be righteousness without a punishment for evil?
I used to listen to a lot of talk radio, but I haven’t in the past six months or so since I’ve had my driving job. Instead, I have clicked on some YouTube videos by some of the same hosts, and I’ve kind of had to put a break on that because all they talk about is corruption in the government. It gets disheartening, especially when you don’t see any righteous punishment going on––when there’s no justice, and you’re wondering, when is there going to be justice for all of the injustices going on?
And then there’s this pitting between the political parties and one news media is on one side and another news media is on the other. Then there’s social media. One friend says something insulting about your political ideology and it becomes difficult to remain friends because they’re not insulting your favorite football team on Superbowl Sunday, they’re insulting your standard of righteousness.
We have a God whose standard of righteousness is perfect. He is sovereign and holy, beyond any of us. Beyond any political system on earth. He is not subject to us or our ways. He is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. And we can’t even get close to his standard of righteousness. We’re too sinful.
And so God’s goodness is evident even in his judgments and punishments. His punishments are good because they are righteous.
As I’ve mentioned in sermons before, if we are God’s children, we don’t suffer his wrath but we may suffer his discipline. God disciplines us because he loves us and because of his righteousness that he wants to bestow on us. Wrath is out of anger, discipline is out of love.
Hebrews 12:5-6 says “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
And Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
This is a promise that God watches out for us and turns the bad into good. Maybe the bad is His discipline for the ones he loves, maybe it’s just a rotten day, maybe it’s more than that. Whatever we go through, God uses it to strengthen us.
Psalm 33:5 says, “The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.” There are times when the only way God can make us live righteous and holy lives is to discipline us and make us go through hard times. We learn from that experience. Through that, we learn what it means to love, to be kind, and to be patient and generous. We learn what it means to go through what other people go through, and we learn humility.
But the point isn’t to bring us low, it’s to lift Him up; and in an odd way, it’s to lift us up too. Evelyn has been training horses for a living, and she’s going to be going down south for a couple of months training horses. But you’re probably familiar with the phrase, ‘breaking horses?’ It means breaking their spirit so that they know who’s boss. Guess what, God does that with us. You’ve got to have your stubborn, rebellious streak broken so you can be the tender, compassionate, and obedient person God means for you to be. So his discipline is actually a benefit. Hard times can be a blessing.
So just because we go through hard times doesn’t mean that God isn’t good and that God isn’t working for our good during our waiting period. He is, whether we see it or not.
Going back to Adam Clarke again, he said, “To hear its worthless inhabitants complain, one would think that God dispensed evil, not good. To examine the operation of his hand, everything is marked with mercy and there is no place where his goodness does not appear. The overflowing kindness of God fills the earth.…he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends his rain upon the just and the unjust.”
In his discipline, in his acts of justice, God doesn’t send us out into the wilderness and abandon us. He didn’t even do that with Cain. When God did not accept Cain’s offering, God did not banish him but instructed him.
Genesis 4:6-7 reads, “So the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
So in His love and discipline, God corrected Cain so that he could learn from his error and change his ways–a form of discipline, right? But of course, we know that Cain did not accept God’s discipline, and out of jealousy, he murdered his brother.
In God’s justice, which we just talked about, he still had mercy on Cain. After Cain feared for his life, Verses 13-15 say, And the LORD said to him, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the LORD set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him.
Then Cain “went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” The land of “Nod” means the land of wanderings. Different from “the land of the living,” isn’t it? Yet, in His mercy, God still gave a promise of protection to Cain when he was banished. This is a perfect example of God’s grace in his justice. And I could go on with other examples–the 120-year opportunity for repentance that God gave the whole earth before the flood; finding just 10 faithful people in Sodom and Gomorrah (which Christ didn’t); time and again with giving Israel a second, third, fourth chance at repentance…
In his discipline, in his acts of justice, God does not send us out into the wilderness and abandon us. It’s our choice whether or not we abandon God at that point. Do we abandon him, or do we seek him?
Psalm 33:20-22 says:
20 We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.
22 May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.
Adam Clarke went on to say, “Our whole life is employed in this blessed work; we trust in nothing but him; neither in multitudes of armed men, nor in natural strength, nor in the fleetest animals, nor in any thing human: we trust in Him alone “who is our help and our shield.””
It’s not fun to wait on the Lord. Especially when we are so used to having practically everything at our fingertips pretty quickly. We can order anything online and have it delivered to our doorstep within 3-5 business days; we have quick meals––whether fast food or microwaved. We have Netflix and DVDs, so we can watch an entire television series at our leisure. Remember the days when we had to wait a whole week for the next episode to air at 8 p.m., and you better be right in front of the TV because it won’t be rerun for months? We don’t have to buy CDs anymore, we can just type in an album on Spotify and there it is.
We’re spoiled by having things right in front of us. We don’t even have to leave our house. We’ve got work online, we’ve got church online, we’ve got all kinds of things online thanks to Zoom.
But what about God? Well, we have instant access to God’s throne, but we don’t have guaranteed instant answered prayers in 30 minutes or less. Like I said, he’s sovereign. That means he works in his time, not ours. We can’t make demands. Requests? Sure. But God is old-fashioned–even Daniel called him The Ancient of Days and that was over 2,500 years ago.
So you might as well make sure your phone is charged or grab a magazine cause you’re gonna sit and wait a while. And when the time is right, he’ll send an angel to call our name, move us from the waiting room into another room, and we’re going to sit and wait some more.
Now, we might be rather idle while waiting for a doctor or dentist, but waiting on God is not. There is something going on in that waiting. Maybe God is moving on our behalf behind those closed doors and–because the doors are closed, we don’t see it. Or, like I said, we could be learning to be patient or kind or humble and not even realize that until later.
Paul said to the Romans that our suffering produces perseverance; our perseverance produces character; and character produces hope.
So back to verse 20, “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.”
The Enduring Word Bible Commentary says, “Having praised Him and considered God’s greatness from many angles, it was appropriate to simply wait for the LORD – for His guidance, His word, His deliverance – looking to Him as our help and shield.”
It went on to say:
“Earlier the psalmist called God’s people to rejoice because of God’s character and might. Now he calls us to praise God because of our blessed experience of trusting in His holy name.”
And trusting in God’s holy name is the key.
One of the early explorers of South Africa’s ocean waters, Bartolomeu Dias, went around a cape on a stormy sea. His ship threatened to go to pieces, so he called the place the Cape of Storms.
But Vasco da Gama, who came later, changed the name to the Cape of Good Hope, for he saw ahead of him the jewels and treasures of India. You can call this a life of storms if you wish. But if you can see the glorious redemption of eternity ahead of you, you can call it what it is only in Christ—a life of good hope.
But we can not only hope for God’s goodness in eternity, we can also hope for God’s goodness in the here and now.
Psalm 27:13-14 says,
“13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
David was speaking to himself when he wrote this. In fact, this was a prayer for guidance, and David was reminding himself of God’s goodness. Just a few verses before this, David asks God to provide him with a ‘smooth path’ or as some translations put it, a ‘straight path.’
Last week, I briefly mentioned Psalm 18, and verse 36 which reads, “You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn.” And I mentioned those steep, narrow mountains in the Middle East that mountain goats can traverse up and down, but not us. I remember when we visited Mount Rushmore, and when we drove around the other side of it, there were mountain goats hopping up and down that mountain. There’s no way we could do that, so in a metaphoric sense, The Lord broadens our path as we climb that mountain so that we can move up and down the mountain safely.
I also mentioned that not all mountains are going to move, sometimes we need that secure footing to climb the mountain. I also talked about the storms in life last week, and David, who had many adversaries, false witnesses, and violent men opposing him. In asking for a smooth path, he wasn’t asking for an easy life but for a stable and secure place to climb that mountain during the storms of this life. Imagine climbing a rugged mountain during a storm.
David, in contrast to Cain, was not insolent at God but sought after God in times such as these. As I said earlier, God does not send us out into the wilderness and abandon us. It’s our choice at that point whether or not we abandon God.
As for David, you can see how he was a man after God’s own heart. These trials did not cause him bitterness, instead, they led him to this statement: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”
So David further strengthens himself and his readers by encouraging us all to “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
Though our desire is to have things settled in 30 minutes or less, like they do on TV, we may have to wait 30 days, 30 weeks, 30 months, and maybe even 30 years. However long the Lord deems is necessary.
But our hope is in the Lord. The goodness, the strength, the righteousness, and the faithfulness of the Lord. “For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. 5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”
Waiting on God means that we have an expectant hope.
I was reminded once again of Lamentations 3:22-26 which says, Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
That is a type of waiting where we should have no doubt in our minds that whatever need we have, it’s going to be provided.
David Guzik said that the idea behind waiting on the LORD as an expectant hope is that we take the time and effort to seek Him, and rely on Him and His strength.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about the ‘thorn in his flesh.’
He said: “8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Our hope is in the Lord. No matter how weak we are, He is strong. And in God’s ways, the weaker we are, the stronger we are because our weakness provides the perfect opportunity for God to show off.
A couple of weeks ago, I based my sermon on Isaiah 40, and I would like to close with it again this week.
Starting from verse 28:
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall,
But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.
Notice who God gives power to, the weak. And to those who have no might, He increases their strength. Those who thought themselves strong find themselves weak. God’s strength is reserved for those who know they are weak, and know they have no might.
But how do we receive this strength? By waiting on the Lord. Those who wait on the LORD with an expectant hope shall renew their strength. There comes a time when God allows us to come to a point where we have no hope in order to receive our hope in Him and in nothing else.
In our weakness, in that moment when our hope in ourselves and everything else is gone, God shows up and shows off. In the meantime, in our waiting, God is doing something within us to strengthen us, to discipline us, and to make us more holy so that what happens in the end is not just an answer to prayer, but also a process that we’ve gone through where we have become refined. God wants us to become a person who is ready and spiritually mature to receive and handle the blessings we’ve been waiting for.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Peggychoucair from Pixabay
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